Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service has today (Thursday) taken over fire control for the Isle of Wight and will now be responsible for mobilising resources from across the Island’s 10 fire stations.
Crews from Newport, Cowes, East Cowes, Ryde, Bembridge, Sandown, Shanklin, Ventnor, Freshwater and Yarmouth will now be mobilised by call operators just across the water in Eastleigh. The big switchover was meant to take place on Saturday (1st April), but was pushed back as ‘more testing’ was required.
New call signs are being adopted with the prefix ‘H7’ followed by the station number and appliance ID. Yarmouth Fire Station adopts H80P1. In addition, it is understood Hampshire have also taken over responsibility for fleet management and stores.
2 years ago the Island’s fire authority, the Isle of Wight Council, entered into a strategic partnership with their mainland counterparts in Hampshire. The partnership has now grown to include the mainland service taking over the helm of fire control from Surrey Fire and Rescue Service.
The move of fire control was agreed back in September last year after a feasibility study was commissioned by the Council to explore if moving the Island’s control function to Hampshire was possible. Consultants Mott Macdonald undertook the study and investigated 2 options – to continue with the current provider (Surrey) for 5 years, or to transfer to Hampshire for 5 years. It was found that a move of the fire control function to Hampshire would further assist with service delivery to the public and savings to the service.
The fire control function relates to call handling and the mobilisation of fire resources for operational incidents on the Island via the 999 call centre. The existing 5-year contract between the Island’s fire and rescue service and Surrey expired on 31st March 2017 – it’s unclear what the arrangements have been for the past week.
Just a few weeks ago it was announced the Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service looks set to merge with Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service, something which Island firefighters have feared for sometime. It has been recommended that the Isle of Wight Council consider joining the existing Combined Fire Authority (CFA) arrangements for Hampshire, Portsmouth and Southampton.
