Surrey County Council have announced a new consultation (below) on changes proposed for the Surrey Fire & Rescue Service.

Today (4 March 2019) marks the start of a 12-week public consultation about Surrey’s fire and rescue service. Outlined in the Fire Authority’s ‘Making Surrey Safer plan’, are the following three proposals for change:

• Spending more time on community and business safety to help prevent emergencies occurring in the first place. When firefighters and fire engines aren’t needed at 999 calls, we will be undertaking more community safety work. Much of this is done during the day when people are at school, work, home and most active in the community, some of this would also be done during night shifts.
• Maintaining the number of fire stations in Surrey and changing how some of them are crewed. Independently verified risk-analysis shows that we need 20 fire engines during the day and 16 at night to keep Surrey safe. Our proposal would mean we have more fire engines than we need - this additional capacity allows extra resilience for larger and longer emergencies as well as training and practice in the increasing variety of emergencies firefighters now respond to.
• Recovering costs from some non-emergencies to re-invest in SFRS. We are looking at charging for some 999 calls such as false reports of fire and animal rescues, to re-invest into our service.

The proposals are explained in detail in the draft plan and summary document available at www.surrey-fire.gov.uk. I would welcome your views on the consultation via our online survey which runs until 26 May 2019.