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Devon's fire service may not rescue cats

It needs to focus on statutory duties

But assistant chief fire officer Peter Bond, director of service improvement, told fire authority members that the service, given its shrinking budget, will have to focus its response activity firmly on its statutory functions of responding to fires and road traffic collisions.

No specific proposals have been brought before the fire authority yet for the service to stop dealing with non-statutory functions, such as rescuing cats up trees, but options and proposals for response, prevention and protection activity for non-statutory duties is included in the Change and Improvement Timeline that has previously been approved.

He added: “The risks are changing, as are the expectations of communities and the service workforce. More than ever, the Service needs to look forward and ensure that it is resilient, flexible and able to not only survive, but thrive in an increasingly uncertain future with a shrinking budget.”

Mr Bond added: “All of our projects must support the delivery of a long term balanced budget and projects that require significant investment must demonstrate a clear benefits plan of either investing to save, or investing to reduce risk, or ideally both.”

But Cllr Linda Vijeh questioned how the public would react to these changes. She said: “If we do have to revert to just our statutory obligations, what are we going to put in place to manage the public expectations? We have been doing more than the obligations and it has become the norm, so how do we manage that and mitigate it if we stop providing the services?”

Mr Bond said that the authority’s Change and Improvement Timeline was assessing how resources in the most efficient way could be deployed.

He added in a report that went to the meeting: “Any decisions made around reducing some of the non-statutory duties undertaken would have an effect on the training demand for staff and a possible reduction in equipment purchased, maintained and stored.”

The timeline is currently in its first phase, which includes options for the removal of some appliances or the retirement of specialist vehicles.

Mr Bond added: The outcomes of these discussions will come back to you in December. Obviously, we are not picking things out of the air to say we don’t need it anymore and we are working with the evidence of what it is used for, how often it is used, and is it relevant to the risk going forward? If the risk is still relevant, we will maintain and keep it, but there are some appliances that are not used and are not required to deal with the risks that we have, but we will evidence that with data.

“The idea is that for each proposal we make, the evidence will be clear. There are currently examples but no decisions have yet been made.”

The priorities for the fire service are:

  • put prevention and protection activity at the heart of activities to reduce preventable emergencies;
  • focus response activity firmly on statutory functions; responding to fires and road traffic collisions;
  • make sure that services are designed to fully meet the risks in the community, with more resources located where risk is greatest;
  • make sure that the organisation is agile, able and motivated to learn and improve;
  • make sure the best value is secured from resources in the face of a shrinking budget.

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