Broadway Fire Station safe for the foreseeable future

At a meeting of the Hereford & Worcester Fire Authority last week Broadway Fire Station and the retained unit at Evesham Fire Station, one of which was set to be closed, were saved.

But while it was good news for the Vale drastic cuts were still announced, including 34 frontline job losses.

When the possibility of the closure of Broadway Station, where a retained service is operated, was announced last year retained crews began the Save Broadway Fire Station campaign.

Dave Eyres, a retained firefighter was involved in the campaign, which had warned local people could wait twice as long for a fire crew to arrive if the cuts went ahead.

He said: "We are really pleased and delighted the station is safe. But again it's very disappointing the cuts are still being made.

"For our local community it's a benefit but for other communities it must be a bit of a blow."

David Folkes, parish council chairman, said keeping the station in Broadway was an important decision for the area.

"I am very, very pleased," he said. "The parish council were very concerned about the possibility of the closure. The fire station is very important to Broadway, we have a lot of elderly people and homes in the village and many large hotels."

The retained station was originally set up because of the Gordon Russell factory and manned by the workers.

Despite the factory now being a museum, Cllr Folkes said it is an important rural base.

He added: "Broadway is surrounded by Gloucestershire and the crew has attended incidents in Gloucestershire as well, including crashes. So we are a central station."

Under the Community Risk Management Plan 34 firefighter jobs are being slashed across the region and Tenbury and Ledbury will lose on-call fire stations.

The Fire Authority also agreed to a change to some of the crewing systems and numbers of firefighters required to man a fire engine was reduced from five to four.

The move aims to address a budget shortfall of more than £6 million in a five year period and whilst 73 percent of these savings will come from reductions in back office and management roles and through a range of internal service improvements, £1.7 million still needs to be found.

Cllr Derek Prodger, chairman of Hereford & Worcester Fire Authority, said: "Of course, we would prefer not to have to make savings from the frontline, and we recognise the concerns of the wider community, but we must deal with the budget shortfall we are facing. We have no other choice."