FRONTLINE emergency services in Aberystwyth are being threatened by funding cuts, a top fire chief has warned.

Mid and West Wales chief fire officer Chris Davies told county councillors that after cutting the service’s budget by 20 per cent already, any further cuts would have to come from operational areas.

And he said the potential removal of one of the brigade’s four aerial appliances - one of which is located in Aberystwyth - was one of the possible changes that could be forced upon him.

He said: “To make it clear, I am not looking to remove the aerial appliance per se. The reason I said that earlier is I will have to look at that if we don’t get the budget support we need to function.

“When, or if, we get to that point there are some risk models we have available to us that we will run in the organisation to determine the impact that any removal of any fire appliance or any aerial appliance has on that community.

“For absolute clarity, I’m not looking to remove it as the fire authority have supported the 2.7 per cent increase to keep all our resources as they are, which is fantastic news and I’m extremely grateful for that, but if we do have to in the future look at not just aerial appliances, but also our rescue tenders and our other frontline appliances we have very detailed risk models that we can run that will give the impact.

“It doesn’t matter how I articulate it, if I change a fire appliance or remove a fire appliance it will have an impact in that community and I will be back in front of you explaining that rationale before it happens, but I really hope I don’t have to.”

Mr Davies said he was hopeful that the fire brigade would see a 2.7 per cent funding increase in the next financial year, which would be partly funded by contributions from county councils, but warned that the future service provided by the fire brigade would be affected if future years see funding cuts.

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