Save Bradford on Avon Fire Station - FBU

14/05/2026

The consultation closes at 5pm on Friday 15th May 2026.

It’s hard to believe that it has been over four months since the proposed closure of 8 fire stations across Wiltshire and Dorset was announced in January 2026. Since then, we have been incredibly busy campaigning to protect our long-standing station in Bradford on Avon and the service they provide to our community.

Over the past few months we have:

• Attended public meetings and spoken with stakeholders
•Engaged with residents and local businesses
• Met with MPs at Westminster
• Hand-delivered more than 12,000 leaflets across Bradford on Avon and neighbouring communities.

For the crew it has been business as usual, they welcomed local schools and youth projects to the station for educational visits and responded to 87 emergency call outs while continuing to serve the community.

We want to say a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us throughout this campaign. Your encouragement, support, messages, shares, attendance at events and completion of the consultation have meant so much to us.

And finally - apologies if it has felt like we’ve been spamming your social media feeds recently! Your support has truly been amazing, and we remain hopeful for a positive outcome when the final decision is announced on 30th June.

Thank you again from all of us at Save Bradford on Avon Fire Station - FBU. 🚒❤️

11/05/2026

08/05/2026

Only 7 days left to complete the consultation. Please take 10 minutes to make your voice heard and help protect our long-standing fire station in Bradford on Avon for future generations.

https://www.dwfire.org.uk/about-us/your-fire-and-rescue-service/proposed-station-closures/

06/05/2026

We had the pleasure of hosting Bradford on Avon’s Beavers at the fire station this week.

They enjoyed looking around the station, climbing aboard the fire truck, learning what an on-call firefighter does, exploring the equipment, and asking lots of brilliant questions. The highlight of the evening was definitely getting to spray water through our hose reel jets!

The Beavers also gave us some amazing artwork in support of our campaign to keep our fire station open.

Thank you to everyone who came along and for your amazing support.

Please help protect our local fire station for future generations by completing the consultation before the 15th May.

https://www.dwfire.org.uk/about-us/your-fire-and-rescue-service/proposed-station-closures/

26/04/2026

Last Wednesday, three firefighters from Bradford on Avon, representing the Fire Brigades Union, were part of a group of firefighters from Wiltshire and Dorset who travelled to Westminster to meet with MPs regarding the proposed closure of their station. They shared their concerns about the potential impact this decision could have on Bradford on Avon and the surrounding communities.

A special thank you to Brian Mathew MP for attending the meeting alongside his colleagues and representing the local community.

https://www.dwfire.org.uk/about-us/your-fire-and-rescue-service/proposed-station-closures/

Dorset Emergency Save Our Fire StationsFire Brigade Union Dorset and WilshireSouth West Region of the Fire Brigades UnionWiltshire TimesWiltshire 999sBradford on Avon Town Council

24/04/2026

RESPONSE TIMES, SO WHAT?

In our previous post, we looked at actual vs. modelled response time data. Our analysis suggests that DWFRS' model is understating both a) the time it takes for the first appliance to arrive at an incident in the Bradford on Avon station ground and b) the impact on response time of closing Bradford on Avon fire station. But what are the real-world implications?

The DWFRS response standard for property fire with sleeping risk incidents is for the first pumping appliance to attend within ten minutes. According to the DWFRS 2024-2028 Community Safety Plan, this response standard is based on "University of Exeter research on fire survivability". We were not able to locate a corresponding University of Exeter research publication online, so we queried DWFRS, who told us that the response standard is actually based on a body of research and analysis dating back to the late 1990s and early 2000s.

It is unfortunate that DWFRS have not chosen to make any of this body of research and analysis available for the public consultation. This would have allowed us all to put DWFRS' assertion that a 2 minutes and 42 second increase in response time is "tolerable" in an evidence-based context. Perhaps they might have come to a different conclusion if they'd used actual incident data-based first appliance response times (which average significantly longer than 10 minutes for BoA, Limpley Stoke, Winsley and Westwood) as the basis for assessing the impact of an additional 2 minutes and 42 seconds, rather than the modelled figure of 10 minutes and 4 seconds?

If you've read this far, you might be interested in a published 2022 research paper (link here https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1420326X221141404) entitled "A comprehensive investigation of the impacts of discovery time and fire brigade response time on life safety and property protection in England", by Martina Manes of the University of Liverpool and David Rush of the University of Edinburgh. The research shows that in England between 2010/11 and 2016/17, the average response time of the fire and rescue services to fires in Dwellings and Other buildings was 7-8 minutes and 8-9 minutes respectively. We can't find any conclusions that support the existing 10 minute response standard or the assertion that an extra 2 minutes and 42 seconds of response time presents a tolerable risk.

Fundamentally, isn't this the kind of analysis that DWFRS should be presenting i.e. a robust evidence-base for their statements about the impact of proposed station closures on response times? And shouldn't the Fire Authority be asking for this evidence as well, rather than just taking everything Andy Cole says as gospel? Something to ask / query in your online survey response!

24/04/2026

THE IMPACT OF CLOSING BRADFORD ON AVON FIRE STATION ON RESPONSE TIMES - MODELLED VS. ACTUAL DATA

In the public consultation reports, DWFRS has analysed 577 real incidents that occurred between 1 April 2019 and 31 March 2024 where Bradford on Avon fire station "would provide the nearest pumping appliance" (this should largely correspond to our station ground). They have then used their response time model to calculate how long it would have taken the first appliance to arrive at each of these incidents, if all appliances at all stations had been available 100% of the time. They then re-ran the model to exclude Bradford on Avon's appliance, and compared the modelled average first appliance response times, as follows:

With the BoA appliance (mm:ss) 10:04
Without the BoA appliance (mm:ss) 12:46
Difference (mm:ss) + 2:42

So the DWFRS model suggests that, if Bradford on Avon fire station is closed, it would have taken, on average for those 577 incidents, an extra 2 minutes and 42 seconds for an appliance to arrive from a different fire station. DWFRS states, in its report, that this increase in response time is "considered, from a professional advice perspective, to be tolerable". We'll revert to this point in our next post.

Under a Freedom of Information request, we have obtained data for actual first appliance response times to 1,223 actual incidents in the Bradford on Avon station ground between 1 April 2016 and 31 December 2025. We have enough data (1,141 incidents) to show average response times for Bradford on Avon, Winsley, Limpley Stoke and Westwood, and to compare the BoA appliance with appliances from other fire stations.

The data highlights two issues with the DWFRS modelling. Firstly, their model significantly understates actual first appliance response times, which in the real world are much longer than 10 minutes and 4 seconds. Secondly, while the 2 minutes 42 seconds modelled response time impact is in the right ball-park for Westwood and Limpley Stoke (potentially explained by their relative proximity to Trowbridge and Bath fire stations which accounted for, respectively, 54% and 47% of the attending first appliances for incidents in those villages), the response time impact for Bradford on Avon and Winsley is a lot longer.

Any decision to close fire stations must be based on robust data, with any modelled results reconciled to real-world data to verify the accuracy of the model. DWFRS should follow the example set by Oxfordshire FRS and publish the results of its validation exercise.

23/04/2026

OUR CONTRIBUTION TO "FIRE COVER RESILIENCE"

Bradford on Avon fire station doesn't only attend incidents in BoA and the surrounding villages in our service area (which we call our "station ground"). We also support other fire stations in DWFRS as well as our neighbouring fire and rescue services (including Avon and Devon & Somerset).

This support can be characterised as providing "fire cover resilience", and can take a number of forms. Our fire engine might attend an incident on another station ground, either on our own (because the "home" appliance for that station ground is busy on another concurrent incident or is unavailable for another reason) or in combination with other appliances if the incident requires more than one (for example a house fire or a road traffic collision).

Or our appliance might be mobilised to another fire station on a "standby move", because the appliance there is attending an incident and there is a need to maintain fire cover in that station ground.

Or individual crew members might volunteer to join firefighters at another station so they have enough people and the required skills to make their appliance available. We call this "crewing shortfall".

We have obtained Freedom of Information data from DWFRS which highlights our contribution to fire cover resilience over the last 6 years. The data shows that around half of the incidents we attend are outside our station ground. And that each year we contribute dozens of hours of appliance availability outside our station ground, either through standby moves or through our crewing shortfall contribution.

We should all be asking DWFRS senior leadership team where this fire cover resilience is going to come from if Bradford on Avon fire station is closed!! This would also be a very good question to ask the Fire Authority in Section F of the public consultation online survey...