An explosive report published today by the Fire Brigades Union has exposed the crisis facing the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service (SFRS).
The report says that a combination of cuts, a lack of recruitment, the crisis in the ‘On Call’ service, declining training standards and the climate emergency have created the perfect conditions for a devastating ‘Firestorm’.
Since its inception just over a decade ago the SFRS has cut over 1200 jobs with fire service bosses predicting another 780 could go in the near future due to a 5 year, flat cash budget settlement from the Scottish Government.
This year alone has seen 10 fire appliances plus a number of additional high reach vehicles and the permanently crewed river rescue boat on the Clyde withdrawn from stations leaving communities with reduced emergency cover.
This comes at a time when incident response times are rising and firefighters are expected to deal with an increased number of wildfires and floods as the climate emergency bites.
The Firestorm report identifies a Service in crisis with insufficient staffing levels, inadequate and out of date equipment, crumbling infrastructure, an aggressive management culture, falling training standards and an ageing workforce exposed to dangerous contaminants, all of which is being ignored by the political leaders who set inadequate budgets and then claim that cuts to services are ‘operational decisions for SFRS management’ and nothing to do with them.
John McKenzie, Scottish Secretary of the Fire Brigades Union said:
This state of the nation report into the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service paints a damning picture of underinvestment, declining standards and job losses, all which increases the risk to firefighters and public we serve. We cannot go on like this, our members and the public have had enough.
If the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service is to meet the challenges of our times we need immediate and radical change and this report sets out what that should look like.
This report is full of ideas that would help reverse the catastrophic decline in a once proud service. There are over 50 recommendations that have come from those who know the service best, the firefighters who work on the frontline in fire stations and control rooms across the country.
They want to be the best that they can be, they want trained to highest possible standards, to work in a service that has the required resources to respond quickly to emergency situations, and is equipped to meet the challenges of our times, paid appropriately for the stressful work they do and to work in a welcoming, supportive organisation.
Over the last decade we have been failed by political leaders who have tried to ignore this crisis. They cannot ignore us now. It is now up to the Scottish Government, the SFRS management and all political parties to respond positively to this report, reverse the cuts and help build a Fire and Rescue Service that aspires to be world leading."
