Political opinion with John Milne MP: More retained firefighters needed for West Sussex
I recently had the pleasure of visiting Platinum House at Highwood on the edge of Horsham, the new fire station and training centre. I was given an enjoyable tour by Ian James and Matthew Gamblen, in which I had the chance to talk to many of the trainees. The last time I visited, as a County Councillor and member of the Fire & Rescue committee, the site was still something of a mudbath, so it was good to see the finished (clean!) version.
This facility took far longer than it should have to get the go-ahead. But now it's finally here, it's something to be celebrated. Their state-of-the-art training facilities are invaluable not only for West Sussex firefighters but also for officers across the country.
Training facilities include a cold smoke training tower, an immersive incident command suite and a road traffic collision training area. But the star facility is the live-fire tower, which can replicate fires in all kinds of houses, flats and buildings. Trainee officers get to face highly realistic conditions within the safety of a training exercise, instead of confronting them for the first time in an actual incident.
The main issue that worried me most in my time on the committee was the challenge of recruitment. In particular, it has become very difficult to find enough' retained' firefighters. These are part-timers with regular jobs in other industries who make themselves available for urgent call-outs.
The pressure of modern lifestyles means people are less able to give their time, yet they play a key role in the service. For example, in West Sussex, 14 of the county's 25 fire stations are crewed entirely by on-call firefighters. Fundamentally, the service gets by on much reduced numbers compared to 20 years ago.
Firefighters have to be ready to rush to the station at the drop of a hat, which means major employers have to be flexible. Ironically, West Sussex County Council itself still refuses to adopt a policy of supporting staff to become retained firefighters by giving them time for training and response to emergencies.
I also heard that although in many respects safety standards have improved, there is still a gap in medical support. There is no continuous health monitoring or blood testing currently in place, and as yet, there is no national system for GPs to have a special code which would identify firefighters for targeted health monitoring. This is an issue I will be raising in Parliament.