For those of you involved with premises or operations in the greater London area...... The London branch of the Fire Brigade Union are currently balloting for strike action. The results will be known next Thursday. Any strike action is likely to be discontinuous (Perhaps 24 or 48 hour chunks) and could start by 21st/22nd October. If a yes vote is cast, London's current fire cover provided by 200 or so fire appliances and crewed by whole time professional firefighters from 100+ fire stations, will be replaced by a temporary contingency service of around 30 appliances from 30 locations. The emergency cover arrangements will utilise a private fire service and crews who have been recruited mainly from a security company and have been given a crash course in firefighting. It is no longer possible for the military to provide emergency cover during these periods of absence. The firefighting capabilities of this temporary/emergency arrangements will fall far short of the usual service and may result in a heighten risk for your premises/operation. For instance - Attendance times are likely to be extended and it is possible that only 'defensive' firefighting tactics will be carried out (firefighting from outside/safe area). Other emergency services (so called special services) usually provided, such as lift rescues, attendance at car crashes and incidents involving machinery or confined rescues - may not be attended whatsoever. In any case, it is likely that there will be no specialist appliances available. These may include: hydraulic platforms/turntable ladders, those vehicles carrying chemical spill apparatus/PPE along with jacking and spreading equipment, and bulk foam carrying appliances.. If you have H&S, fire or FM responsibilities in the London area, it may be wise to consider contingency arrangements as soon as possible If you do plan to instigate contingency plans to cover any heightened risks caused by the FBI industrial action, it may be useful to share them here to assist others. Similarly, if you have already considered or have such plans (perhaps as a result of similar FBU strike action elsewhere in the UK), please share them here if possible.

This may not be a situation confined to the London area as there are proposed cutbacks in most Fire & Rescue Services across the UK. I live in West Sussex where there is a proposal to cut 5 appliances this year and maybe more the year after. When fire risk assessments are carried out how may people consider the length of time it will take a fire appliance to arrive? That is if one is available! The previous Government wasted a huge sum of money on centralised control centres that are still not up and running (I doubt they will work at all). Whether FFs go on strike or work to rule is irreverent when fire authorities take out the resilience of their fire & rescue services. This will have a dramatic effect on FFs safety and ability to actually carry out their role safely (but I forgot they will be not covered by any safety legislation if a certain person has his way), this in turn will effect business continuity plans. martinw is right to high light this issue, but I think it is going to become a much big issue in the coming months, after all if you can not evacuate a building there be no one available to carry out a rescue until it is too late.

In my view they should not be allowed to go on strike. This would require some sort of 3rd party arbitration service to ensure that their voice is heard.

I know two FF's and if the general public were aware of how they are treated they would be shocked. Management deliberately discriminate against union members, one example is if a FF gets a citation for bravery, if he/she is a union member they get a letter of thanks, if however he/she is not in the union a big presentation evening is arranged and the lord mayor presents the brave FF with a certificate and the thanks of the community, now if that's not discrimination what is?

Well is that not the point OD? We don’t want to drive down the level of service to the point that there is evidence of an increase in loss of life. We should not also forget that one of the reasons why fatalities from fire are not what they used to be is because of the improvements in getting medical attention to fire victims. If we start reducing fire cover and ambulance cover and if what you say about doctors and nurses is true then you just might see an increase in fatalities from fire. But if you want evidence then I would suggest looking at insurance statistics which shows that the cost of fire is not going down…..it is only a short step between property damage by fire and fatalities in fire.

Shaun, your status as a New Forum User is a little misleading I think! However, I don't think that your link between increasing costs of fires and fatalities is necessarily valid. For domestic fires the rising insured costs I suspect are a combination of increased quantity and value of personal posessions plus (maybe) increased takeup of insurance. For commercial and industrial fires there is a much increased use of high-value equipment (and consequently fewer jobs) such as CNC machines, computer centres which are very easily damaged by relatively small fires. Add to this the increased likelihood of the fire services concentrating their activities on prevention of spread to neighbouring premises rather than the much more dangerous extinguishment activity inside the premises, resulting in greater fire damage to the affected property. Quite rightly we no longer expect our FFs to risk their lives in entering commercial or industrial premises to limit financial losses if all personnel are accounted for. Fire risk assessments should look at the fire risks and risks to personnel without reliance or an assumption on a speedy brigade attendance, particularly in areas where the FBs main activity is likely to be attending road traffic incidents.

Blimey: I started this thread to warn London businesses and organisations of this threat and suggest they consider contingency arrangements. Everyone seems so busy putting their (often ill informed) view across, this message has been lost. Just to set the record straight. FBU members across the Uk have been involved with implementing huge changes to the way they work and massive efficiencies have resulted. Community fire safety is at the core of their workload, and will continue to be (until the money runs out). Many so-called Spanish practices have been modernised, but it is true, there is still some work to be had here. Anti terror work, training and equipment has had a significant effect on their role. So it is not accurate to say that there have not been improvements/efficiencies To sum up the London dispute: A pig-headed management are attempting to bring in a raft of changes, including shift start/finish times. A leaked document shows clearly that as a result of the shift changes, the LFB will make huge cuts in night=time cover. They argue that there's on a few calls at night, so less cover could cope. They ignore other statistics that show rescues and fire deaths nearly all happen a night and a cut in cover at this time may be bad news for the community & firefighter safety (and jobs). Now the LFB have informed their employees that they will be sacked if they don't sign up to the new deal. That has understandably really wound the FBU up to ballot for strike action Meanwhile an equally pig headed 1970's style union won't agree to any of it and refuse to budge an inch. The result = stalemate As in all disputes, there's more than one side to blame. But as far as the users of this board are concerned, planning for this stoppage might be more beneficial that trying to virtually resolve it!!

Thanks to messyshaw for giving us the 'heads-up' on this. To avoid further straying into politics, etc, this topic is now locked. Jane