92.1%
7.9%
Why the Town of Windsor must retain a 24hour fire and rescue emergency response.
“A little fire is quickly trodden out, yet if it were allowed to grow it could be impossible to quench” so stated a visionary observer of the effects of fire in London and Stratford on Avon in the 1590’s. The observation is as true today as when written 400 years ago and is the key reason why 24hr cover at Windsor fire station must be retained.
For 150 years Windsor has maintained a form of 24hr emergency fire response and for only 41 of those years, including the 6 years of the national war time fire service, has the control financing and direction of the fire service in Windsor not been in the hands of locally elected and appointed councilors and officials of the borough.
During this entire period the Windsor fire service developed and evolved along with the development of the Town and its surrounding communities to provide an emergency fire service that has been shown over the years to match the risks posed by the ever changing and expanding business, industrial and domestic environment.
Throughout this time from the earliest days, mutual aid was provided to all outlying communities from Colnbrook to Eton and Maidenhead, that needed assistance from Windsor and vice versa when Windsor needed help
During the whole of the period under direct local town council control the size, financing and resource requirements were subject to ongoing scrutiny, but as all the recorded discussions show in the Windsor Town council minutes, whenever the question of reducing the Windsor fire service was raised, clear and objective evidence was tabled to show why such a move would lead to a serious risk to both people and properties.
When in 1974 fire services across the UK were merged and control of the Windsor fire service passed to the County of Berkshire, many controls were put in place to ensure that ad hoc decisions having a negative effect on local services could not be implemented at the whim of a Chief Fire Officer or County fire authority and for 31 years the system continued to provide a sustainable level of fire protection across the community.
However these checks and balances were removed virtually overnight when the government brought the Fire & Rescue Services Act 2004 into effect on 1st October 2004.
Out went Her Majesty’s Fire Service Inspectorate and its annual inspection programme of all fire services, the committees that served the central fire brigades council, and of particular concern to all of us here, the national ‘standards of fire cover’ which had ensured a minimum emergency response across the whole country based on tried and tested objective measurements was scrapped.
Together with the introduction of the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order) 2005 which took away from fire brigades the legal responsibility for ensuring fire safety of the work place and placed the entire responsibility in the hands of building owners and occupiers, the result has been a revolution in the operation of emergency fire response and provision of fire safety across the British Isles.
While many Fire & Rescue Services responded to the challenges in a balanced, constructive manner taking local situations into consideration when making changes, the Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service and the Fire Authority have taken no account of the local conditions and provision of fire services so carefully nurtured and sustained over the past 150 years. Instead they have introduced ill thought out standards of emergency response that totally ignore the business and commercial community refusing to set time limits within which to respond to emergency incidents and a time line for responding to domestic fires that cannot be guaranteed even in the best circumstances, indeed the word guaranteed was deliberately removed from the initial IRMP document.
The proposed cuts in fire emergency response not just in Windsor but across the Berkshire Fire Authority, with further retained fire stations earmarked for closure are a serious indictment of the management of both the Fire & Rescue Service and the Fire Authority that has totally lost touch with the communities they are supposed to serve. The results of their actions will, in my professional opinion, be to put the communities of not just Windsor, but all the outlying villages and towns that currently have an immediate response from Windsor’s 24hr manned appliance at serious risk and remove all elements of night time fire cover from the Town for the first time since the town council provided 6 night watchmen in 1769 to patrol the streets at night to ensure the security and safety of the population, including risks from fire.
No longer will “the little fire be quickly trodden out” but it will grow into the size of a Camberwell flats, Dean Street Soho or Edinburgh Balmoral Bar fire with the loss of lives and property that were occasioned in these recent tragic events, unless the Windsor Fire Service is placed back in the hands of locally elected councilors of the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead.
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A paper to support the submission by the Royal Borough of Windsor and Maidenhead under the Sustainable Communities Act for the provision of Fire and rescue services to be removed from the Berkshire Fire Authority and placed under the direction of the Borough council. Presented to the members of the representative panel on 15th July 2009 at the Council Chamber Maidenhead.
References:-
History of fire provision in Windsor
King Henry the 6th. part 3. written 1590’s ACT 4 . Scene 8. London. the palace.
1941 – 1947 National Fire Service
1974 – 1978 Berkshire County Council
1998 Unitary Authorities
County Archives records office reading
Windsor Town hall newspaper archives
Notes:-
The Unreformed Corporation of Windsor Borough 1653 – 1828 and the Reformed Corporation from 1828 – 1974. Within this period the Windsor Watch Committee (the forerunner of the fire committee) started in 1875 and run through to 1931.
Entries prefixed with WBC are from the records of the Windsor Borough Corporation (Town Council) and its committees.
By WBC - Finance Committee July 1866
Reference to a new fire engine at £100 and to repair existing engine £15
Records in the County and Windsor Guildhall archives show that from the 1860’s provision for emergency response to fire in the form of a fire engine and personnel to be called upon to man the fire engine were in existence and under the direct control of the Windsor Borough Corporation (Town Council).
Richard Coates
14th July 2009