Overview
- Chief Fire Officer Andy Cole revised his advice Friday to keep six of the eight on-call stations open and to propose trial mergers of Hamworthy with Poole and Wilton with Salisbury.
- The recommendation is conditional on the Dorset & Wiltshire Fire & Rescue Authority approving extra fire precept (council-tax) flexibility and will be decided at the Authority meeting on June 30 with papers due June 22.
- DWFRS says the original proposals were prompted by a funding gap of about £1.2 million that is projected to grow, and the service frames the revisions as part of a wider modernisation plan to avoid compulsory redundancies.
- Unions welcomed the reversal as a positive step but warned relocations still risk eroding capacity, while local MPs and campaigners hailed the move as a win for rural communities that rely on on-call crews.
- If councillors approve the funding change, the service will run the mergers as time-limited trials and pursue longer-term precept flexibility to prevent the threat from recurring in future years.