Ours get put out to tender as they have to be. They get done one or twice a year which I pointless and whichever company comes and does it is useless. They do a awful job but as usual in the fire service they have to get the cheapest job and dont care if it's a good job. Same with and building or decorating that gets done which is rare.
Oh and for whoever thinks we moan more than the paramedics well a lot of brigades are now doing co responding. So as well as having had our numbers slashed so even a small house fire becomes a lot more dangerous for us as well as car crashes flooding fishing dead bodies out of rivers rescuing people from height using line equipment people trapped pretty much anywhere. People locked out of their houses. People locked in their houses. Shut in lifts. A lot of firefighters now have to go to supposedly just the red calls for the ambulance because they can't keep up with the numbers. But in reality we are going to pretty much anything the paramedics haven't got an ambulance to go to. Have you noticed the number of firefighters being killed and the increase in fire deaths over the last few years.
That bit in red - Gov. website says 41 between 1987 and 2000 and 25 between 2001 and 2013.
In particular we asked Professor Watterson to examine the deaths of firefighters at fires,
including fatalities at Marlie Farm (2006), Atherstone (2007), Dalry Road (2009) and Shirley
Towers (2010). In the UK over the last ten years, 14 firefighters have died in the line of
duty. Through exhaustive research on official reports, investigations, legal documents and
interviews with key stakeholders, the report identifies significant lessons from past fatalities
that need to be learned.
There were six firefighter deaths at fires in England between 1993/4 to 2003/4, but in the next ten years this doubled to 12 firefighter deaths and one fire technician death. A further death occurred in Scotland and another in Wales.
In Britain since 2010, it has been reported that there have been over 5000 firefighter jobs lost, 39 fire stations closed and response times increase substantially.
The two firefighters that died in the shirley towers incident in 2010 were colleagues of mine , there were also two others badly burnt, one of them rescuing his partner .
The trend in firefighter deaths is that they are going up , thats a fact , in some parts of the country fire deaths (non firefighter) are also rising and this is largely due to the cuts .
there is no doubt in my mind that more and more people will die due to the austerity cuts , the fire service costs each household around £60 a year ....... i think that is very cheap , you will soon be getting around a 25-30 % worse service but be paying the same .