A senior officer has warned that Scotland’s fire and rescue service must adapt to meet changing climate change risks amidst significant issues with their ageing estate., spoke as the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service launched an online survey on what the emergency service should look like in the future.
He also struck a cautionary tone on the topic of the SFRS’s estate noting that a number of fire stations across Scotland have been deemed “not fit for purpose” and require urgent investment to make them safer and more suitable. SFRS believe that in most cases the safest and most cost-effective solution is to rebuild these stations, and estimate that replacing the 14 stations with RAAC would cost in the region of £77 million.
“While we welcome the uplift in our capital budget, we do not have the budget to address this and doing nothing is simply not an option. We must find a permanent solution. He said: “Last year we saw extreme weather events that placed an unprecedented demand on our emergency service. “This included one of the largest wildfires on record at Cannich in the Highlands and Storm Babet, which devastated many communities in the north east.