By Ben Schofield
Daily Post
LIVERPOOL, England — Changes to firefighters’ shift patterns at two Merseyside stations have sparked warnings of strikes in the service.
An urgent crisis meeting was last night taking place between Merseyside Fire Brigade Union (FBU) and its national counterpart.
The union summit comes after the region’s fire authority rubberstamped proposals from the chief fire officer to reclassify Allerton and Belle Vale fire stations as “low level activity risk” (LLAR).
As such, they will only be manned between 10amand 10pm by a crew of firefighters who will live in nearby accommodation and remain on call through the night.
Chief Tony McGuirk said Allerton and Belle Vale fitted the criteria for LLAR because of the low level of call-outs for their fire engines.
At a Fire Authority meeting yesterday, he said that with 521 responses a year from Allerton and 638 from Belle Vale, both stations were within the 825 threshold for LLAR.
But Merseyside FBU branch secretary Les Skarratts said Mr McGuire’s measurements went against agreements drawn up between the service and the union in the wake of the 2006 strikes.
As such, he said, there were grounds for a dispute.
“This is disastrous for industrial relations and it’s disastrous for the Belle Vale and Allerton residents,” he said.
“We couldn’t rule out anything at this time, but we hope that with the help of the national negotiators who have got a better grasp of the agreement, that we can move on and put this matter to bed.
“But if there’s any disregard for the national negotiators then that puts the integrity of the agreements reached completely in jeopardy.”
Under the agreement, Mr Skarratts said activity was gauged by area, rather than by fire engine activity.
Using that measure, Allerton had 1,079 emergencies and Belle Vale had 1,106.
Mr Skarratts also said the LLAR plans “downgraded” the fire service coverage. The crew will be housed no more than two minutes from the station between clocking off at 10pm and going back to the station at 10am.
This, Mr Skarratts said, put a critical delay between the alarm being raised and firefighters reaching the scene.
At a heated meeting at the service’s Bridle Road headquarters, councillors from the five Merseyside councils jostled over the proposals.
In his report, Mr McGuirk told authority members: “In the interests of absolute clarity, there is no ‘downgrading’ of any fire cover or any fire station.”
He said LLAR crewing would save the service pounds 600,000. But Cllr Jack Colbert said it was remiss to see the scheme as a “silver bullet”.
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