An innovative new crewing system introduced by Cambridge Fire and Rescue has increased the number of firefighters working during peak hours. 

The service’s Tactical Delivery Group introduced the new system in January this year, and so far on-call fire engines were available for emergencies for almost 1,000 more hours in total across the county.

The changes to the crewing involved re-assigning 10 posts from the Huntingdon rescue vehicle to create the TDG. 

The system means two firefighters continue to crew the rescue vehicle, which is not restricted to Huntingdon, during the day and the remainder of the TDG carries out other important work.

Area Commander Nick Foster said: "Re-allocating our resources like we have with the TDG has made a positive impact on increasing the availability of on-call fire engines to help improve frontline services.

"The flexibility of crewing in this way means our available resources are not tied permanently to one station but are allocated according to where the risk is, which we think is a smarter way of making more fire engines available to answer 999 calls.”

Original source

Cambridge Fire and Rescue Service