Fire chiefs are set to review a trial of three person crewing for firefighters in Staffordshire.
The switch has taken place over the past six months and will end on 1st December before a review by a governance board who will decide whether to continue with it or not.
The change saw on-call firefighters able to go out in threes rather than requiring four people to operate an appliance.
During the trial period, reduced crew numbers have responded to 257 live incidents with the six most common types being building fires with no-one inside, road traffic accidents, automatic fire alarms going off, outdoor fires in rural locations, vehicle fires and incidents involving animals.
However, the trial has not been welcomed by all and has faced criticism from the Fire Brigades Union.
Staffordshire’s Chief Fire Officer Rob Barber said problems related to on-call staffing was not an issue isolated to the county.
“If people want to they can go on to Cheshire Fire and Rescue Services website at the moment – they’re just consulting on a number of response options changes because of the issues they’ve experienced similar to ours.
“The recruitment isn’t necessarily the issue it’s the retention of on-call firefighters.
“Our position in Staffordshire is we want a minimum of four firefighters on an on-call appliance and we want five firefighters on a whole time appliance. What we can’t afford to do is say those pumps aren’t available at all should they drop below those numbers.
Chief Fire Officer Rob Barber
In a 2022 report by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services said that the service requires improvement and said “response standards and the availability of its fire engines have got worse”.
Part of the recent trial has been to improve both the availability and response times by firefighters
The Chief Fire Officer continued:
“I’ll be absolutely open, honest and transparent in terms of the reality of the pressures that we are facing.
“We’ve got to be flexible in our approach and we’ve got to make sure we put those community members when they’re at their time of need at the centre of everything around our thinking.
“So we’ve developed a new approach, it isn’t that we are crewing down to three and I’ve heard many people say that in many settings, we’re not crewing down to three. What we are doing is mobilising available resources.”
Chief Fire Officer Rob Barber
