Fire Plan Ploy

Last week the Conservative Council Cabinet announced delays to the decision to close Warwickshire Fire Stations. With a General Election only months away my fear is this is only a ploy to delay the decision until after the election.

Local people deserve better than an open ended plan to bring proposals back 'some time in the future'. I would like to see these ill thought through plans scrapped altogether. The closures have proved deeply unpopular. Even our own fire fighters and neighbouring fire services have criticised the plan.

Plans put forward by the Conservative cabinet at the county council, would mean the closure of both Warwick and Kenilworth fire stations leaving just the station in Leamington to cover all three towns and surrounding areas.

With consultation on the proposals having closed on 8th December it was intended that the Cabinet would consider the proposals in January and then a final decision on changes would be made at a County Council meeting in February.

That timetable has now been abandoned, but despite pressure from Liberal Democrat councillors at the meeting to scrap the plans altogether no indication was given by the ruling Conservatives as to when plans would be brought back to the Council.

Damning Report from Neighbouring Fire Service.

As promised I have now had time to read the damning report from neighbouring Hereford & Worcester fire service on the plans to close fire stations across Warwickshire, including Warwick.

Its simply not good enough to postpone the decision, possibly until after the General Election. (do the Tories think we are stupid!) Its time to put an end to these plans altogether.

Here are some extracts from the report.

Page 57 - points 12 and 17 their Chief Fire Officer, Paul Hayden summarises his concerns.

Our evaluation suggests that the scale of reductions being proposed will leave Warwickshire without sufficient resilience to deal with routine operations without a significant increase in requests for over the border mutual aid from neighbouring Authorities such as ourselves. Our concern is not simply in relation to the reduction in resources proposed along our immediate border area, but that the reductions proposed across Warwickshire would adversely impact their ability to resource day-to-day activity.

On the basis of evidence Warwickshire has provided, and in light of the above issues, I have grave concerns that proposals to reduce front-line resources across Warwickshire would have a directly adverse impact on communities in Herefordshire and Worcestershire.

You can read this report in full here.
Go to section 10 page 55.
I welcome your comments.

Warwick Fire Service March

Many of us in Warwick attended the Demonstration against the planned closure of Warwick Fire Station today. The proposals are part of a county wide review of the Fire Service. If they go ahead will mean the closure of Warwick and Kenilworth fire stations leaving just Leamington to cover all three towns and surrounding areas. This will impact all three towns.

Everyone I spoke to on the march today are deeply suspicious of the response times between Leamington and Warwick that we were given in the consultation documents. We have every reason to be. Documents unearthed by Lib-Dem councilors across the county, who all oppose these closures show that the risk will actually go up.

You can find links to these documents in my previous posting. Have a read of the risk assessment which paints a very different picture to that given in the documents we were given as part of the consultation.

Given the massive support today I hope the Conservative Councillors on the County Council will see sense, read their own risk report and put an end to these risky plans and keep our fire stations open.

Warwick Fire Station Facts.

On Sunday the 6th December independent councilor Karen Scarrott will be organising a march to save Warwick Fire Station. Karen has kindly invited all of the Parliamentary Candidates for Warwick.

During the public meeting we attended in September we were told our response to the consultation should be based on Fact rather than Emotion. Yet we left the meeting with many questions unanswered.

That is why l have been working with my Lib-Dem colleagues across Warwickshire to dig out the facts using ‘Freedom of Information Requests’.

Below I have posted links to all of these documents - I hope you find them as useful as I have.

The Risk Review report in particular contains a lot of important information which we are entitled to see, so we can make a considered and informed response to the consultation process.

Documents you should see.

DNV Risk Review - Full Report
This is the Det Norske Veritias risk report commissioned by the county council dealing with the proposed changes to our fire service. This report is the most vital report for us to read about these plans to our fire service.

Operational Assessment Peer Review (I&DeA)
Cabinet Report - Chief Fire Officer

Martin Turner's Comparison Report
Martin Turner is my colleague in Stratford upon Avon. He has produced an excellent report examining the information provided in the Det Norske Veritias risk report and the information provided to us as part of the consultation.

Secret Tory Report on Fire Service Proposals

After sustained pressure from my Lib Dem colleagues on the County Council, the management summary of a report presented to the Conservative Cabinet in July, based on which it decided to consult on the closure plan have been made public.

The Tory Cabinet initially refused to make this document public in spite of freedom of information requests by Lib-Dems.

Yesterday however following sustained pressure from Lib-Dem county councillors, Warwickshire County Council agreed to release the Executive Summary of the consultants' report on which the recommendations to Cabinet had been based, and today they have gone further and agreed to release a version of the full report in the near future.

When I attended the public meeting on Monday we all felt we were not being given the full picture. The information given to us was sketchy. We were also told that our responses to the consultation needed to be based on fact rather than emotion. Difficult when the facts were being kept from us.

The report can be found on the Kenilworth & Southam Lib-Dem website where they are fighting the same campaign to stop the Tories from closing Kenilworth Fire Station. It is important that these campaigns run together as closing Warwick and Kenilworth will place a huge strain on the remaining Leamington Fire Station leaving all three towns dependant upon just one fire station.

I am gravely concerned about response times, at the meeting Fire Chiefs admitted that activity for incidents peaked around 6pm. This is the same time as roads between Warwick and Leamington are heavily congested.

The management summary admits in the section marked 'uncertainties' that it "makes use of national calculations of the effects of response time, whereas local models would be preferable".

We cannot make decisions to close fire stations in two of our largest towns in the county on uncertainties. It is time to scrap these plans. If we do need to review our fire service then the conservative council need to do their homework.

3 Things you can do to Save Warwick Fire Station

The Conservative County Council want to close Warwick Fire Station. Liberal Democrats Councillors are opposing this closure.


There are 3 things you can do to keep up the pressure to Save our Fire Station.

Complete the consultation
Complete the consultation form and return it to the Fire and Rescue Service Deadline for return is 8th December 2009 - we strongly urge you to wait until after the meeting on November 10th to complete the form. You can download a copy of the form from http://www.warwickshire.gov.uk/ and follow the Fire Service web site.

Write a Letter
Write a letter to go with the form The fire service want to use computer modelling to analyse the results - there is no guarantee any extra comments will be read in detail. We suggest you send a hard copy form with a covering letter to ensure that your views are recorded.

Lobby the Councillors
Lobby the Conservative County Councillors - Help them see sense.
Lib-Dem councillors on the county council have already decided to opposing the closure of Warwick Fire Station, so the decision will be down to the Conservatives who are proposing the closure.


Please write to the Conservative Fire and Rescue Portfolio Holder, Cllr R Hobbs (Conservative), Warwickshire County Council, Shire Hall, Warwick CV34 4SA.

Warwick Fire Station Consultation

I’ve just got back from a consultation on the proposed closure of Warwick Fire Station at Myton School this evening. The meeting was very well supported by my estimate over 100 people all against the proposed closure.

The key argument against the closure made by residents is that we do not believe response times can be maintained if Warwick Fire Station is closed. The information provided with the consultation does not appear to stack up. There are only two roads between Leamington and Warwick and these get clogged up during peak times, especially from the end of school in the afternoon through to the evening rush hour.

During the consultation the Fire Officer admitted that the peak activity time was between 2pm and 10pm. He described this as a bell curve, which would place the actual peak at 6pm, right around the evening rush hour.

I have asked for more information on this along with a revised map showing the response rates plotted at this time of day, taking into consideration the traffic at 6pm with and without Warwick Fire Station included.

I will let you know when I get this information.

In the meantime you can take part in the consultation from the County Council Website.