By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
A “bonkers” move by ambulance bosses to rely on unpaid labour instead of paid retained firefighters when co-responding to call outs in rural parts of Gloucestershire has been blasted by a county chief.
The South Western Ambulance Service NHS Foundation Trust (SWASFT) is shifting its focus to rely more on community first responders when responding to 999 calls in more remote parts of the county.
Once they have built up sufficient numbers of the unpaid volunteers, they will phase out fire co-responding in areas which have been historically served by Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service.
The ambulance trust, which is under financial strain, is responsible for 20 per cent of mainland England and its area stretches from Gloucestershire in the north as far south west as the Isles of Scilly. They respond to 3,000 emergency calls a day.
Fire co-responders are retained fire personnel who generally have other employment but who live within a certain distance of their retained fire station.
In Gloucestershire as of September there were a total of 33 co-responders based in Dursley, Newent, Tetbury, Wotton, Coleford and Lydney.
Matt Thomas, executive technical director at SWASFT, told Tuesday’s (October 14) health overview and scrutiny committee that the move to phase out fire co-responders is designed to provide the best volunteer response to patients.
“Our goal is for people who are critically ill injured to get a response to them as soon as possible,” he said.
“We know that our team of volunteers support our, our very capable paramedic, an ambulance service, and so the decision is based around trying to maximise the impact that we can get with volunteers.
“We have volunteers everywhere. We have many in Gloucestershire, and they are important, and a really valued asset as part of that.
“We believe that this represents a positive step forward for patients.
Jane Whichello, head of volunteering and community services at SWASFT, said the decision was made in March.
She stressed it was not about taking something away and not replacing it.
“This is about replacing fire co-responders with another service that we believe provides a better and more cost effective model for unwell patients,” she said.
“So we do use fire co-responders and community first responders who are volunteers to get to some of these harder to reach areas.
“And our modeling shows that actually the service that community first responders can provide is that they are generally quicker than our fire colleagues in getting to the most critical.”
Fire chief Mark Preece said they will continue to respond to emergency call outs despite not signing a memorandum of understanding with SWASFT.
He explained his only reservations were around funding.
“The service is under pressure just as SWASFT are under financial pressure, and my reservations are purely about cost recovery.”
And public health, communities and fire cabinet member Paul Hodgkinson (LD, Bourton-on-the-Water) said he was extremely disappointed by the decision.
He has consistently been raising concerns over ambulance response times in the Cotswolds and how the ambulance failed to meet the targets.
“Every time I look at the stats, the Cotswolds and other rural areas, the ambulance Service has failed to meet the targets for response times, in some cases by miles,” he said.
“So this has never changed. We’ve we’ve asked about it constantly, so I would have thought that when you are not providing the service that is required by the government and us all those residents that you would need all the help you can get.
“The public really do value public services working together, so they really value the fire service working with the ambulance service.
“Yet the ambulance service unilaterally says we don’t want to do this anymore.”
He said he was not convinced that community first responders will fill that void.
“I’m not convinced at the moment that they will, and I’m not convinced that the ambulance response times will get better as a result,” he said.
“I actually firmly believe that the fire service should still be involved.
“I think the decision is frankly bonkers, if I’m honest.”
He asked if the real driver for the decision was actually cost.
Dr Thomas said was “absolutely not purely about money”.
“However, we are a public organisation who receive our money from the public, and I think we have a duty to try and work out how that money is spent in the most effective and cost effective way.”
He also said community first responders go to more incidents and contribute on average to a faster response time than fire co-responders.
The committee agreed to scrutinise the statistics and the phasing out of fire co-responders would only take place when numbers of community first responders are built up.