North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service are undertaking a review which will look at the fire cover across the county.
- ‘Fire cover’ is the term used by the Service to refer to;
- The number of fire engines, other specialist fire vehicles and equipment, available within the Service to respond to fires and other emergencies.
- Where fire stations are located.
- How quickly fire engines can respond to an emergency call (i.e. how they are staffed).
The review will therefore, look at how and where we provide fire engines and fire stations and how they are crewed.
It is being carried out to:
- Ensure the Service balances cost and resources* to risk and to ensure, as far as possible, that the provision of resources relative to risk is similar across the whole county and the City of York.
- Take into account the impact of a reduction in incidents over the last 10 years.**
- Ensure the Service can provide a response to incidents that is appropriate for increasingly frequent large weather related events (e.g. flooding)
- Ensure the Service has a model of fire cover that is capable of delivering savings, according to the financial constraints, over the life of the review
To undertake the review we will analyse five year’s worth of incident information and the impact on (our response to) these incidents, if we were to change;
- The number and location of fire engines
- The number and location of fire stations
- The way that we crew both fire engines and stations
From this information the Service will be able to consider options and draw up an initial range of proposals, taking into account other information available, such as future housing developments and potential changes in demographics.
Before we start the review we want to gather feedback on how we are proposing to undertake it and what we should consider within it. This feedback gathering stage is open until 5pm on Monday 28th April 2014.
In order to assist you provide us with feedback we have added some supplementary information and a feedback survey to our website. You can view this information and complete the survey by clicking on the link on the homepage of our website www.northyorksfire.gov.uk
We will also be at various public venues over the coming weeks so please feel free to come over for a chat if you see us.
Monday 14th April between 3pm-5pm Selby Library
Wednesday 16th April between 2pm-4pm Skipton Library
Thursday 17th April between 3pm-5pm Richmond Library
Thursday 24th April between 3pm-5pm Scarborough Library
Friday 25th April between 9:30am-12 midday Harrogate Hydro
Friday 25th April between 1pm-3pm Harrogate Library
Following this feedback stage North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue will spend the rest of 2014 undertaking the review and then produce a report to be considered by the Fire Authority.
Any proposals for change will be set out in a document for public consultation during 2015. Following this consultation, those proposals will be considered by the Fire Authority and any implementation is likely to start from April 2016.
*Resources means fire engines, specialist vehicles, equipment, buildings and people.
**. There has been a 32% reduction in calls between 2002/03 and 2012/13. In 2002/03 we attended 11,248 incidents. In 2012/13 we attended 7,659.
