Fire station hours could be cut in cost-saving plan

Reducing hours at a fire station is one of the proposals aimed at addressing a fire service's £1.2m funding gap.

A public consultation on potential measures at Cleveland Fire Brigade opened earlier this month, including plans to reduce staffing of one of the two fire engines at Thornaby Station to daytime hours only.

The service said changing Thornaby's crewing would have the "lowest impact" on service-wide response times compared with other sites and added the safety of its communities remained its priority.

The consultation, which is open for 12 weeks, closes on 26 November and would be used to inform recommendations and support decision-making by the Cleveland Fire Authority, it said.

Cleveland Fire Brigade said it was facing "financial pressures like many public services" and its forecasting identified a funding gap of at least £1.198m by 2028-29.

Cleveland Fire Brigades Union (FBU) previously said its firefighters were already "constantly having to do more with less".

Secretary James Sudron said: "Any further reduction in front-line appliances and staffing risks undermining both public safety and firefighter safety."

Cleveland Fire Brigade said one fire appliance Thornaby Station would continue to be available 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

It said emergencies happened more frequently during the day than overnight so the proposal would "better align resources with periods of greatest demand".

The service added there were no job losses or redundancies proposed and the reduction would be made through "natural staff turnover".

The second proposal involved permanently staffing a daytime fire engine crew in East Cleveland, with it rotating between the area's fire stations including Guisborough, Loftus, Saltburn and Skelton.

Currently, the stations operate an on-call duty system where those within five minutes travel time of the station have other commitments but respond to emergency calls when needed.

The service said: "As this is arranged at short notice and unplanned, it incurs significant costs in the form of overtime, disturbance payments and cancelled training events, which then have to be rescheduled."

Cleveland Fire Brigade said the proposed changes were expected to increase response times across the region by two seconds.

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