We’re calling on people across South Yorkshire to have their say on how we plan to meet a four million pound financial shortfall.
We currently face cost pressures of up to £4million, due to no longer being able to use a way of staffing our fire stations called Close Proximity Crewing, and because we might have to meet a significant, national shortfall in pension contributions.
Our proposals, which are outlined in our draft Integrated Risk Management Plan, were considered by our governing Fire Authority last month.
The key proposal within this plan is to reduce the number of firefighters on a fire engine from five to four, in order to maintain the number of fire engines we have available 24/7 across the county.
This is a change that has already been adopted by many services across the country and we would rather so this than reduce the speed of our 999 response, during the night, at up to half of our fire stations.
In making this change we would review our existing procedures to ensure the safety of our firefighters and, importantly, would continue to commit breathing apparatus wearers to house fires regardless of whether we have a five or four person crew – with other fire engines providing back-up as needed.
We’re now publishing our draft plans, which you can see via the link above, and want you to have your say via the survey below. The consultation will run for 12-weeks, across May, June, July and August.
Before filling out the survey – we have published a series of Frequently Asked Questions that outline why we need to make these savings, what else we’ve done to save money, why we can’t use our reserves and more.
This form collects some personal information – which will be used for monitoring purposes only, to ensure we capture views from people across the whole of South Yorkshire. By sending us a completed form you are agreeing for your data to be used in this way. More information on data sharing and protection can be found here.