Boris Johnson plans to close fire stations in New Cross, Downham and Woolwich as part of budget cuts designed to save £29m over two years. Since the proposals were announced, the London Fire Brigade has published a document setting out the impact on response times of fire engines at ward level. The document is quite dense and contains a couple of enormous tables so I thought I would try to distil out some of the impacts on the boroughs of Lewisham and Greenwich.
This News Shopper article pointed out the impact in 5 wards across the boroughs today, but I think it's worth looking across all wards to see the total effect. It's worth pointing out that a significant number of wards already have response times that fall outside the target time of 6 minutes for the first appliance. (I haven't looked at the second appliance times because I think that's confused by the fact that not all fires will need one.)
The four columns in the tables of response times for the first appliance below are:
2011/12 fires
2011/12 all incidents
Current Performance (3 Year Average) (minutes)
Post LSP5 Performance (minutes)
Bellingham 57 177 06:29 06:55
Blackheath 37 189 04:48 04:54
Brockley 44 253 05:28 05:41
Catford South 19 94 05:29 06:13
Crofton Park 41 180 04:01 04:07
Downham 63 166 05:54 07:38
Evelyn 49 343 04:32 04:37
Forest Hill 38 178 05:41 05:45
Grove Park 67 187 05:10 06:27
Ladywell 38 129 04:56 05:01
Lee Green 20 131 04:29 04:35
Lewisham Central 56 470 04:06 04:11
New Cross 72 298 05:04 05:31
Perry Vale 34 179 04:16 04:22
Rushey Green 77 252 04:46 04:53
Sydenham 44 206 06:14 06:21
Telegraph Hill 44 206 05:15 07:24
Whitefoot 73 191 05:08 07:57
Abbey Wood 91 220 06:24 06:28
Blackheath Westcombe 98 223 06:03 06:07
Charlton 37 138 05:45 05:55
Coldharbour and New Eltham 35 96 06:16 06:19
Eltham North 31 110 05:11 05:17
Eltham South 50 142 04:51 04:56
Eltham West 43 106 05:53 05:57
Glyndon 116 255 05:17 05:23
Greenwich 51 317 04:24 04:28
Kidbrooke with Hornfair 48 135 06:34 06:43
Middle Park and Sutcliffe 41 155 05:07 05:11
Peninsula 67 306 05:20 05:27
Plumstead 101 214 04:48 04:54
Shooters Hill 64 148 06:35 07:01
Thamesmead Moorings 120 256 07:07 07:13
Woolwich Common 93 328 05:32 06:36
Woolwich Riverside 112 452 04:57 07:26
(Source: Ward impacts of changes to fire stations and engines)
I've highlighted in red those wards that will be outside target response times following implementation of the London Fire Safety Plan 5. Those in italics are already outside target. So in Lewisham the number of wards outside target increases from 2 to 7 of 18 wards and in Greenwich the increase is from 6 to 8 of 17 wards. I'm no expert, but this doesn't look particularly safe or sensible to me, and not just because I happen to live in one of the affected wards.
Petitions against the cuts are available and I recommend you sign them:
Downham
Woolwich
General petition against the cuts
If anyone knows of a New-Cross-specific petition I'll add it!
You can also respond to the consultation here until 17 June.
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