The South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) has announced the withdrawal of financial support for fire co-responding schemes across the south-west of England as part of a wider cost-saving initiative aimed at reducing expenditure by £5 million in 2025. While the Trust has stated that frontline clinical roles will be protected, this decision is likely to have significant implications for emergency response capacity in rural communities.

The annual cost of running fire co-responder schemes using professionally trained firefighters, is approx. £280,000 pa.

SWASFT proposes to phase out fire co-responders over the next 12 months and replace these cost-effective and publicly valued roles with volunteers.

Viability

The Fire and Rescue Services Association (FRSA) questions whether the expansion of the number of volunteers, particularly in rural areas, is viable. It is clear from the fact that SWASFT have suggested that current fire co-responders become volunteers without first speaking to these individuals, that the necessary due diligence has not been undertaken.

While volunteer co-responders are a valuable community resource, we fail to be convinced that there will be an appetite within the voluntary sector to cover the large number of fire co-responders that would need to be replaced.

Volunteers can be called upon frequently for this emotionally demanding role which can cause ‘burn-out’. The current model of fire co-responders provides a resilience by having teams rotate when providing availability.

Fire co-responders are by their nature, professionally trained firefighters, contracted by their employer, fire and rescue services (FRS’s)  to provide availability to respond to emergency incidents, which currently includes co-responder calls.  These firefighters will have long term careers within the fire service which provides stability in both the number of fire co-responders and experience.

Volunteers, by their nature, can choose to relinquish the role with little if any notice period, creating gaps in the level of emergency response that is available.

Our understanding is that SWASFT have made this decision without fully engaging with the FRSs involved and without a full appreciation of the willingness for FRSs to continue with the fire co-responder model.

Broadening of the role

The FRSA has a long history of advocating the broadening of the firefighter role and has been a strong supporter of fire co-responders. Our view is that the blue light services should be collaborating more to the benefit of public safety. However, SWASFT’s decision will be a step backwards in this ambition.

Recruitment and Retention

Increasing the duties of a firefighter increases the number of calls an on-call firefighter responds to, this has a knock-on effect on earnings potential, experience, knowledge and motivation to provide availability.

This has a benefit in terms of the recruitment and retention of on-call firefighters, something that has been a challenge for FRSs up and down the country. Therefore, should this additional duty be removed, it is likely to have a detrimental impact on both recruiting new staff and retaining current on-call firefighters.

Alternative approach

We would prefer that the decision by SWASFT is paused providing the necessary time to explore the possibility of maintaining most if not all the current fire co-responders.

Firstly, we do not believe the decision is motivated by money. The approx. cost of £280,000 pa is, in the context of the current overall local budget of the NHS, an extremely small amount of money which in its turn provides an emergency response to a large geographical area. We believe that this potential saving could be absorbed by a collaborative approach from both blue light services and local government. The alternative is that the ‘fire’ sector takes a significant step backwards in its objective to broaden the role of a firefighter and improve collaboration between blue light services, something that is not in the public interest of the governments overall objective.

Secondly, the fire co-responder model is well-established and sustainable and has been in operation for decades. It is our view that the volunteer model, while perfectly adequate in some areas, is not sustainable or robust if used as the only model. A hybrid approach is needed.

This is an opportunity to reset the fire co-responder model in the southwest region and review how the model could be improved and funded long-term to the benefit of SWASFT, local fire and rescue services and the public.