JOB cuts in Essex fire service are to go ahead, despite protests.

More than 250 firefighters, including 30 from Harlow fire station, lobbied councillors outside Essex County Council's County Hall, in Chelmsford, last Wednesday, over proposals to axe 36 firefighter jobs.

Originally, crews were told that the shadow Combined Fire Authority (CFA), which manages the Essex fire service budget, had not approved the job losses and would set up a sub-committee to consider objections -- the Fire Brigades Union (FBU) members not to be represented on this.

But now, the shadow CFA has said the job losses are inevitable and the committee will only be set up to comply with Home Office

requirements.

CFA chairman Tony Wright said: "A decision to cut 36 firefighter jobs has been taken in principle. The FBU is being a little optimistic if it thinks anything will change.

"We are obliged to set up this sub-committee as part of our public consultation, so that we can look at any objections we have received from the FBU and the Chief Fire Officers'Association.

"But my guess is that nothing will change and that these 36 jobs will go. We are prepared to listen, but the budget is fixed and we need to make these reductions if we are to stay within it."

An Essex County Council spokeswoman said there would be no sackings. Jobs would instead be lost through natural wastage, whereby firefighters who left the service would not be replaced.

Sub-officer Mark Wilson, at Harlow fire station, said: "I feel that someone, somewhere, is stitching up the fire service. We have been misled.

"The personnel on this station are prepared to defend the fire service for the people of Harlow and if it means we need to take industrial action, we will. If the cuts go ahead we will ballot for a strike."

With firefighters spread more sparsely between stations, lives of Essex residents would be put at risk, he warned.

Harlow's leading firefighter Gary Wootton said the CFA was putting money before lives. Essex FBU Secretary Paul Adams remained hopeful that the CFA would back down over the cuts.

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