The council’s main opposition Labour Group is calling for a united response from city councillors in opposing planned cuts to Huntington Fire Station.
The county’s Conservative Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner (PFCC), Zoe Metcalfe, is currently consulting on moves to crew the station with on-call staff rather than a full-time fire crew, meaning response times to house fires will take longer.
Labour councillor Danny Myers will propose a motion at next week’s Full Council meeting. He said:
“These planned cuts risk people’s lives, and that is not something Labour is prepared to accept. We need a full-time fire service covering every part of York, and that includes Huntington and New Earswick, Haxby and Wigginton and all communities on the north side of the city.
“The Fire Brigades Union states that their evidence shows an on-call crew at Huntington, as a replacement for a full-time crew, could lead to it taking up to 16 minutes for an engine to arrive at a fire, to an area of York serving 30,000 people. This is simply not acceptable. It is even more alarming given the historic difficulty across the fire authority area of raising an on-call crew. The last review into the on-call duty system and its failings was never published, possibly never even completed.”
Labour’s motion calls on the council to formally respond to the Commissioner’s consultation, opposing the planned cuts affecting Huntington Fire Station. It also seeks agreement from councillors to ask the city’s two MPs and PFCC to meet with Michael Gove, the relevant Government Minister, to push for better funding for what is one of the lowest funded fire authorities across the whole country.
Cllr Myers explained:
“What we really want the Government to do is recognise and respond to the fact that operating fire services across one of the largest geographic areas in the country on one of the lowest budgets isn’t a tenable situation. York and North Yorkshire is one of the poorest funded Fire Services in the country and Government should recognise our unique challenge and increase funding.
“Hopefully the PFCC’s consultation will highlight how much the public value this service and want to protect it, while we as city councillors can show leadership on the issue by formally opposing these risky and dangerous proposals. The City of York is a net-contributor to the Fire Service in North Yorkshire, we warrant the level of fire cover we currently have and must defend our service so that it isn’t dangerously whittled away, leaving residents paying more, getting less and being left at greater risk.”
Labour’s council motion is set to be debated at the council’s first Full Council meeting for several years back at the refurbished Guildhall, on 14th July at 6.30pm.