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Public Consultation: Fire Cover in Nottinghamshire

Consultation is now closed

The results of the consultation have now been published (.pdf, 76 pages, 1,4Mb), revealing the views of over 1800 respondents, which included being supportive of paying more in council tax to support the fire service.

Your fire and rescue service plays an essential role in keeping Nottinghamshire safe. We have 24 fire stations and 30 fire engines providing fire cover 24 hours a day.

These fire stations are supported by different crewing models. Each year we attend around 9,000 emergencies. These emergencies are not just fires. They include road traffic collisions, water rescues, animal rescues, hazardous material incidents and much more.

As well as responding to emergencies, our specialist prevention teams work to keep you safe through educating and promoting how to prevent emergencies happening in the first place. Our fire protection teams work with businesses to ensure they follow fire safety laws and regulation to keep you safe in places of work and leisure. We also have a range of supporting services including, equipment, estates, finance, human resources, who all work together to deliver our vision of creating safer communities.

In a recent independent inspection, we were rated ‘Good’ in all areas across the Service. This is one of the highest levels of grading given to any fire service in England to date. You can read more about our commitment to the communities of Nottinghamshire in our Community Risk Management Plan.

Why are we consulting?

At the moment, finances are a challenge for everyone. We are facing pressure on our budget primarily from inflation, pension costs, future uncertainties, and the cost-of-living crisis. Legally, we must set a balanced budget. From 2023, we believe we need to save a predicted £2-3million a year.

What are we doing about it?

A review across the entire organisation has identified three main areas for delivering efficiencies. These are non-operational staff structures, our operational model, this is the number of fire stations and fire engines we have; and our operational officer structure.

75% of our funding is spent on staff, so naturally any reductions will impact personnel. In wages alone, a wholetime fire station with one fire engine and 24-7 cover costs around £1.2million a year. An on-call station, where crews are based within five minutes from their fire station and are called into station when required costs around £225k in wages. Stations that are day-shift crewing, where firefighters are on station during the day, and on-call at night, cost around £800k.

Over the past 18 months, we’ve undertaken a comprehensive risk assessment. The analysis tells us the types of incidents we are likely to face, the locations they are likely to occur, and the times of day we have the highest levels of demand. We commissioned an independent sector leading specialist that has worked with a number of fires services across the country, to advise how we could meet our predicted financial challenges, whilst minimising the impact of an increase in response times to emergencies.

As a result, the Chief Fire Officer is recommending to the Fire Authority that they go to public consultation, to seek views on changes to our operational model:

  • Removal of one of the two fire engines at London Road station. This will generate savings of around £1 million a year
  • Removal of one of the two fire engines at Stockhill fire station. This will generate savings of around £1 million a year
  • Removal of the night shift at West Bridgford fire station. This will save around £660k a year.
  • To best balance our resources across the county, and to help maintain an average response time as close as possible to eight minutes, the above changes promote the reinstatement of Ashfield Fire Station to a 24-7 wholetime model. This will require an investment of around £660k

In total, these changes will generate around £2 million of savings a year.

The Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority has approved to go to public consultation on this proposal to seek your views. At this stage, no changes are guaranteed until the public consultation period is over.

What happens next?

Our public consultation survey ran for 12 weeks.

More information can be found by visiting frequently asked questions.

Any further questions can be submitted to talk2us@notts-fire.gov.uk.

The public consultation period is now closed. Outcomes will be discussed at the Full Fire Authority in February.


November 2022: ORH Final Report

To inform the proposals, the Service commissioned Operational Research in Health Limited (ORH) to undertake an independent review of alternative fire engine deployments. The final report from this review can be read online.

ORH undertook a comprehensive assessment of risk in 2021 to provide a Community Risk Review and Assessment of Risk. This report builds on that review, but with a focus on the operational service.

They identified where changes could be made, while best maintaining operational response times, to meet the needs of required cost savings. ORH helps emergency services around the world to optimise resource use and response in the most effective and efficient way.

The report considered current fire engine deployment position, response times, station costs, and more, to give a range of savings models.