Merseyside fire service’s Paul Murphy on government cuts

Jan 16 2013 by Our Correspondent, Birkenhead News

THE Government announced the grant settlement for fire and rescue services in late December 2012. The outcome for Merseyside was that our fire and rescue service will face a further £10m grant reduction on top of the £9m lost over the last two years.

The chief fire officer and the fire authority are discussing what changes to our fire and rescue service are necessary in response to the government cuts in order to ensure the safety and effectiveness of our firefighters so they can continue to provide safer and stronger communities in Wirral.

Following on from the budget announcement the service in the Wirral district is developing a community safety plan for 2013-14, which sets out our key objectives and priorities for Wirral over the next 12 months using a risk-based approach.

The Wirral District Plan is accompanied by six local community fire station plans, which are developed by station-based operational managers and firefighters.

These address the bespoke community safety issues at the appropriate level in the fire station areas and associated constituency areas of Birkenhead, Wallasey, Wirral West and Wirral South.

I would like to take this opportunity to thank members of the public for their time and assistance in fire service public consultation events and to our partners for their support in the development of local community safety plans in Wirral.

Key partners attend and contribute to a series of consultation meetings held at local community fire stations alongside fire service staff to ensure better collaboration, information sharing and more effective targeting of resources to deliver our fire-specific priorities and provide members of the public with value for money.

The fire service’s Wirral community safety planning process outlines the level of community risk in each area and works towards identifying those who are most vulnerable or at risk.

The plans are linked to a number of key factors such as social demographics, historic incident data and deprivation in order to target our community safety strategies and local campaigns to prevent fires more effectively.