Plan to remove firefighters at night rejected

Plans to remove staff at night from two north Wales fire stations have been rejected by the fire authority.

Members of the North Wales Fire Authority Board voted against the scrapping of 24-hour cover at Rhyl and Deeside.

The fire service will now consider alternative proposals, which will be brought before the authority next year.

Chief fire officer Dawn Docx said she would continue to work with all stakeholders to develop a new permanent solution.

The proposal to remove nighttime staff was rejected by 12 members of the authority board, with 11 voting for, and four abstaining.

It was one of three proposals.

Another included removing one of three fire engines based in Wrexham and cutting the number of firefighters, with the third involved a combination of the first two, as well as closing Abersoch, Beaumaris, Cerrigydrudion, Conwy and Llanberis fire stations.

Following a 10-week consultation, plans were cut down from the three options to one which involved reducing services in Rhyl and Deeside to a daytime crew only, with staff being deployed to more rural areas.

A further option was offered by the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), but was rejected by the authority for "legal reasons".

Adopting the plan for no night staff would have meant that only on-call employees would be available to respond to 999 calls overnight, with both Rhyl and Deeside stations manned only during the day.

The authority argued that this would have addressed "disparities" in cover across the region.

Matt Ryan from the FBU said members had "no faith" in the options proposed, and that it would result in "reduced cover in two of the region's busiest stations" and constitute a "step backwards" in services.

Chief governing officer Gareth Owens had defended the option of scrapping the night cover.

He said that the review was to "ensure fairer and more equitable cover across the region".

But he said the option put forward by the FBU would not, describing it as a "backward step" which would make the "situation across the whole of north Wales worse than it is now".

Ms Docx said the authority had "done everything we can to support clear decision making... holding nine working groups in which we've considered many options".

She added that she would have liked a consensus option with the FBU, but option four had come "too late in the day, and wasn't a viable option".

"We need a collective decision for the good of the whole of north Wales," she said.

Ms Docx added that following the vote, further work will be carried out, with officers "continuing to work with all stakeholders, taking into consideration today's decision and the limits of the proposed budget".