4 – Response resource in Harrogate and Scarborough
Replace the Tactical Response fire engines with Emergency Rescue fire engines, crewed during the time when emergencies are most likely to happen.
Proposal
- Currently both Harrogate and Scarborough Fire Stations have two fire engines each:
- One Emergency Rescue fire engine, crewed by 4 firefighters 24-hours per day, which responds to all emergencies.
- One Light Rescue fire engine used only as a Tactical response fire engine, crewed by 3 firefighters 24-hours per day, which only responds to certain emergencies.
- There would be no change to the current Emergency Rescue fire engine based at each station.
- We would swap the Tactical Response fire engine at each station for another Emergency Rescue fire engine, which can respond to all incidents, and only crew it during the day when emergencies are most likely to happen.
If this was to happen we would:
- Increase the number of full-time firefighters based at each station during the day shift to crew the second Emergency Rescue fire engine.
- Continue to provide an immediate emergency response with one fire engine during the night when demand is lower, backed up by fire engines from nearby On-call stations.
- Redeploy the full-time firefighters that were required to crew the Tactical Response fire engine during the night-shift to other stations or roles, including prevention roles.
Harrogate
Scarborough
Why are we proposing this?
- Over two-thirds of calls for assistance from Harrogate and Scarborough happen between 09:00 and 22:00.
- A Tactical Response fire engine can only respond to a limited range of emergencies. This means that we currently have to move fire engines into these station areas to provide cover when the Emergency Rescue fire engine is busy.
- Swapping the Tactical Response fire engine for an Emergency Rescue fire engine would mean that the second fire engine at these stations would be immediately available to respond to any emergency during daytime hours when emergencies are most likely to happen. This would reduce our need to move our fire engines around to provide cover, reduce reliance on neighbouring On-call fire engines which are less available during the day, and provide better resilience to respond to major incidents across our whole Service area.
- The availability of our On-call fire engines increases during the night to provide emergency response support, reducing the need for two full-time shift fire engines at these two stations.
- Without this proposal, we would not be able to achieve proposal 1 to increase prevention and protection resource.
