Fire chiefs poised to abandon targets they never met

In 2006, senior officers in South Yorkshire told firefighters they must reach 80 per cent of life threatening incidents within six minutes, but the aspiration was never achieved.

Last year, firefighters arrived at just 55 per cent of such “priority fires” within six minutes and as budget reductions lead to job cuts it is thought the target will be missed even more often.

Yesterday, chief fire officer Jamie Courtney said the number of deaths, serious fires and 999 calls had tumbled in recent years, despite the target being missed, and said prevention work was key.

He added: “We always aim to get to every incident as quickly and as safely as possible and that will never change, but given the Government cuts to our budget and the possibility of further cuts, we are genuinely concerned about the impact on the frontline.

“We want to have an honest and open debate with the people we serve about exactly what they expect from us in terms of a response time, and what we realistically can deliver with the resources available.

“When it comes to our success at reducing deaths and injuries from fires, response times are clearly not the deciding factor. But we recognise that having a response time target helps to make us accountable to the public, and provides people reassurance about the service they receive.”

Three options on response times have been drawn up and members of the brigade’s ruling fire authority will be asked to approve them for public consultation at a meeting on March 25.

The first option would involve scrapping emergency response times altogether, with the brigade giving an assurance that it would reach every fire in the “shortest possible time”.

A second would be to introduce a “single county-wide standard” which would commit firefighters to reaching fires in a certain period, but Mr Courtney said it was unlikely to be six minutes.

The final option would involve what the brigade called a “risk-based model” where areas with a high risk of fires would receive a quicker response time than quieter neighbourhoods.

If the three options are approved by members of the fire authority a consultation will be launched which will run until June 24, with South Yorkshire residents asked to contibute their ideas.

Senior officers will then consider the information gathered during the exercise before making a final decision later in the year.

Unlike ambulance trusts, fire brigades are not subject to minimum national standards and can set their own response times or decide to scrap them completely.

Yesterday the Fire Brigades Union said scrapping response times or increasing the length of time it would take to get to a fire increased the risk of deaths.

FBU official John Gilliver said a decrease in the number of calls should mean it was easier to achieve the six minute target even with less staff.