Editor's Pick of the Week: Stray Ferret criticism and on-call firefighters

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When it comes to the fire service, one of the concerns in the Harrogate district has been the availability of on-call firefighters.

This week, our story on the matter brought the detail of the problem to light and highlighted an acute shortage of local on-call firefighters.

We chose to investigate the story after we were contacted by local firefighter sources saying they were concerned about how often local on-call stations were unable to turn out crews. They felt the public was largely unaware of the problem.

The matter has also been raised in public meetings hosted by Jo Coles, deputy mayor for policing and fire in York and North Yorkshire, and senior fire officers have commented on the challenges of recruiting on-call firefighters in those meetings.

So it was strange this week when Ms Coles, who is paid £68,750 to scrutinise the fire service. decided to respond to direct questions over what she was going to do about the problem by focussing instead on why the Stray Ferret decided to publish the article in the first place.

She said it was “disappointing” that we “chose to run this story during a major fire in our region” which firefighters were tacking.

But, as our director Tamsin O’Brien pointed out, our investigation and data is even more important because of the recent Langdale fire as it reveals a shortage of resources. 

We had also already pointed out the significance of the figures at a time of a major fire in our reporting and included a link to North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue’s on-call firefighters recruitment page.

In the Stray Ferret newsroom, we have journalists who have been in the industry for more than three decades — including our editor, who wrote the exclusive on the firefighter shortage.

We’re long in the tooth enough to take criticism and feedback of our work on board.

But, Ms Coles’ response was surprising, to say the least, and did not address any of the issues raised.

We are still waiting to hear from Ms Coles as to what her plans are to address the shortage of local firefighters.

John Plummer is away.