A CREW of newly recruited part-time firefighters have signed up at Brentwood Fire Station.
The 11-strong unit, which was brought in to save cash by replacing the town's second full-time crew at North Road from April, is now in training at Essex County Fire and Rescue Service (ECFRS).
Many or all of the new team have full-time jobs and will be called out to incidents as necessary. The full-time crew, which is being phased out, operate in shift patterns and spend their working hours at the station.
Senior divisional officer at ECFRS, Mark Wilson, is pleased with the progress of the new "retained" crew.
He said: "The recruitment process at Brentwood has gone very smoothly.
"The first recruits have been with the service for months now and have been working alongside the existing crews for a great deal of that time.
"Now the entire retained crew are ready to join their permanent colleagues on the run and will be attending emergency incidents soon."
Controversy surrounded the decision taken in 2011 to replace one of Brentwood's two permanent crews with retained staff, with around 10,000 residents signing a petition against the cuts.
The move reduced the number of full-time staff from 52 to 28 and created a rift between the Fire Brigade Union and fire service management at Kelvedon.
The FBU claimed that losing one fire engine at the station would put people's lives at risk.
But ECFRS management said that the results of a countywide survey showed that Brentwood's fire engines were called out less than average.
They said that Brentwood's first fire engine attends 45 per cent less incidents each year than the average, and the to-be-replaced second fire engine went to less than half the number of call-outs attended by second fire engines.
