Cash-strapped councils face extra £1.9m fire service bill
NORTH Wales’ six cashstrapped councils face having to find another £1.9m to fund the fire service after plans to remove Wrexham’s second appliance were scrapped.
In May, proposals to cut jobs, axing engines and shutting or downgrading stations were considered as North Wales Fire and Rescue Service faced an almost £2m shortfall for 2019/20.
As well as removing an engine from Wrexham, other options on the table included changing the hours of Deeside and/or Rhyl 24 hour stations to day staffing only, and closing one or more of the region’s 36 retained stations.
But, amid concerns that such proposals would increase the risk to the public, fire authority members opted for an alternative choice of funding the gap by asking the six councils to help plug the shortfall.
In a report presented to councillors on Anglesey last week, the service said: “Having carefully weighed up the alternatives for ensuring a balanced budget next year, the authority is minded not to pursue large scale savings because it considers that the level of risk would be too high at this time.
“It has not ruled out making savings, but the scale of those savings in 2019/20 would stop short of, for example, closing fire stations or making firefighters redundant.”
Each county council in North Wales contributes money every year towards the cost of providing fire and rescue services.
How much the county councils contribute depends on how much the authority has estimated it will need to cover its running costs - which this year amounts to a total of £33,492,878 between them, or the equivalent of 13 pence per day per person.
Next year, however, the Fire Service will request a contribution of £35,391,701 from the local authorities, resulting in increases of between £190,272 by Anglesey to £420,058 in Flintshire, with the figure largely calculated on each county’s population.
But Cllr Ken Hughes questioned if the service had done enough to find efficiency savings at a time when hard-up local authorities were already struggling to balance the books.
In response, Helen MacArthur, assistant chief officer, said: “It’s fair to say that we fully appreciate the financial position that local authorities and the public sector finds itself.
“I can give you the absolute assurance that we’ve looked at every area of our expenditure.
“All of our activity is based on statutory function but we are always looking at our cost base and opportunities to keep it down.”