Ramsbury Fire Station to be closed – have your say….

Ramsbury Fire Station is one of eight Fire Stations within Wiltshire and Dorset scheduled for closure, soon. Quite when hasn’t been stated but not too far into the future. There is however a ‘Public Consultation’ programme happening which for Ramsbury runs until 13 May, followed by a meeting (where final decisions will be made) on June 10.

This follows two consultation meetings held in the Memorial Hall in Ramsbury at the start of March. The consultation is in the form of an online survey which can be accessed by clicking here. As well as this online survey there will be an online meeting on Wednesday 15 April, between 6 and 7pm. Scan adjacent QR Code to join that ‘Teams’ session.

Why? What are the reasons for this – and the other planned closures? In one word – money. In a release Chief Fire Officer Andy Cole stated: “Nobody wants to close fire stations but, despite saving over £15 million in the last ten years, our financial position remains very challenging due to a 19.5% cut in funding provided directly from Government. We still need to make sure our operational staff have the equipment and training they need to stay safe, and we’ve pared back our Corporate staff numbers as much as possible. This isn’t Plan A, we’ve worked through many difficult options before this point.”

Details of what this closure will mean to Ramsbury can be accessed and downloaded by clicking here. Key point of that it shows how much longer it would take for an appliance to get to Ramsbury in the event of a fire. It estimates an extra 5min and 44 seconds. Ramsbury isn’t close to any other location with a fire station. Roads into Ramsbury are small ‘country’ roads so even with blue lights on an appliance can’t travel quickly. There are many thatched properties, old terraced houses in the centre with shared attic spaces, all of which – without describing Ramsbury as ‘an area of great fire hazard’, thos closure would but the area ‘out on a limb’ regarding any fire incident. And time equates to greater damage, and possibly greater danger to life.

Sheila Glass, Chair of the Ramsbury & Axford Parish Council told Marlborough.news: “We will draw attention to the fact that response times in the document that they issued at the meetings – there are only six full time manned stations in Dorset & Wiltshire and Marlborough is on call so response time (13 minutes) needs to factor in the time taken for firefighters to reach the station. In addition the C6 road from Marlborough to Ramsbury does not lend itself to huge speeds even with blue lights. There is only one appliance in Marlborough which serves an area to the west of Marlborough as well as east to Ramsbury. Response times from Swindon stations of 23 minutes are also optimistic.”

She added that: “Ramsbury station is in the centre of a fire station free area (except Marlborough) and could be expected to serve Aldbourne, Chilton Foliat, Froxfield and the Bedwyns which have a population of around 8,000. These villages all have a good proportion of thatched properties and Ramsbury centre has many terraced houses on the High Street where fire can spread easily in roof space.”

Sheila also made the point that this closure notice was unexpected and should have been made clear earlier: “Until we were made aware  in the last few weeks, the Parish Council and most residents were unaware of the parlous financial situation that the underfunding from central government in the last 16 years had caused to the Fire Service (86% of funding now comes from local councils). Had we been made aware sooner I am sure that the action that has now been galvanised would have been forthcoming some time ago.”

This is an important issue for the community of Ramsbury and the surrounding area. It is also important to the communities further afield – Marlborough and the area around, as were there a fire in Ramsbury, or in Marlborough, then the one appliance in Marlborough would the the first to be dispatched to deal with that, but were another fire to happen elsewhere in the area – units from Swindon? And then longer delay. An issue for Ramsbury and Axford, certainly, but an issue that could have serious knock-on issues further afield.