Fire service's staffing shake-up necessary - fire chief

Proposed changes to a fire service including to staffing levels were about putting resources where they were most needed, a chief fire officer said.

The Warwickshire service wants to change its staffing model to, it says, reflect when they are most needed.

A parish council expressed concerns the changes would leave areas "very vulnerable".

"We will move fire engines where they are needed based on risk on an hour-by-hour, minute-by-minute basis," chief fire officer Ben Brook said.

Warwickshire county councillors approved the start of a consultation on the service's "Resourcing to Risk" proposals.

The council, which administers the service, said it wanted to relocate engines from some rural stations and change night cover to make sure more people were protected at peak times.

Bases which relied on on-call staff, which included Bidford-on-Avon, Henley and Kenilworth, would become "surge" stations, used for significant incidents or periods of high demand, it said.

On-call firefighters have other full-time jobs and leave their main jobs when they are needed.

Bidford Parish Council raised the area's flooding problems and need for crews to respond to road collisions as concerns.

Clerk Elisabeth Uggerlose said the proposals would leave their village and others "vulnerable".

But Mr Brook told BBC CWR it was wise to look at resources because "89% of our life and property emergency calls" were between 08:00 GMT and 22:00 GMT and he said, during the day, on-call firefighters were only available 17% of the time.

"We know there are parts of Warwickshire where they'll have 85 life and property emergencies a year. There are other places that will have two or three," he added.

"So we need to have a look at this and make sure we have our resources in the right place and make the best difference when an emergency happens," he said.

He said the service's "brilliant fire control operators" were able to relocate fire engines to "make sure that we have the best possible cover across Warwickshire that we can have".

A spokesperson for the county council said changing demands had led them to consider a new model.

Their consultation will run until March 2024.