Cuts announced to fire and rescue services in Surrey will mean areas currently facing flooding will lose fire and rescue stations, equipment and as many as 40 staff, firefighters have said.
Last week, Surrey County Council agreed to close Sunbury and Staines fire stations and replace them with a single new station in Spelthorne, despite 92% of the public rejecting the proposal in a public consultation.
But local firefighters that cuts had already severely hampered the service’s ability to respond to flooding, with an over-reliance on part-time ‘retained’ firefighters over full-time workers being exposed by the floods.
Fire Brigades Union secretary for Surrey, Richard Jones, said: “The service is already being stretched to breaking point and further cuts could mean floods in future are even more dangerous and damaging.
“We don’t receive funding for covering flooding, and even with huge amounts of overtime paid out to beef up staff numbers, only 2 out of the 13 on-call pumps were available this morning due to understaffing.”
“Given how much we are struggling, firefighters on the ground are expressing serious doubts over the service’s ability to respond successfully to floods in the future.”
Firefighters said that only two water pumps were available on Monday morning (9 February) because of a lack of available crew, and the FBU said that serious questions needed answering over the response to the floods, the costs involved and the fire and rescue services ability to plan and train staff members.
The union 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 issues about their priorities.
Currently there is no obligation for fire and rescue services to attend floods, and nationally the FBU has argued strongly for the introduction of a statutory duty for firefighters to cover flooding.
