THE Fire Brigades Union warned “enough is enough” today as it pledged to battle all threatened cuts to fire and rescue services.

It voted to keep building its Cuts Kill campaign to increase pressure on decision-makers, to “put employers on notice” further cuts will not be tolerated and to engage members on industrial action to defeat cuts, noting that an early declaration of potential industrial action helped see off proposed cuts in Avon.

Cleveland’s James Sudron warned: “Across the UK, fire and rescue services have been cut to the bone. We’ve lost firefighters, appliances, stations and vital resilience.

“Every cut has consequences. We are the ones who see those consequences first-hand. We see it on the fire ground, we see it in response times, and in the growing risks to firefighters and the public we serve. This cannot go on.”

He called for the union to be on an industrial footing to ensure “we will not accept any further cuts.”

General secretary Steve Wright told the Morning Star that in 14 years of Conservative austerity Britain had lost one in five firefighters. “When I joined 25 years ago, there were five firefighters on a fire engine all the time. Now it’s routinely four, sometimes even three.

“That puts us in danger and it puts the public in danger. Safety has been compromised by government decisions. Fire deaths are going up.”

The way cuts were stopped in Oxfordshire this year showed how political campaigning and a strike-ready workforce could combine to stop cuts, he said, but the importance of securing funding at national level meant “this is a national battle.”