Fire station closure plans built on blancmange, says Henley MP

FIRE chiefs have been told that their plans to close Henley’s station are built on “blancmange”.

MP Freddie van Mierlo made the comment at a public meeting in which he claimed the data used by the Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service “don’t add up”.

The event, held on Thursday last week, was held as part of a consultation into improving response times across Oxfordshire.

Henley’s station in West Street is one of three earmarked for closure due to “persistent low fire engine availability”.

The county council, which runs the service, says its aim is to better match cover to high-risk areas and “future-proof” the service.

It announced on Monday that deadline to respond to the consultation, which was due to close on Tuesday, had been extended until January 31.

More than 200 people had packed into Christ Church in Reading Road to listen and pose questions to chief fire officer Rob MacDougall.

Chief fire officer Rob MacDougall addresses the public meeting

Residents, councillors, business owners and families of firefighters filled the pews with some being forced to stand at the back and sides of the room.

They listened to details of the proposed restructure of the service, with some reacting with applause, boos and heckling as points were raised.

The meeting began at 7.30pm and was due to finish at 9pm but it overran by almost an hour to allow additional questions from the public.

Mr MacDougall, who joined the fire service in 1998, stood at a podium with a microphone to give a summary of the proposal.

He explained the plans to reduce fire engine deployment times across the county. This includes restructuring shift patterns and relocating staff to ensure that five stations have full-time firefighters, at Farringdon, Chipping Norton, Windley, Bicester, and Wallingford.

Three on-call fire stations at Henley, Eynsham and Woodstock would go and a new station in North Oxford would be built.

Mr MacDougall said: “Our approach is to match our resources to risk, deploying full-time day cover where it's needed, relying on on-call cover at night when it's strongest and to improve overall performance in terms of response times to incidents, having more full-time resources readily available during the daytime in strategic locations.”

He reiterated that the county council is “committed to being open and transparent”, despite the data being labelled as “misleading” for not including cross-border incidents where Henley firefighters attended incidents in Buckinghamshire and Berkshire.

Mr MacDougall said: “Our commitments are to keep people safe, be transparent and listen if changes proceed. We're not attempting to hide any information.”

More than 200 people packed into Christ Church for the public meeting

Next to take the stand was Chris Wycherley, an executive council member of the Fire Brigades Union (FBU), which covers Oxfordshire. He told the meeting that the union had not been consulted on the proposals prior to launching the consultation which he said would negatively impact safety and staff.

“It will be a disaster for residents and firefighters”, Mr Wycherley said. “We see people who want to protect their local communities, want to protect their fire stations and do not want to suffer the consequences of having no fire cover in their area.

“The model has been done so with no regard to the health and wellbeing of the employees or members who it impacts the most and, for that matter, for residents.

“Contrary to our industrial relations protocols, at no point did the chair consult or negotiate with the FBU and its members, who were left completely in the dark and are furious. The proposal goes against all that the FBU has been working towards.”

More than 50 per cent of firefighters in Oxfordshire have told the union that they will leave the service or look to leave for neighbouring ones if the proposals go ahead.

Mr Wycherley said: “You cannot spare to lose a single firefighter, let alone up to 50 per cent of your workforce.

"The proposals are disastrous for firefighters and residents and we will do everything in our power to oppose them.

“Firefighters are ready to stand up for the public and for their safety and I'd encourage you all to do so.”

Stefan Gawrysiak, a town, district and county councillor, shared the same message as his colleague Leigh Rawlins, a county and district councillor for Sonning Common, who spoke afterwards.

He said that the town council was unanimous in its opposition to the proposal to close the station and claimed that the data he had seen would show response times to incidents in Henley would increase.

Councillor Gawrysiak said: “In 2025, there were 153 incidents and the Henley response time was eight minutes and the Caversham [station] average was 13 minutes.

“If they don’t turn up, other fire engines from Maidenhead, Slough, Windsor and wherever else take more than 15 minutes.

“When you take out the shouts for Playhatch and Sonning Common, which get a quick response from the Caversham full-time crew, the average response time jumps to 18 minutes plus. These response times are absolutely unacceptable, which means we need a fire station in Henley.”

Mr Van Mierlo told the meeting that he had met with Mr MacDougall and his team about four times and argues that the data presented to justify the station closure was not robust.

He said: “If you're going to come and mess with Henley, then I think you'd better be prepared to have your case be rock solid.

"Unfortunately, when it comes to Henley, the consultation isn't built on rock. It's blancmange and the numbers don't add up.”

“On average, from Caversham Road [station], it takes 15 minutes 34 seconds. From Wokingham Road [station], which is the next nearest after Caversham, it’s 20 minutes 16 seconds. Those were 30 per cent of the time, so to say it’s coming from Caversham is not wholly true. Eighty-eight times out of the 295 incidents, they were coming from Wokingham Road [station].

“The proposals show falling times around Crowmarsh, Benson and Watlington, all of the central belt of my constituency. That’s really good and welcomed but my focus is continuing to get the best deal for the entirety of my constituency, including Henley - I'm not prepared to see Henley sold out in order to achieve averages.”

Mayor Tom Buckley addressed Mr MacDougall directly. “Henley is not an average town,” he said. “We cannot be compared in just averages across Oxfordshire — we’re not average.

“We have lost Wargrave and Sonning stations and Stokenchurch and Henley is going to be closed. That is an area of over 450 square miles where there is no fire station in the middle in a very rural area.

“Risk is not just about likelihood; risk is about impact. If you have a one-dimensional view of risk that just says the likelihood is low, you miss out on the impact of something happening and suddenly the risk of those changes.

“I want to ask you to acknowledge that this is not about numbers on a page. It’s about real streets, real homes and real people represented here. We would like the proposal to be withdrawn and reconsidered and for the numbers to be looked at properly.

“Henley is not a statistic on a spreadsheet; it’s a community and the safety of its residents and visitors that need to be taken into consideration.”

There were around 16 questions asked from the public, which covered a number of topics, including, costs, the use of modelling tools, recruitment, safety, climate change and planning.

Emma Vanstone-Booth, the co-chair of the Henley Business Partnership, said the reality was “more terrifying” than when she walked in the door.

She asked for reassurance that, in the face of climate and civil emergency and global political challenges, the safety of her family would not be impacted.

Mr MacDougall replied saying the service takes risk “very seriously” and that regular reviews of strategic risks across the county was necessary.

Vic Angel, from Caversham, who was vice-chairman of the Public Protection Committee from 1993 to 1998, which was responsible for the fire brigade, argued the consultation did not go far enough.

He said: “It has been in the Henley Standard but there should have been a leaflet circulated. Another golden rule is that you don’t have a consultation over the holiday period, which is what you did. So much for your open and transparent consultation — it’s appalling.”

Alan Buckett, who was born around 100m from the Henley station, asked if the fire service would do something special for Henley to make sure it can have an improved or at least a maintained service.

Mr MacDougall said that by making improvements elsewhere, he expects to see improvements in Henley “the majority of the time”.

However, he said that Henley cannot be “offered any special treatment” as it is “not the ideal location to improve those overall response times”.

He said: “We are not wedded to the ideas that we have but if there are options out there which we think are viable and they create the same outcomes, we will definitely look at that. We will take into account the variability we've seen in other fire stations since we started the modelling process.

“There is a target to aim for, which would mean the station would close. I can't give you reassurance because that would be unfair and it wouldn't be appropriate for me to do so.”

Rosie Gosby-Dolby, wife of Henley fire-fighter Andy Gosby, whose family has served the community for around 60 years, spoke about her and her husband's efforts to recruit, despite a lack of support.

She said: “Henley is doing everything it can to recruit to make sure it doesn’t lose its home location despite the lack of help we’re getting. Henley’s data was improved 10-fold this year but your outdated covid data doesn’t show that. If we can get the right amount of crew are you still going to close it?”

She also spoke about the effects on mental health of the firefighters and their families who are fighting for their station, community and their jobs.

Mrs Gosby-Dolby said: “I got bombarded in two local shops about questions on this consultation because a lot of people in Henley know my married family. I went to my car and cried for 30 minutes because I saw the absolute fear and disappointment on multiple ages and faces — it’s scary.”

Mr MacDougall acknowledged the hard work of the Henley crew’s efforts to recruit and said it is doing its best to put in place support for mental health.

He said: “We’re recognising the trauma that they’re exposed to and it’s important to make sure that we have those mental health services in place to support our firefighters and we’ve done that the best we can and I think we’ve done a pretty good job of that.”

Other questions were asked about completing safety checks in the community, the fire service covering flooding events, cost-cutting and topography issues causing delays.

To make a comment on the proposals, visit: letstalk.oxfordshire.gov.uk/ofrs-consultation