Scots waiting longer for 999 fire callouts, Conservatives claim
The typical time Scots wait for fire engines to arrive at an emergency has risen every year since the service was centralised by the SNP almost a decade ago, the Scottish Conservatives have said.
A Freedom of Information request to the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service by the party found the median time to attend 999 callouts was eight minutes and eight seconds last year,19percenthigherthanthe six minutes 50 seconds in 2013.
The median time has risen year on year since the eight regional brigades were centralised, according to the data, though the fire service no longer sets response-time targets.
MSP Russell Findlay, the Conservatives' community safety spokesman at Holyrood, said: "Responsetimesarecriticaland a matter of seconds could be the difference between life and death or whether someone's home is saved or destroyed."
In 2013 Scotland's eight regionalbrigadesweremerged into one, creating the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service and making it the largest in the UK.
But as part of the merger it cut the number of control rooms handling 999 calls from eight to three.
Accordingtothedatareleased by the fire service it is the first time the median response time has broken the eight-minute barrier.
Thescottishtoriessaidthatin the service's 2019-22 draft strategicplan,firefighterssaidtheir greatest concern was a lack of money from the Scottish Government as well as station closures and reduced crew numbers.
Mrfindlaysaid:"it'sinevitable that SNP cuts could have serious consequences, not only by potentially putting the public at risk, but demoralising brave firefighterswhorisktheirsafety while protecting us.
"The SNP must make the fire service a priority and not an afterthought. Communities need to be confident of there being a sufficient number of firefighters to protect them."
A Scottish Government spokesman said: "The allocation of resources and responding to incidents is a matter for SFRS.”
Sfrsdeputychiefofficerross Haggartsaid:"wewouldalways caution against using national response times as a meaningful measure of performance because of our geographic diversity, which includes large inner cities as well as rural and remote communities.”