East Sussex Fire Authority thanks all those who have taken part in our consultation on the future of Mayfield On Call Community Fire Station
The consultation ran from 5 July 2024 until 27 September, with the findings considered at a Fire Authority meeting on 5 December 2024. This is a public meeting which you are welcome to attend. Read more.
As of 27 September, we had received more than 400 responses which will now go through a verification process.
The following information helps explains the background of the consultation.
About our work
We do more than simply respond to emergencies. We work to prevent emergencies from happening in the first place, and to protect people and property. We aim to do this by managing our resources, our budget and our people as effectively as possible.
The risks faced by local communities are changing, and it has become harder to recruit on-call firefighters who can provide emergency cover at the times they are needed most. We keep the management of community risk including its fire stations and appliances under constant review.
About Mayfield
- Mayfield is an On Call Fire Station and it is the lowest activity station within the service.
- At On Call stations, crews tell the service when they are free or “available” to respond to emergencies.
- There needs to be at least four members of a crew available for the fire engine to go out.
- In 2023, it was available to respond to emergencies 6% of the time, instead of our target of 50%, and previous attempts at recruitment have not been successful.
Options
The full Options Appraisal was presented to our Fire Authority in June. (Please see the additional information about heritage buildings below, which amends information within this paper. There are 160 in the Mayfield and Five Ashes Parish area, including homes, businesses, churches, tombstones and troughs.)
The options consider several factors including Mayfield's contribution to overall service risk reduction and resilience, and proposed arrangements for maintaining public safety in the area currently served by Mayfield.
Analysis for all the options shows we are still able to meet the Service attendance standards.
- Option 1 – Maintain Mayfield as a single appliance On-Call fire station and uplift the availability to the Service’s minimum standard of 50% from the current 6% availability.
- Option 2 – Closure and sale of the fire station, keep the fire appliance and reinvest the revenue staff costs. This would enable the Service to reduce risk more effectively through an improved response capability.
- Option 3 – Closure and sale of the fire station and appliance, and reinvest staff costs. This would enable a redistribution of staffing resource to reduce risk more effectively through an improved response capability.
- Option 4 – Closure and sale of the fire station and appliance, and removal of the On-Call section as an additional saving to meet budget shortfall if required.
Get Involved
Our survey asked questions including:
- Given the need to make savings, to what extent do you agree or disagree that ESFRS should consider the feasibility of fire stations that are used least often?
- To what extent do you agree or disagree that Mayfield Fire Station should be closed to reduce the need for savings elsewhere within the Service?
- Do you have any alternative solutions to address the challenges that you think should be considered?
Why Mayfield?
Mayfield was identified after we analysed stations on the basis of their contribution to overall Service resilience, their availability, crewing profile, the risk profile of the local area, incident activity and neighbouring fire station/appliance(s) capability.
Further to this, earlier this year we carried out a high-level review which considered:
- Population and social demographic and built environment data;
- Current activity;
- Number of critical incidents within each station area;
- Time it takes for the fire appliance to attend incidents;
- Current fire appliance availability;
- Opportunities for securing firefighters within close proximity to the stations.
What do we mean by risk?
Risk is the assessment of the likelihood of an event occurring coupled with the potential severity if that event occurs. The impact of incidents is often wider than just those directly involved. For example, a fire in a business will have a knock-on effect to staff, customers, suppliers and the wider community.
We want to reduce the risk, the likelihood and the consequence, for all those who may be affected by an incident.
We bring together data and intelligence to look for patterns and trends. We also use our professional judgement and experience of the service, of partners and Government, alongside both national and local risk registers.
What we mean by availability?
Mayfield Community Fire Station is an on-call fire station. On-Call Firefighters carry pagers/alerters and make themselves “available” to respond to emergencies when they are able, however if there aren’t enough crew members who are available at the same time, the fire engine cannot be sent out.
What does "fully competent" mean when referring to a firefighter?
To put it simply, this is about ensuring firefighters have had the right training to safely do the job. This takes time and so new firefighters will need to complete certain training before being confirmed as a “fully competent” firefighter, able to carry out a full range of activities.
Can you explain the finances?
By law we must produce a balanced budget. This means we cannot spend more than we receive.
The forecast funding gap faced by the Fire Authority for 2025/26 is between £1.884m and £2.536m.
Savings of £14.047m have been or are planned to be taken between the period of 2010/11 and 2028/29.
This still leaves the Fire Authority with a shortfall and we must now consider other proposals.
Fact File
The following information has been gathered to give you an insight into Mayfield:
ORH analysis shows that Mayfield is the lowest activity station within East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service between January 2022 and December 2023.
- 103 incidents within the Mayfield station area within the 2 year period – average 52 per year
- During the 2 year period, there were 13 critical incidents (13%), none of which had Mayfield as the first-arriving appliance, 54% of critical incidents are RTCs.
- Crowborough was the first-arriving appliance to 55 (53%) out of the 103 incidents within the Mayfield station area, including nine of the 13 critical incidents.
- Mayfield was the first-arriving fire appliance on six occasions (6%) within its station area.
- There were 16 false alarms (39%).
- The availability (6.1%) of the Mayfield appliance during that time would have had minimal impact on the risk within the local area.
- Due to Mayfield appliance availability, the station area was being covered by neighbouring stations 93.9% of the time.
What modelling was undertaken?
East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service (ESFRS) commissioned Operational Research in Health Ltd (ORH) to undertake deployment modelling to support the Mayfield Options Appraisal.
ORH has significant experience of working with fire and rescue services and other emergency services across the UK and internationally and have worked alongside the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) in recent years developing new risk methodologies to support Community Risk Management Planning. In addition to consultancy work, ORH provides its Dynamic Cover Tool (DCT) software to support dynamic decision making in our Joint Control Room.
A technical report produced by ORH can be found here and focuses on the predicted impact that each option could have on the response times to incidents (of both the first and second-arriving fire appliances), as well as the predicted impacted on the Service’s attendance standards.
The modelling undertaken by ORH indicates that the Service’s attendance standards would continue to be met irrespective of which Option were to be implemented (see page 7 for concise summary).
Whilst the options are likely to make little impact on overall performance, the modelling predicts the change to local response times within the Mayfield (and surrounding) areas, and these are summarised in section 4.18 of the Options Appraisal.
Heritage Buildings
Heritage sites can often pose unusual features that may subsequently influence the operational plans so crews and officers gather Site Specific Risk Information, to mitigate the impact should an incident occur at a heritage site.
The National Heritage List for England (NHLE) is the only official, up to date, register of all nationally protected historic buildings and sites in England - listed buildings, scheduled monuments, protected wrecks, registered parks and gardens, and battlefields.
Within the UK there are three categories of listed buildings;
· Grade I buildings are of exceptional interest, nationally only 2.5% of listed buildings are listed as Grade I. According to the NHLE, there are just 3 Grade 1 Listed Buildings within the Mayfield and Five Ashes Parish ground.
The first is Middle House Hotel on the High Street.
The second is the Parish Church of St Dunstan on the High Street.
The third is the Old Palace (Convent of the Holy Child Jesus St Leonards Mayfield School) also on the High Street.
· Grade II* buildings are particularly important buildings of more than special interest; nationally 5.5% of listed buildings are Grade II*
There are four in the Mayfield and Five Ashes Parish area.
One is the Argos Hill Windmill which operates as a tourist attraction run by a Trust. Argos Hill Windmill - Home Page
· Grade II buildings are of special interest; 92% of all listed buildings in the UK are in this class and is the most likely grade of listing for a home owner.
There are 153 of these in the Mayfield and Five Ashes Parish area.
Around 20 of these are tombstones, garden walls, phone boxes or horse troughs.
The remaining properties are either businesses or homes.
Heritage buildings and the Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005
The Regulatory Reform (Fire Safety) Order 2005 applies to most non-domestic premises and businesses, including:
- Venues open to the public including theatres, bars and gyms Hotels, B&Bs and guesthouses
- Factories, warehouses and storage facilities
You can read more about the legal responsibilities relating to heritage buildings here: Heritage buildings | East Sussex Fire & Rescue Service (esfrs.org)
Was the land/site gifted to you?
Our records show the site was sold to East Sussex County Council for £3250 in 1976 when they ran the fire service. You can see the contract here. We have been assured that we have the right to sell the site and we have found no covenants relating to receipts. Please contact us if you have any official documents you think we need to consider.
Did you take account of Mayfield’s Parish Council's response to the pre-engagement in the development of the options before consultation?
Yes we took into account responses from all stakeholders involved in the pre-engagement work which took place ahead of the consultation. You can find our responses in this Appendix to the June 2024 Fire Authority paper (page 39 onwards).