Councillors have voted through cuts to the fire service despite their own reservations, thousands of objections from the public and a vote of no confidence by union leaders on safety grounds.
Between 10 and 20 job losses across East Sussex will include four firefighters from the three stations in Brighton and Hove where “group crewing” will be brought in.
The Fire Brigades Union was critical of the initial plans to cut dozens of jobs but the figure was revised down after a consultation. Some people are now likely to be redeployed.
The union also opposed proposals to downgrade some fire stations and reduce the number of fire engines.
The public objected to proposals for fire crews to end routine rescues of people stuck in lifts and to leave animal charities to rescue pets and wildlife such as birds trapped in netting.
Chief Fire Officer Dawn Whittaker said that East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service dealt with an above-average number of cases of people trapped in broken-down lifts.
Old and poorly maintained lifts in blocks of flats in Brighton were a particular problem, she told a meeting of the East Sussex Fire Authority today (Thursday 3 September).
Brighton and Hove City Council is understood to have accelerated its multimillion-pound lift replacement programme in dozens of blocks where there have been repeated breakdowns.
Green councillor Steph Powell said: “I have to say that 10, 15 or 20 years ago nobody on this authority would be coming up with a suggestion that firefighters should not be attempting to do an animal rescue of any kind.
“They would not be suggesting that firefighters were not the best people to attend those trapped in lifts. It is absolutely ridiculous.”
The chief fire officer said: “I agree entirely with Councillor Powell’s statement about the trauma of being trapped in a lift if you are elderly, infirm or vulnerable.
“I would just like to make the point that it was never our professional view that we would stop attending incidents of that nature.
“We do however have a very high number of (trapped lift calls) and some of those issues are about poor maintenance of lifts, particularly blocks in Brighton where we have on a number of occasions had multiple turnouts to the same buildings and been failing to get support to get some of those maintenance issues rectified.
“I would welcome councillor support from the city to try to address some of those issues – because it is a waste of resource candidly.
“It is not about risk to life and people. It is about businesses actually maintaining their buildings properly so that we are not wasting an emergency service resource.”
Twenty jobs are expected to go as result of the approved proposals although 10 of them are likely to be transferred to a new “flexible resourcing pool” or to fire safety work.
The fire service said that it did not expect any compulsory redundancies to be necessary.
The initial proposals would have meant up to 33 firefighter job losses. Again, some people would probably have been redeployed.
Under the approved plans, proposed staffing changes have been dropped at five out of six seven-day, day-crewed fire stations in the county – Bexhill, Newhaven, Crowborough, Lewes and Uckfield.
Under the previous proposals these stations would only have had full-time firefighters on site during the daytime Monday to Friday, with on-call firefighters providing evening and weekend cover.
The switch to five-day daytime crewing will, however, go ahead at Battle fire station.
Plans to downgrade The Ridge fire station in Hastings – which currently has firefighters on site 24/7 – to a seven-day day-crewed station were also approved. On-call firefighters will provide cover at evenings and weekends.
But the other fire station in Hastings – the full-time Bohemia Road – will gain a second fire engine to enhance its cover.
Plans to cut fire engines from some other stations were also scaled back, with Bexhill, Crowborough, Uckfield and Newhaven all retaining a second vehicle.
Other stations will have access to specialist operational vehicles so that Lewes, Battle, Rye, Heathfield, Seaford and Wadhurst maintain at least two operational vehicles, the fire service said.
The proposed changes were set out in a document called the Integrated Risk Management Plan.
