Final fire station cuts announced

Ben Sprung, from the Fire Brigades Union says the concessions aren't good enough and the campaign will continue.

The London Fire Brigade say that the public consultation brought forward some strong voices and the changes made have been in response to this. Rita Dexter, Deputy Commissioner of London Fire Brigade explains that in order to make changes to the plan, savings needed to be made elsewhere.

By making £6 million in savings from these changes, Clapham fire station and New Cross fire station will remain open.

In addition Chelsea fire station would retain two fire engines (instead of reducing by one), and East Greenwich fire station would gain an additional fire engine.

The revised plan still seeks to maintain existing response time targets of getting the first fire engine to an incident, on average, in six minutes and the second, if needed in eight minutes.

These are amongst the fastest target response times of any emergency service in the country.

The fire stations still proposed to close under the revised plan are:

1.Belsize

2.Bow

3.Clerkenwell

4.Downham

5.Kingsland

6.Knightsbridge

7.Silvertown

8.Southwark

9.Westminster

10.Woolwich

The revised proposals are:

• Close 10 fire stations, rather than 12.

• Reduce the number of fire engines (pumping appliances) by 14, ratherthan 18.

• Reduce the number of fire rescue units (specialist rescue vehicles) from16 to 14.

• Reduce minimum crewing levels on fire rescue units from 5 firefighters to 4.

• Reduce the number of firefighter posts overall by 552 instead of 520

These will be discussed by the Fire Authority on Thursday, 18 July.

Two London fire stations facing closure as part of a controversial package of cuts have been saved.

Fire chiefs have come up with a revised plan following a15-week public consultation.

Clapham and New Cross fire stations will stay open.

The number of fire engines being scrapped has also been reduced. But the number of jobs being axed will increase.

The original plan to save £29 million would have seen 12 fire stations closed, 18 fire engines withdrawn and 520 jobs lost.

Instead, 10 fire stations will shut, 14 fire appliances will be scrapped and 552 jobs will go.

The brigade will also lose two of its 16 specialist rescue trucks and they will be manned four firefighters instead of five.