The public fifth draft London Safety Plan public consultation closed at midnight on the 17 June. A report is now being produced and will be discussed at a future meeting of the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority.
The draft Plan outlines a wide range of policies and measures which are intended to improve the safety of Londoners. It also includes details of how savings worth £28.8m could be made, involving the closure of 12 fire stations; the removal of 18 pumping appliances and the redeployment of four pumping appliances to other stations. In those parts of London with the worst response time performance, this would have a beneficial impact; in other places, the removal of appliances would have a detrimental impact, although London-wide, response time targets and standards of fire cover would continue to be met and at a borough-level more boroughs would meet the targets. No borough would move from within target to outside target based on average attendance times.
Under the proposals, the Brigade would maintain its existing London-wide target attendance target of getting a first fire engine to an emergency within an average six minutes and the second fire engine, if needed, within eight minutes. This is amongst the fastest target response time of any emergency service in the country and almost twice as fast as some other fire brigades. The full detail of the Plan proposals can be found in the draft Plan and supplementary documents in the links to the right of this page.
The consultation included public meetings and now the consultation on the full plan is complete, all of the responses will be analysed. A report will be prepared and considered by the London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority, who will make a decision on the proposals in the Plan. The final decision is expected to be made later this year, but not before July 2013.
