Plans approved to replace fire engines with 'tactical response vehicles'

Fire engines will be replaced with smaller tactical response vehicles like these Credit: ITV News

The North Yorkshire Fire Authority has approved plans to replace a full time fire engine with a 'tactical response vehicle' at five fire stations in the region.

The affected locations are:

  • Harrogate

  • Malton

  • Northallerton

  • Ripon

  • Tadcaster

Changes are also being introduced at Scarborough, where one of the two full-sized engines will only be crewed during the day, rather than by a rotating shift of firefighters.

The changes will start being implemented on 1st April 2016 and are likely to take up to four years to complete.

The service expects that sufficient numbers of staff will leave the organisation over the next four years to allow the changes to happen without any redundancies.

The fire service have suggested the specification of their tactical response vehicles, which is yet to be confirmed, will be similar to this German example Credit: North Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service

Tactical Response Vehicles will be crewed with fewer staff than a standard fire engine. They will respond to, and be able to deal with, small incidents, such as bin fires, on their own and will be sent with standard fire engines to larger incidents such as house fires and road accidents.