100 signatures reached
To: Members of the Leicestershire CFA and the CFO
Stop the Cuts in Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service
The Brigade Committee of the Leicestershire Fire Brigades Union is taking this position to stop the cuts within Leicestershire Fire and Rescue Service (LFRS).
The Chief Fire Officer has announced that £1 million of cuts are required to produce a balanced budget for LFRS.
To achieve this, the most significant cut involves removing the two wholetime-crewed Tactical Response Vehicles (TRVs) from duty and changing the duty system at another fire station. This will result in a loss of five positions from our establishment.
The impact of these cuts is that the level of fire cover in the west of Leicester and Loughborough will be reduced during the day.
The more concerning aspect for the FBU is the loss of firefighter positions at a time when the resilience of fire cover across Leicestershire and Rutland is already being propped up by overtime shifts and retained firefighters covering wholetime shortfalls.
The current crewing crisis will only be made worse by these cuts.
Since 2010, when Leicestershire had over 750 wholetime firefighters, numbers have fallen to fewer than 500 today. These cuts stem from years of Tory-led austerity and a severe lack of investment—all against a backdrop of increasing incident numbers, rising risks, and the challenges of climate change, including wildfires in summer and flooding in winter.
It is time to say enough is enough.
#CutsKill
Why is this important?
We are calling on our members and the wider public to support this petition.
These cuts will impact service delivery and could result in increased attendance times and reduced resilience, further causing the normal response to be diminished.
These cuts will impact service delivery and could result in increased attendance times and reduced resilience, further causing the normal response to be diminished.