Budget cuts impact to Cornwall fire service raising its game

The service was judged to be requiring improvement in six areas following its last inspection.

One of the most senior officers at the unitary authority issued the stark warning at a budget scrutiny committee on Thursday (October 31), where service directors outlined cuts and savings they’ve proposed to stop Cornwall Council going bankrupt like other local authorities in the country.

In February, the council stated there would be a £67m budget gap for 2025/26, which was reduced to £58m after a review of directorates. Following “not necessarily desirable” cuts to various service directorates, savings of £49m have been made, but that means there is still a funding gap of just over £9m.

The net revenue budget for 2025/26 is forecast to be £825m. After revenue is taken into account, such as council tax (around £417m), a 100 per cent council tax premium on second homes introduced next year (£23.7m), business rates (£273.7m) and government grants (£101m), that leaves the revised budget gap of £9m. The meeting was held to discuss ways in which that amount can be reduced further still.

Sophie Hosking, strategic director for neighbourhoods, stressed that some of the cuts suggested will impact efforts to improve the county’s fire and rescue service, which received a “requires improvement” judgement following an inspection by His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) last year.

The Inspectorate’s last report in 2023 found Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service wanting in seven of the 11 performance categories the inspectors looked at. The fire service’s performance was only graded as “adequate” in four areas, but was rated as “requires improvement” in six areas and ‘inadequate’ in one area.

Ms Hosking told this week’s meeting: “We don’t have a well performing fire and rescue service in the eyes of the Inspectorate. We get inspected every two years and it’s a very thorough and uncomfortable process. Overall, we are a service that requires improvement; we’re in the bottom quartile of services across the country.

“We have an improvement programme that we’re working on to get up to the next category, which we hope to achieve next year, which would be adequate overall. We are not a good or excellent service by anyone’s standards.

“I think it’s important to say that some of the proposals that I’m bringing forward today will impact on our ability to raise our game. We will be cutting back on some of the things that we were planning to do in order to improve.”

Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service (Image: Cornwall Council)

She added that £260,000 of proposed savings are rated “red risk” in terms of the impact on the service, in particular the ability to make the improvements required by His Majesty’s Inspectorate and to meet the requirement of national fire standards.

Ms Hosking said the fire service was measured on its ability to respond in a timely way and Cornwall was not hitting those targets. The HMICFRS also noted that there was “cause of concern” in terms of facilities for firefighters at some of Cornwall’s fire stations.

She said Cornwall Fire and Rescue Service was also measured on fire prevention such as the number of home fire safety checks it carries out, as well as assessing high risk buildings, of which Cornwall has a lot in terms of holiday accommodation and hotels.

“It’s not just how quickly we respond to put out a fire, there’s an awful lot more we’re assessed on and we are overall found lacking,” added the strategic director.

The warning came a day after Cornwall Council announced the fire and rescue service is recruiting on-call firefighters at 26 local stations.

Any suggestions on further savings made by the budget scrutiny committee will go to the council’s Conservative Cabinet next month and the proposed budget for 2025/26 will be discussed by full council in February.

Next year’s budget has been called the “most challenging” in the council’s history by its deputy leader David Harris.  It is expected that the local authority will have to levy a maximum council tax increase of 4.99 per cent for the third year running.