Merseyside Fire and Rescue Service

Liz McInnes Excerpts

Tuesday 26th January 2016 Westminster Hall

[Liz McInnes (Heywood and Middleton) (Lab)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Mr Hollobone. I thank my hon. Friend the Member for Wirral West (Margaret Greenwood) for securing this important debate. She is right to highlight the cuts to Merseyside fire and rescue service and to the six metropolitan fire and rescue authorities in general. They have borne the brunt of budgetary reductions between 2010-11 and 2015-16. My constituency is served by the Greater Manchester fire and rescue authority, which like its metropolitan sister in Merseyside is facing massive cuts that cannot mean anything other than a drastic reduction in its services. Following the local government settlement, Greater Manchester fire and rescue authority will have to cut £15.8 million from its budget by 2020, with a massive £12.6 million reduction in the first two years alone.

Today the Government announced greater collaboration with the other emergency services, but Greater Manchester already has numerous collaborative projects, which include a national flagship station at Irlam that includes police, fire and ambulance, and the development of the UK’s first safe and well assessments, which focus on health and crime prevention as well as fire safety and prevention. It is the first fire and rescue service in the UK to have all front-line firefighters and resources responding to cardiac arrests on behalf of the local ambulance service. It is also building a joint fire and ambulance station in Wigan; providing offices to Greater Manchester police in Stockport, Stalybridge and Mossley; launching the community risk intervention team to support Greater Manchester police and health services; opening prevention hubs with Greater Manchester police and Salford City Council to support troubled families; and developing and delivering joint realistic multi-agency public disorder training.

The Government announced joint working with the police with a lot of fanfare, but I put it to the Minister that it is already going on. A further cut of £15.8 million will undoubtedly have an impact on the projects I have just outlined and will serve to limit the type of joint working that the Greater Manchester fire and rescue service has done so successfully with the police and other agencies. That is surely a retrograde step, given today’s announcement.

Since 2009-10, Greater Manchester fire and rescue authority has saved £28 million, which amounts to a 25% reduction in budget. Similarly to Merseyside fire and rescue service, that has been achieved through cutting the numbers of firefighters; cutting support staff and senior management; revisions to firefighter shifts and crewing arrangements; increased collaboration with other services, as I have already outlined; and improved procurement, among many other savings. With those steps already taken, a further cut of £15.8 million will require an unacceptable reduction in the fire and rescue cover that the service can provide. The scale of the new cuts will require the loss of a further 312 firefighter posts and the reduction of night-time cover from 56 fire engines to 33, meaning that Bury, Stockport and Trafford will have only one engine that is immediately available. The cuts will reduce front-line firefighters to 1,000 by 2019. In 1996, the authority had more than 2,000 firefighters. Fewer firefighters means fewer crewed-up fire engines being immediately available. As other Members have outlined, the consequence is that it will take longer to get to incidents and fires will spread more extensively.

Greater Manchester fire service has delivered more than 425,000 home visits and reduced fires by 42% over the past six years, but the trend of reduced incidents is now levelling off and in some places reversing. Between July and September last year, special service calls, such as road traffic collisions and flood responses, rose by 28% compared with the same period in the previous year. The numbers of non-domestic fires, accidental house fires and fire casualties have also increased. Further cuts will have an impact on preventive work, resulting in increased risk, more fires and more casualties.

On Boxing day last year, two thirds of Greater Manchester fire and rescue service’s available resources were deployed to provide flood rescue response across the county. Firefighters rescued nearly 1,000 people in less than 24 hours. Future incidents of that size will leave large parts of Greater Manchester with no fire and rescue cover. The Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004 does not place a statutory duty on fire services to respond to flooding, and Greater Manchester fire and rescue service will be unable to maintain its current levels of response to flooding following a further £15.8 million in cuts.

Greater Manchester fire and rescue service is one of the most innovative brigades in the country. As we go forward into a devolved administration in Manchester, our communities should have the power to decide the type of fire and rescue service that they need. Cost-benefit analysis shows that for every £1 invested in firefighter provision in Greater Manchester, £18 is returned in benefits to the local economy—a contribution of £1.27 billion in 2014 alone. I urge the Government to take note of those figures and ask themselves whether further cuts to our fire and rescue services are a false economy. If the answer is yes, which I believe it is, the Government must think again before they put short-term financial savings ahead of public safety.