Surrey firefighters will seek legal advice after accusing Surrey Council of failing to consult the public properly before agreeing proposals that will see Sunbury and Staines fire stations closed.
The council’s cabinet voted on Tuesday (4 February) to replace the two whole-time stations with a single new station in Spelthorne, despite 92% of the public rejecting the proposal in a public consultation.
The council said it would provide an additional ‘on call’ fire engine at this new station, although this proposal came after the close of the consultation, meaning local people were given no chance to express their view.
The council agreed that if this option proved unviable, they would default to the original proposal of the station having only one full-time fire engine despite the strength of local opposition, and local firefighters have said that the plan cannot work.
Fire Brigades Union secretary for Surrey, Richard Jones, said: “This decision will put the lives of firefighters and the public at greater risk.
“Surrey’s ‘on-call’ fire stations have been understaffed for years and on the day of the council’s meeting 10 of Surrey’s 12 ‘on-call’ fire engines were unavailable because of crew shortages.
“It is simply unviable for the council to be able to provide an call fire engine for the new station, meaning they will fall back to the single fire engine: an option that was rejected by the local community.
“This means Spelthorne will have a severely deficient fire and rescue provision, with response times worsening and safety severely undermined.”
The FBU also said that the council’s policy of paying private contractors to undertake non-essential work at the same time as closing fire stations raised important questions about their priorities.
Jones said: “It is not acceptable that emergency cover is being cut in Spelthorne while taxpayers’ money is being turned into profit for a private contractor. The public were never consulted on that either”.
Ahead of their vote, the cabinet allowed Jones to read out a three minute statement although he was not allowed to ask questions and was not given a right to reply to various comments from councillors.
