Fire & Rescue services under the spotlight

Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service has launched a consultation to reshape services across the county.

These include replacing on-call services at Macclesfield with full-time crews, who would only operate during the day. On-call crews have other jobs but when a call comes in, must head to their local fire stations to deploy. Full-time firefighters do not have other jobs but are stationed on site for the duration of their shift.

Presently, although on-call staff are not present there all the time, they can still be called in during the night or weekends to respond to emergencies.

The revised plan would leave one full-time fire crew in place and replace the second on-call crew with another full-time crew. That new full-time crew would only work during the day and not at evenings and weekends like the on-call crew currently does. But the service insists each station would still have cover around the clock.

It also claims the changes would not harm services across the impacted towns as fire engines could be deployed from other parts of Cheshire.

Andrew Fox-Hewitt, secretary of the Fire Brigades Union in Cheshire, said: “We are aware the proposals are causing concern and anxiety at stations where the removal of a fire engine is proposed, and we have requested data along with risk and task analysis from the service to understand how these proposals will impact the community particularly at night and weekends.”

Alex Waller, Chief Fire Officer and chief executive at Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service, said: “Our proposals include converting four fire engines, currently crewed by part-time (on-call) firefighters and not often available, to fire engines crewed by full-time firefighters and guaranteed to be available during weekday daytimes, when we are usually busiest.