(a)

the Government grant had been reduced by 10.3 per cent for 13/14 and 7.3 per cent for 14/15 equating to a reduction in funding of £5.5m;

(b)

the DSFRS had worked hard over the last few years to ensure that the impact of any cuts on public safety was minimal and that the effectiveness of their emergency response was maintained.  This was being achieved through the introduction of an integrated approach, namely that –

·         stations, vehicles, crews and equipment would match local risk;

·         prevention and protection activity would be targeted to those of the highest risk;

·         staff would be working in a new more flexible way

(c)

details of the proposed internal and external changes which it was anticipated would achieve savings totalling £6.8m –

internal

·         reduce support staff by at least 5 per cent by investing in technology;

·         make savings through greater efficiencies in back office support functions;

·         ensure support functions effectively support new model for front line service delivery;

·         continually challenge and carefully manage recruitment for the foreseeable future;

·         create flexible staffing approach to provide improved efficiency, fire cover and prevention activities;

external

·         roll out Light Rescue Pump vehicles

·         implement changes to automatic fire alarm responses to target high risk premises only

·         mobilisation of one co-responder directly from home/work

·         reduce number of middle/senior managers

·         invest £450k in additional prevention activity in 2013

·         change crewing of  three fire engines in Plymouth to ‘on call’ rather than whole time -

·         crew the Aerial Ladder Platform (ALP) at Crownhill fire station with ‘on call’ staff

·         end Yeovil fire station pilot where an additional four firefighters are provided

·         change crewing arrangements of second fire appliance at Taunton from whole time to ‘on call’

·         change crewing arrangements of second fire appliance at Torquay from whole time to ‘on call’

·         change crewing arrangements of fire engine at Ilfracombe from day crewed to ‘on call’

(d)

that in Plymouth –

·         the proposed changes would still leave seven frontline appliances within the city boundaries

·         over 50 per cent of incidents were false alarms

·         response times varied between 10 and 13 minutes

(e)

the draft plan was now out to consultation and views on the proposals would be welcomed up to the closing date of 22 April 2013.

(f)

no stations would be closed in Plymouth nor would there be any reduction in the number of appliances serving the city;

(g)

the council’s civil protection unit were invited to participate in the consultation and both services worked closely together on the ‘short sermon’ emergency planning exercise to ensure the necessary links were in place should a real-time event occur in the city;

(h)

it was anticipated that the proposals would have no impact on the response times to the Dockyard.  The Camels Head station would have one whole time crewed appliance which would be the first to respond whilst, at the same time, the second unit would be called from either Crownhill or Greenbank.  In the meantime, the Camels Head on-call team would be paged and called in to crew the second Camels Head appliance;

(i)

with regard to the proposals to change some stations from whole time to on-call crews, the nearest crewed station to the incident would be despatched in the first instance with the on-call crews being paged simultaneously.  The on-call crews would then proceed to their stations, gear up, collect the appliance and proceed to the incident;

(j)

five fire fighters were required to crew an appliance and when an incident arose, where stations were covered by an on-call team, twelve members of staff would be paged simultaneously and the first five to arrive at the station would proceed to the incident;

(k)

whilst Plymouth did not currently have any on-call crews the system had been working well in other parts of Devon and in Somerset;

(l)

on-call proposals for Plymouth would require fire fighters to live no more than five minutes away from their allocated stations and be able to provide guaranteed hours of availability;

(m)

the DSFRS welcomed the opportunity to work with the council in engaging particularly hard to reach and vulnerable groups so that those most at risk could be targeted in terms of fire safety and prevention;

(n)

flooding was not a statutory responsibility for the fire service and representations had been made to central government expressing the service’s concerns at its ability to respond to incidents, which were increasing in number, whilst funding was being reduced;

(o)

a new call control system would shortly be in place across Devon and Somerset, Dorset, Hampshire and Wiltshire which would be able to track an appliance’s location and the location and identity of the caller;

(p)

incidents of staff sickness had been reduced from an average of 12 days per person per year to 7 days;

(q)

the capital proposals for the draft plan would be submitted for consideration to the DSFRS Resources Committee which was taking place next week.