Total support for the proposed merger of the fire and rescue services of Wiltshire and Dorset in the face of £3.8 million government cuts has come from former firefighter Peter Edge, himself a member of Wiltshire Council.
The 61-year-old Lib-Dem councillor is himself the son of a retained firefighter at Wilton, his father, Bryan Edge, who served as what was called then a part-time firefighter for seven years.
Councillor Edge, only 22 when he joined the fire service, served at Wilton for 25 years. And now his son Christopher, 39, has followed in his firefighting footsteps at the same fire station.
His remarkable family record adds power to his fears that people’s lives will be put in danger by taking any alternative course, as proposed by Wiltshire’s Tory leader, Councillor Jane Scott, and her deputy, Councillor John Thomson.
“A similar threat to this back in the 1980s when they wanted to close retained fire stations in Wiltshire,” Councillor Edge, a local politician since 1985, told Marlborough News Online in an exclusive interview.
“But that was stopped because the local communities involved just weren’t prepared to allow it to happen. And neither am I. Irrespective of what policy our Lib-Dem group decide on, I shall be sticking to my views come what may.”
Councillor Edge pointed out that the Tory belief that £700,000 a year cuts in back-office staff can suffice has followed the opposition of James Gray, Conservative MP for North Wiltshire, who has stood out against the “regionalisation” of ambulance and police services.
“He is the only MP in the whole of Wiltshire and Dorset who is against the merger project,” Councillor Edge protested. “Jane Scott and her colleagues are just empire building. Saving £700,000 a year is fine but they can’t make the other £3.1m savings without affecting front-line firefighter services.
“You might be able to do that with the police but with the command and control system we have in the fire service it would be ludicrous to do so.
“As far as I am concerned, Councillor Graham Payne, chairman of the Combined Fire Authority on which I also serve, is absolutely right, which is why he has been ousted.
“There is no future for the front-line service unless we can come to some sort of a merger, and joining up with Dorset is the logical one.
“The largest cost in the fire service is on employees and if we don’t merge we shall absolutely lose a load of our firefighters and put the public at risk.”
Councillor Edge, a former electrician who now, appropriately, runs an alarm business, believes that pressure put on the government to change its austerity programme, which was hitting fire services across the country, has already been “knocked on the head and won’t happen.”
He is seriously concerned that the final decision will be made on a political basis rather than by taking into account the results of a major public consultation exercise, already delayed, which will follow the next Wiltshire Council meeting on July 10.
“It is the council members overall who will make the decision, not Jane Scott,” he declared. “And it will be the public most affected who need to have the final word.”
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