Suffolk firefighters reduced by nearly 200 over last 14 years

The number of firefighters in Suffolk has reduced by nearly 200 over the last 14 years, in part due to a lesser volume of 999 calls and service funding.

Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service has 608 uniformed firefighters at present, which is a drop of nearly a quarter on the 2010 numbers, according to figures from the Fire Brigades Union.

It comes as the FBU said nearly 12,000 firefighters have been cut since 2010, which it claimed left the UK without the resilience to ‘guarantee public safety’.

Figures from the FBU said there were 792 firefighters in Suffolk at 14 years ago.

Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service said its Integrated Risk Management Plan for 2015 to 2018 saw a fall in firefighters, primarily due to a 30 per cent reduction in 999 call demand over the preceding 10 years.

A spokesperson said: “This was a reduction of 16 wholetime firefighters and 23 On Call firefighters and was achieved through natural turnover and without the need for redundancy.

“The IRMP is now known as a Community Risk Management Plan and contains a long-term strategy to make the fire and rescue service more responsive to locally identified needs, as well as targeting resources so we can prevent incidents from happening.

“This ensures those resources are in the right location to best protect the community, a process carried out by every fire and rescue service in the country.”

The FBU said one in five firefighter jobs have been cut across the country, while one in three fire control staff, who take emergency calls and mobilise crews, have been cut.

It also said response times to life threatening fires have slowed by three minutes, from 6.11 minutes in 1995 to 9.13 minutes in 2023.

Matt Wrack, Fire Brigades Union general secretary said: “Fourteen years of austerity have devastated the fire and rescue service.

“With flooding, wildfires and storms on the rise as a result of the climate emergency, firefighters are being asked to do more with less; 999 response times are slower than ever before, putting homes and lives at risk.”

Mr Wrack said, to protect the public, the new Government, must invest fire services ‘as a matter of urgency’.

The stats from the FBU said the worst hit service in the nation was Buckinghamshire, which it said has seen cuts of over 40 per cent.

The union also found thay 4,000 firefighters had both full time and on-call contracts, meaning they would be counted as two firefighters in the data.

It said the double counting meant the numbers employed and available at any one time were ‘significantly lower’ than official figures suggest.