Incidentally, this was published ten days ago. I quote:
Since 2010, over 10,000 firefighters have been axed; dozens of fire stations have closed; fire engines have been scrapped; and emergency rescue equipment has been slashed. Fire service budgets have been reduced by 30 per cent across the UK, with a further 20 per cent of cuts expected by 2020.
In England, the average response to primary fires – the most serious that the fire service attends – has increased by 31 seconds since 2010/2011. Response times to dwelling fires which involve somebody who needs rescuing increased by 26 seconds since 2010/2011. Those are not the only increases: every type of incident that the fire service responds to now takes longer compared to 2010.
Firefighters are increasingly finding themselves over stretched and under resourced. I cannot emphasise enough how seconds count when firefighting. A few seconds can be the difference between saving a life or not.
The Government’s own statistics show that 303 people died in fires during 2015/2016. This is an unacceptable rise of 15 per cent on the previous year.
Safer? A year after a Manchester policeman warned May that the police cuts would result in terrorism, and were a threat to national security, only for her to sneer that he was crying wolf and fear-mongering? We are not safer. We are anything but.
You can't take large amounts of funding away and expect the same quality. It beggars belief that people can argue to the contrary.