Merseyside’s chief fire officer Dan Stephens has delivered a stark new warning of the risk to life for people in Hoylake, Meols and West Kirby if the controversial new Saughall Massie fire station plan is rejected next month.
The proposed fire station sits on the edge of Wirral’s Green Belt, and has met with vociferous protests from the Saughall Massie community.
West Kirby fire station is being phased out this year because of budget cuts. The fire and rescue service plans to replace Upton fire station with the new Saughall Massie building which will be more central to the area it will need to serve, and a critical two minutes closer to West Kirby and Hoylake.
Opponents argue that Saughall Massie Road will not be able to cope with fire engines responding to emergencies – although this is the same route now used by fire engines travelling from Upton to West Kirby.
Wirral’s planning committee is due to rule on the application on October 20, and now the fire chief has written a letter to the council’s head of regeneration and planning, David Ball, spelling out his concerns.
He writes: “All of the available research identifies that there is a relationship between survivability and response times. This can be measured in seconds rather than minutes, so a delay of 120 seconds could easily make the difference between someone surviving in a fire, road traffic collision or other emergency, or not.
“Survivability decreases significantly beyond 10 minutes. There are parts of the West Kirby station area (including within Hoylake and Meols) that cannot be reached from Upton fire station in 10 minutes.
“The average response time to the West Kirby station area from Upton is in excess of 8 minutes, which is 3 minutes longer than the Merseyside average and much closer to 10 minutes than almost everywhere else on Merseyside.”
Mr Stephens added that the 10 minute response standard had to be adopted in 2013 as a result of government spending cuts, but where possible the fire and rescue authority still strived to maintain average response times on Merseyside as close to 5 minutes as possible.
“It is my professional opinion that if this planning application is refused and the authority is forced to close West Kirby fire station outright an incident will occur on the West Kirby station area where responding from Upton fire station will result in a delay that will have a direct impact on the outcome in terms of survivability.
“The Planning Committee need to understand this when reaching their decision therefore I would be grateful if you could bring this to their attention.”
Saughall Massie councillor Chris Blakeley, who is leading opposition to the proposal, says: “This application is completely unnecessary as the fire authority already have said their preferred choice is to redevelop the Upton fire station.
“As well as the threat to our Green Belt, a fire station in Saughall Massie would also be a risk to life.
“We all know how often the country lanes around Meols and Greasby are blocked due to slow moving farm vehicles. Every minute a fire engine is stuck in the lanes is another minute stuck in a burning building somewhere.
“What we need now is for the leader of the council to listen to the residents of Saughall Massie and respond in the same way as he did when a previous plan for Greasby was knocked on the head.”