Plea to ‘think again’ on plans to scrap vital Devon emergency response service

The ambulance service has dropped a 12-month deadline to phase out medical emergency fire co-responders – but objectors have urged it to scrap the idea altogether.

South Western Ambulance Service Trust had put forward a plan earlier this year to phase out the system of fire co-responders in favour of community first responders, but had seen huge opposition to the move.

A meeting of Devon County Council’s health and adult care scrutiny committee has called for more evidence on how the proposals would affect rural areas, with some suggesting the plans should be dropped completely.

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Current 15 of Devon’s on-call fire stations host co-responders who are sent to the most serious medical incidents to ensure patients get the fastest response times.

The ambulance trust has been trying to gradually replace this with an equivalent service that sees trained members of the community become community first responders.

The trust has argued this would give faster response times as operatives could be deployed straight from their homes rather than needing to attend a fire station first.

Even though there had been some tweaks to its plan – including the removal of a specific deadline by which fire co-responders would be phased out – the ambulance trust boss, Dr John Martin, faced Devon’s health and adult care scrutiny committee for the second time in three months.

Members raised a host of concerns over the 90-minute debate including claims of a lack of robust data to support the proposed changes, fears about response times and worries the trust had overly focused on the risk to its reputation due to any changes rather than the impact on communities.

Councillor Jess Bailey, who chairs the committee, asked if it was possible for the trust to “reconsider and abandon its plans to withdraw the fire co-responder service.”

She said: “It still feels like you’re trying to move to where you don’t have fire co-responders, and while we all welcome more community first responders, we don’t want to see the fire equivalent phased out.

“Can we have a commitment that you are not going to try and push to remove the fire co-responders and to use both to support rural communities?”

Dr Martin reasserted that the trust had already removed the previous 12-month deadline for phasing out fire co-responders and stressed the emphasis was to have enough community first responders in each location to mean that the fire equivalent naturally became no longer necessary.

He acknowledged that where this was not possible, then the fire co-responder service would continue.

Mark Nesbitt, a resident of Hartland in North Devon and a former fire co-responder, addressed the committee and claimed he was “not at all impressed” by the information the ambulance trust had provided.

He said various Freedom of Information Act requests had shown that fire co-responders were more frequently available than their community peers and claims the fire cohort were more expensive did not stack up once the price of equipment for community responders was factored in.

Penny Dane, another campaigner from Hartland, said: “Throughout our enquiries, I expected to find the ambulance trust had good evidence, but now we know that is not the case.

“They have not done their homework and they are expecting us to deal with the consequences.”

She added that long ambulance response times in her area specifically, meant the two-person fire co-responder dispatches were preferable to the single community first responders.

Ms Dane also queried the completion of an equality impact assessment some four months after the ambulance trust decided to try and scale down the fire co-responder service.

Several councillors raised concerns, such as whether community first responders, without emergency blue lights, might get more stuck down rural lanes than their fire equivalents and also queried the use of trust-wide data to try and support claims that community first responders could get to incidents more rapidly.

Cllr Ed Tyldesley for Chulmleigh and Landkey added that many rural communities were “already digging deep in their pockets” to support fundraising for the likes of the air ambulance.

“They are already reliant on the fire co-responders, and the fire co-responders rely on the very small amount of remuneration they get,” he said.

“The communities are already volunteering their time, so to try and stand up more volunteers feels like breaking point.”

Dr Martin stated the trust would now allow fire co-responders to stay as long as they were needed, but said there were some fire stations who hadn’t been called upon for more than 12 months due to the quantity of community first responders in the area.

“Both can and will continue, but there will be a point and we are seeing it in some areas, where you end up with a [fire] scheme that is unviable,” he added.

“I’m happy for the schemes to run in parallel as long as needed, we had said 12 months, but if it takes years, it takes years.”

Dr Martin said the likes of Combe Martin had been asked to attend 71 times in the past eight months but only managed three responses.

Similar situations in three other Devon fire stations meant the co-responder equipment may be moved to the outside of the station so community first responders can access it too.

The committee voted in favour of a motion to write to the ambulance trust to re-consider its move to try and phase out fire co-responders, and also stressed that it felt the impact assessment was inadequate. It also requested a revised impact statement focusing on the rural fragility of Devon complete with location-specific emergency response times.