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Fire service needs to come clean about lack of staff cover - claim


By SPP Reporter

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Recruiting fire fighters has become a problem in many remote areas.
Recruiting fire fighters has become a problem in many remote areas.

A STAFFING crisis leaving Lochinver Fire Station “off the run” has raised insurance cover fears for hoteliers and guest house owners.

The Glac Mor Industrial Estate depot is temporarily closed because it does not have the required number of retained firefighters needed to respond to emergency call-outs.

Highland councillor Alister MacKinnon, a financial consultant with more than 30 years’ experience in the insurance industry, is concerned local hotel and B&B owners do not know Lochinver is unable to respond to 999 calls and that their nearest station is at Scourie or Achiltibuie – “an hour’s drive away on a poor night”.

He said it was commonplace for insurers to ask hotel owners for details about the nearest fire station in order to assess the level of fire cover.

“My concern is that the client may not know that there is no cover from Lochinver. If you had a big hotel and there were 100-odd guests, maybe the insurer would not want to cover you if they knew that if there was a fire in the night, a fire engine would need to come from Scourie or Achiltibuie and that’s 45 minutes away at least, an hour’s drive on a poor night.”

Councillor MacKinnon said the fire service should have a plan in place to notify relevant premises in every area about station closures – especially in remote locations – to ensure policyholders can comply with insurance requirements.

“The fire service has to come clean on such things,” he said. “They need to tell locals that there is an issue. But I think the service is wanting to engage and I’m more than happy to go up there and work with them and attend meetings with the locals in Lochinver.”

The village fire station is supposed to have 12 retained firefighters on-call for an annual retainer of around £2000.

A minimum of four trained firefighters are needed to attend incidents.

Sutherland councillor Hugh Morrison said there are now only three firefighters at Lochinver who are trained to attend call-outs. They cover the whole of Assynt, which has about 1000 people.

Councillor Morrison, a former retained firefighter with 30 years’ experience including 10 as station manager at Durness, said the issue was currently “a Lochinver problem” but any day now it could apply to any number of surrounding villages.

He said: “Some villages in the north are sitting with six or seven or even five retained members and all it takes is for one or two of them to drop out and it’s the same story, different area.”

The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service responded to the concerns via a written press statement.

However, the service did not answer questions around the insurance fears.

Quoted in the response, Scott Hay, area manager and local senior officer with the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, said he and local councillors would be in the Lochinver area in the very near future to discuss the role of retained firefighters and to try to encourage people to join the service.

He said becoming a retained firefighter brought with it “a tremendous sense of satisfaction” and the service was working with a range of partners to attract new recruits.

Margaret Davidson, Highland Council leader, said the local authority was playing its part by “targeting council staff through internal vacancies and staff communications to encourage local people to think about this as a wise and rewarding career prospect”.

To join you must be aged 18 or over, physically fit with good eyesight and colour perception and live or work within eight minutes of the fire station.


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