Fears that Grantown could lose second fire appliance are eased
There has been a marked improvement in firefighter crew availability for Grantown’s second appliance further reducing fears the engine could be lost from the town.
Latest figures revealed that personnel availability was at 60.71 per cent from the start of last October to the end of March, earlier this year.
Statistics for April to September last year revealed that the availability of crews for the second fire appliance in the Strathspey capital stood at just 18.66 per cent.
The latest figure was 97.40 per cent for Gratown’s first fire engine compared to 88.70 per cent for the previous six-months.
Scottish Fire and Rescue Service station commander Nick Nethercott drew attention to the big improvement at the latest Highland Council Badenoch and Strathspey area committee meeting.
He said that the figure for early January to late March was even better at 75.3 per cent.
Mr Nethercott said: “This is a great result following a long period of effort by SFRS and local residents working together to support the community’s resilience.”
There are currently 14 firefighters based at the Grantown station.
Local Highland councillor Bill Lobban (Independent) had asked at the previous area committee last December if the second Grantown fire engine would be better deployed elsewhere because of the low availability figure.
He observed then that the fire appliance was ‘almost always not available’ because of the crew shortage.
Mr Nethercott admitted at the time it was ‘a subject of conversation for us all’.
There are four on-call retained appliances at three fire stations in the strath - Kingussie, Aviemore and two fire engines based in Grantown.
There are three on-call community response units based in Carrbridge, Nethy Bridge and Newtonmore.
Latest firefighters availabilty for the other main stations were Aviemore (93.41 per cent) and Kingussie 88.63 per cent.
