Health and Safety

New figures have revealed that fire crews across Essex have been significantly and consistently understaffed with nearly a sixth of all shifts last year having fewer than the minimum recommended number of firefighters. A freedom of information request made and reported by ITV Anglia revealed that in...

Just 12 days after Cambridgeshire fire chiefs ignored the professional concerns of frontline firefighters about the serious unreliability of the Multistar Combined Aerial Appliances – the £650,000 vehicle has broken down again. The experimental vehicle is supposed to combine a fire engine with a...

A former firefighter who suffered a career ending injury while working at Ilkley fire station in West Yorkshire has secured a substantial damages settlement. Michael Hollings was seriously injured during a training exercise in May 2011. He and two colleagues were taking part in a drill that involved...

More incidents have been reported over the weekend of failings from the new ‘state of the art’ mobilising system used to get the right fire engine to the right incident with the correct information. Emergency responses have been delayed as the IT system has repeatedly failed to notify fire stations...

A new round of cost cutting measures announced this week could see Cambridge and Peterborough firefighters lose their specialist aerial emergency vehicle, leaving only “unreliable” combination vehicles to protect the local area. As part of the £4.3M budget cuts Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Fire...

The FBU has today welcomed the end of an almost six year wait for justice for hero firefighter Ewan Williamson. Hero Ewan lost his life in the line of duty battling a fire at the Balmoral bar in Dalry Road, Edinburgh on the 12 July 2009. Although the FBU welcomes the sentence from Judge Uist the...

Emergency control staff from Essex were in parliament on budget day Wednesday lobbying MPs over anti-family working shifts whilst also highlighting public safety fears over failing IT mobilising systems. It coincided with the end of a nine day strike in Essex over an imposed work shift system which...

The catalogue of failures of the alleged state-of-the-art mobilising system in Essex fire control continues to grow. Amid the nine-day strike of professional 999 control staff, three separate incidents have been reported highlighting the on-going failures of the new IT system to get the correct...

An influential House of Commons committee has agreed with the FBU that cuts to firefighter numbers could undermine future emergency responses to flooding. The Environmental Audit Committee used findings from the union’s Inundated: The lessons of recent flooding for the fire and rescue service report...