Impact of fire station closures in Lewisham and Greenwich

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.