‘LIVES PUT AT RISK’ IF FIRE STATION CLOSES

CLOSING Henley fire station will put lives at risk, a former crew member has said.

Its future is in doubt after it was earmarked for closure by Oxfordshire County Council following a review of how the fire service responds to emergencies.

The on-call station in West Street is one of three in the county that faces the axe. The others are Woodstock and Eynsham.

The council says they are being considered for closure due to “persistent low fire engine availability”.

It opened a 12-week public consultation on Tuesday which it says aims to ensure the right level of cover is available in high-risk areas and to “futureproof” the service.

The council said: “Despite the dedication of on-call employees, the pressures of modern life often mean that many of them are unable to commit to offering the hours that they once might have.”

It said that, if they were to go ahead, the closure was forecast to have “a minimal impact” on overall response performance due to the ability to deliver a fire engine response from surrounding stations.

The closest station to the town would be in Goring, about a 13 mile drive west of Henley or Watlington Fire Station, about 10 miles north, or Wallingford, which is 11 miles north-west.

Caversham Road Fire Station, under the jurisdiction of Berkshire Fire and Rescue, lies nine miles south of the town. Fromer Henley firefighter Darran Gough believes closing the station would be “gambling with people’s lives”.

Mr Gough, 60, who lives in Banbury, works as a full-time firefighter. He has worked as a firefighter for 40 years, serving at Henley station from 1986 to 1989.

He said: “If this goes through, I’m glad that I don’t live in Henley because it will not be a safe place to live. The fire service needs more funding, not cuts, and if more people can become on-call firefighters then Henley could be crewed 24/7.

“This will affect not just Henley but Peppard, Sonning Common and Wargrave for example. This is happening all around the country.

“The Henley crew can currently cover nights and weekends, it’s just the day that they struggle with.

“I hope residents and on-call firefighters will grow a pair and stand up to the government and say they can’t take more cuts. They’re gambling with people’s lives and more people in the Henley area will die, no questions about it.

“When the chief says that response times will be met is rubbish. You can’t get from Reading to Henley in less than 10 minutes.”

Mr Gough recalled working in the station in the early Nineties when there was a fight to keep its second fire engine due to low crew numbers.

He said: “We won but then we lost that truck in around 2009. It was always hard to cover with one fire engine, let alone two during the daytime because of people not working in the town.

“I blame a lot of this on the internet because of high street shops closing down meaning there’s not a big enough pool of people to become on-call firefighters in the town.”

The main proposal the council is consulting on involves creating five-day shift fire engines in Wallingford, Faringdon, Witney, Bicester and Chipping Norton. This could include relocating Wallingford to a new £7m station in Crowmarsh.

This will be done by the reallocation of firefighters from existing roles, including crewing one of Rewley Road’s fire engines. This is to help address fire engine staffing levels elsewhere in the county.

A further option involves moving the fire engines from Rewley Road and Kidlington fire stations to a new fire station location towards the north of Oxford, with the aim of improving response times to the surrounding area and creating an accessible station for firefighters outside the city centre.

In its pre-public consultation report, the council said that between July 2022 and March 2024 the amount of the day covered by staffing in Henley was nine per cent and 25 per cent at night, adding that, over five years, the station responded to about 66 incidents per year across Oxfordshire.

It said that removing the station would increase the average first fire engine response time by two seconds overall. Second fire engine response times are forecasted to increase by one second.

County councillor Stefan Gawrysiak met with chief fire officer and director of community safety Rob MacDougall on Wednesday to discuss the issue.

“It's a thing that we really have to fight for,” Cllr Gawrysiak said. “The critical thing from the Henley point of view is if we lose our fire station, it is going to take longer to get a fire in from wherever than our local crew.

“South Oxfordshire is a rural county, there are large distances between the town settlements so in the south of the county, we absolutely need a fire station. Henley has a larger population than Wallingford currently, so therefore it deserves to be served by a fire station.”

Cllr Gawrysiak said he was against the proposal building a new station in Crowmarsh.

He said: “We should not be considering building a new fire station at Crowmarsh for £7 million when we have a perfectly adequate fire station at Henley, big enough for the crews, big enough for two or three modern fire engines.

“I would urge readers of the Henley Standard to read the paperwork and to fill in the consultation in the strongest possible terms.”

Town and district councillor Kellie Hinton said that she would work with stakeholders to see that could be done to ensure the station remained open in the town.

She said that the fire station had been in contact with Henley Town Council and that some of the councillors had been to visit the station last week,

Cllr Hinton said that the consultation brought back memories of the “alarm” and “worry” surrounding the closure of Wargrave fire station in 2020.

She said: “Like everyone else in the town it’s alarming to me as a councillor and as a resident.

“My initial reaction is what can we do to save this resource and keep it in Henley. I will be looking at ways of working with all the stakeholders to see what we can do to keep the service and better the service and that we don’t end up like Wargrave.”

Cllr Hinton said that the problems the Henley station was having with recruitment did not accurately reflect on the hard work of its firefighters in the community.

“It’s a part-time job and for some of them to do this on top of other jobs is phenomenal,” she said. “They are very visible in the community, they will park the truck at the May Fair or show children round if a school wants to visit.”

Mayor Tom Buckley said: “It would be awful if it did close. This is another example of Henley as a town having its services cut because there’s not enough money. We are already down a police station.”

He said: “Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service has been cut to the bone over the last 15 years. Plans to close three fire stations and reduce fire cover at night will impact the entire county and put the public at greater risk.”

To take part in the consultation, go to: www.lets
talk.oxfordshire.gov.uk

l What do you think? Write to: Letters, Henley Standard, Caxton House, 1 Station Road, Henley or email letters@henley
standard.co.uk