THE council’s opposition party has called for a united response from councillors in opposing the planned cuts to a York fire station.

North Yorkshire’s Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, Zoe Metcalfe, has launched a consultation to consider whether to replace Huntington Fire Station’s full time crew and two fire engines with a part time crew of on call responders and one fire engine.

This would mean that firefighters would just respond to emergency calls rather than be based at the station.

Ms Metcalfe has claimed that Huntington is the least used station in York, with the area also covered by two other full time stations, and on-call fire engines at York and Acomb also cover Huntington.

Labour councillor Danny Myers is set to call upon the council to form a united opposition to this consultation at a council meeting on Thursday, July 14.

He said: “These planned cuts risk people’s lives.  We need a full-time fire service covering every part of York, and that includes Huntington and New Earswick, Haxby and Wigginton and all communities on the north side of the city.

“The Fire Brigades Union states that their evidence shows an on-call crew at Huntington, as a replacement for a full-time crew, could lead to it taking up to 16 minutes for an engine to arrive at a fire, to an area of York serving 30,000 people. This is simply not acceptable.

“It is even more alarming given the historic difficulty across the fire authority area of raising an on-call crew.  The last review into the on-call duty system and its failings was never published, possibly never even completed.”

This consultation is part of the North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue service’s ‘Risk and Resource Model for 2022 to 2025, which sets out how the Service can better deploy its people and resources.

In response to the Fire Brigades Union, Ms Metcalfe said: “The Risk Plan classifies Huntington as a ‘low risk’ area and we have verified this by looking at incident data and demand over the past five years, and under our proposals we would keep a small number of full-time firefighters at Huntington to supplement the on-call crew, until we are confident the on-call crewing is both resilient and sustainable.

“The York area is covered by two other full-time stations, and on-call fire engines at York and Acomb also cover the Huntington area.”

Cllr Myer says he will also ask Ms Metcalfe, Rachael Maskell MP for York Central, and Julian Sturdy MP for York Outer, to meet with Michael Gove to push for better funding.

He said: “York and North Yorkshire is one of the poorest funded Fire Services in the country and Government should recognise our unique challenge and increase funding.

“We must defend our service so that it isn’t dangerously whittled away, leaving residents paying more, getting less and being left at greater risk.”