Leader's fury over letter regarding fire service provision

Plymouth City Council leader Tudor Evans has expressed fury at a suggestion that the Council should pay to prevent the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service from cutting fire cover in the city.

The proposal came from Councillor Mark Healey of Somerset County Council, chairman of the fire authority, in response to a letter from Councillor Evans raising concerns about the planned cuts in Plymouth, which include replacing full-time firefighters with retained crews.

In his response to Councillor Evans, Councillor Healey said the planned cuts were to meet reductions in Government grant and “if Plymouth City Council would be prepared to commit funding within its resources to maintain current service provision in Plymouth” the fire authority would take that into consideration at its meeting on 10 July.

Councillor Evans said: “We are deeply concerned about the proposals to reduce fire cover in Plymouth, the biggest city in the region and therefore the area with the biggest potential hazards. No other comparable city in the UK is proposing retained firefighters in its urban areas, for obvious reasons.

“So I was utterly astounded to receive a response from Mark Healey asking for Plymouth taxpayers to pay extra just to maintain fire cover. It is astonishing that he thinks it is acceptable to suggest that Plymouth City Council should subsidise basic fire and rescue cover when we are facing huge reductions in our resources. We are addressing these pressures as best we can, and the suggestion that our tax payers should be asked to pay twice for fire cover is outrageous.”

Councillor Evans said Councillor Healey had quoted Sir Ken Knight’s ‘Facing the Future’ efficiencies report to justify the cuts but there is no evidence in its plan of any attempt to address the suggestions in that report that the fire service should collaborate with other blue light services, share facilities with councils or consider alternative delivery models such as through mutuals, sharing officer resources and more streamlined governance structures. 

He said: “In Plymouth we are working extremely hard to deal with massive reductions in our budget and are pursuing all of these approaches as an alternative to cutting vital front line services. I believe that it is entirely reasonable to expect the same from the fire authority rather than it.”

Councillor Evans added that the fire authority’s consultation on the cuts was hidden away and received only 184 responses and a margin of just 18 people to justify decisions affecting the lives for more than 250,000 residents.

The Plymouth Daily has contacted Cllr Mark Healey for a response.