Fire chief aims to calm fears on response times

South Yorkshire Fire and Rescue aims to reach 80 per cent of life-threatening incidents within six minutes, but the target has never been achieved since its introduction in 2006.

Senior officers who are struggling to cut £9.5m from a £60m budget by 2015 have now said the six-minute response target will be ditched, and have drawn up three alternatives.

The first would see response time targets scrapped altogether with a pledge from fire chiefs to “attend every life-threatening incident” as quickly and safely as possible”.

A second option would be to introduce a “revised county-wide target” which the brigade said would be likely to be between nine and 11 minutes for a incident where life is at risk.

The third would introduce a “risk-based” target which would see a shorter response time allocated to areas with a higher risk of fires and longer times where less fires have historically occurred.

A public consultation on the three options was originally announced in mid-March, but senior officers now plan to stage a series of drop-in sessions and public meetings to gauge reaction.

Chief fire officer Jamie Courtney said: “Through these public meetings we hope to have open and honest discussions with the people we serve.

“We want to know about what they expect from us in terms of a response time and what we can realistically deliver with the resources available.

“We haven’t put forward a preference for any of the options and it is extremely important that we get the views of as many people as possible as part of the decision making process.

“We want to be clear that, whatever the target, we will always attend every life-threatening incident as quickly and safely as we can.”

In common with Yorkshire’s other three fire services, South Yorkshire has seen budgets slashed under Government austerity measures, with station closures and staff cuts proposed across the region.

But none of the other three brigades has a blanket response time for its whole area, instead relying on a risk-based scheme which sees different response times for different areas.

Previously the Government stipulated national emergency response times under National Standards of Fire Cover, but they were abolished in 2003 leaving targets to fire chiefs’ discretion.

The plan to scrap or alter the current target has been defended by fire chiefs who say that the number of calls to life-threatening fires has plummeted in recent years, from 4,685 in 2006, to 2,112 in 2012.

Senior officers also say the number of deaths and serious injuries in South Yorkshire have also dropped over the same period, from 158 in 2006 to 50 in 2012 with 999 calls also falling from 42,835 to 29, 425.

Despite the statistics, the move to change the target has been criticised by the firefighters’ union the FBU, with branch secretary John Gilliver claiming six minutes “was achievable”.

He said: “If the number of calls are going down why aren’t fire crews able to get there in six minutes? It is achievable.

“If you take longer to get to an incident the chances are that puts the public’s lives at risk.”

Brigade chiefs said the consultation would end in June and a “draft operation plan” would be presented for Fire Authority approval in the autumn.