How much is your life worth to you? 

Who would you call when you see something on fire, your house has flooded, an animal needs rescuing or someone is drowning inland? Firefighters right?! 

We all call the Fire & Rescue service for SO MANY different reasons and they ALWAYS come to our aid. Would you expect to call the fire service and them be dangerously understaffed or not turn up at all because they don’t have enough colleagues and an engine has been taken off?

We expect the people tasked with saving lives to be as quick as they can, with enough manpower/woman power to actually help. 

Well, that might soon not be the case. The higher powers at Avon Fire and Rescue service have released a proposal called “Budget shortfall options” which proposes cuts to firefighters across the division to only have 4 people on one engine. Which just isn’t safe for anyone involved. 

These proposed cuts would make working for the fire service so much more difficult. Less men and women to help save lives. Want to know why? To save more money. £2.5 million over the next 3 years is what’s proposed.

The reason why this is so outrageous is not only is it putting the lives of OVER ONE MILLION people living within Avon Fire and Rescue’s service area, but they are BLAMING THE SALARY RAISE THAT FIREFIGHTERS HAVE BEEN FIGHTING FOR, FOR YEARS. 

Now should we look at this from the view of a firefighter with regards to their pay? What is proposed is putting more people at risk. Firefighters have only VERY recently had a salary increase after campaigning for several years (since 2010 there was a pay freeze for 3 years, then in 2012, a raise of just 1% every year up to 2018, where the pay raise was 2% up to 2020, then from 2021 was 1.5% and in 2022 through collective bargaining fought by the FBU or Fire Brigades Union there was a pay raise of 7% and a 5% increase in 2023) to actually get any sort of pay raise. However, in real terms, the pay firefighters receive is still down by at least 12%. Firefighters have been fighting for years to be paid what they deserve, and they still don’t receive it.

We need as many people as possible to sign this petition, because this isn’t “just more cuts” these are LIVES. This is about the people who risk their lives DAILY to help ordinary people. These are heroes. 

So I’ll ask you again, how much is your life worth? 

For more information use this link: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-bristol-67004474