A response to ‘Fighting the fire’: fire chiefs’ proposal to run England’s ambulance service

Dear Editor, Professor Malcolm Woollard does an excellent job of exposing the proposal from fire chiefs for the ill thought-out nonsense that it is.

In his article, Woollard quotes fire service attendance times of 5 minutes. I would like to point out that the fire services no longer have national attendance time standards at all as these were abolished by the previous government (against no opposition from fire chiefs).

I think I am right in saying that, although chief fire officers now have discretion to determine their own services’ response times, there are no 5 minute attendance times any longer.

In fact, almost without exception, where there have been new local standards determined, standards are worse now than they were before national standards were abolished.

Since around 2004, there are many fewer firefighters, many fewer fire stations and many fewer fire appliances available for emergency response.

Woollard can therefore add to his criticisms of fire chiefs, the charge of rank hypocrisy in that they are claiming to be able to run another emergency service to a more efficient standard, while they are presiding over a lamentable drop in standards of emergency response within the fire service itself.