Fife fire cuts: anger and despair of firefighters as cuts set to bite

Earlier this year, the centralised SFRS announced a raft of measures to find £11m of savings this year.

The savings package will see second or third fire appliances temporarily removed from Methil, Glenrothes, and Dunfermline stations and a height appliance stationed at Kirkcaldy will also be withdrawn. The changes will come into force on September 4 and more budget cuts are on the horizon in coming years.

Chris Murphy, Fire Brigades Union (FBU) East Area chairperson, has been a firefighter in Dunfermline for 17 years.

He attended a public meeting organised by Alex Rowley, MSP for Mid-Scotland and Fife, on Wednesday and afterwards described the anger that he and his colleagues are feeling.

“There’s a great deal of anger and a great deal of frustration. Probably not so much anxiety, but definitely a lot of frustration and anger towards SFRS and ultimately towards the Scottish Government,” he said.

As a local firefighter, Mr Murphy emphasised the impact that these cuts will have on the fire service.

“I’ve never before been at an incident where we asked for more resources and none were available” he said.

But that’s what happened last July during a spate of wildfires in the area. Mr Murphy indicated that fire services will likely encounter more incidents like that now that appliances are being removed from service.

“It will only take a small number of high profile bad incidents before authorities like Fife run out of resources,” he said.

Although politicians and firefighters have strongly condemned the cuts, Mr Murphy feels that the local community has largely been kept in the dark.

“I don’t think the community is actually aware [of what’s going on],” he said. “We’ve done a number of public awareness days and although the public are ultimately very supportive, a lot of them are not aware at all. I think SFRS have cleverly circumnavigated any kind of public scrutiny or public consultation through the use of the word ‘temporary withdrawals'.”

John McKenzie, Scottish secretary of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) addressed the same issue earlier in the evening.

He said: “The crux of the issue is that the budget cuts are permanent. SFRS are saying the removals are temporary, but there’s no money to pay for them. The firefighters being removed from stations - their transfers are permanent. From our perspective, if there isn’t money to pay for them and there isn’t money to pay for the firefighters needed to staff the appliances, then calling the removals temporary means nothing.”

However, Mr Murphy is not giving up hope just yet.

“I don’t think we can possibly lose hope that these cuts are temporary until they become permanent. Until that happens, the campaign continues,” he said. “Until these cuts become permanent, we’ll keep fighting to reverse them.”