North Yorkshire fire service to dip into reserves to avoid further cuts

Last updated Feb 3, 2024

Harrogate fire station and Zoe Metcalfe

North Yorkshire Fire and Rescue Service is to dip into its reserves to avoid the need for further cuts to frontline services.

Four firefighters in Harrogate are due to lose their jobs this year as part of a new strategy focusing on fire prevention. The Stray Ferret broke this story in 2022 and has since covered it widely, most recently here.

Zoe Metcalfe, the North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner, held a consultation last year on how much council taxpayers should pay in their annual precept for fire services in 2024/25.

She gave four options: no change, a 2.99% increase, a 6.2% increase and a 9.3% increase.

She warned at the time that the 2.99% option “would likely lead to reductions in current levels of service delivery”. However, Ms Metcalfe is now recommending 2.99% because this is the maximum increase permitted by government without a referendum.

This will increase the amount a Band D council taxpayer is charged for fire services by £2.41 to £83.02.

Council taxpayers will foot about 60% of the cost of fire services in North Yorkshire. The rest comes from central government.

When Westminster’s contribution is added, total funding will actually increase by just over £3.3 million this year but inflation and a higher than budgeted fire service pay rise necessitated the need to make savings, Ms Metcalfe said in a report to a meeting on Monday of North Yorkshire Police, Fire and Crime Panel, which scrutinises the commissioner’s performance.

To balance the books in 2024/25, Ms Metcalfe said she needed to save £545,000, which will mainly come from dipping into £339,000 of reserves.

Reserves are forecast to reduce from £7.4 million at the start of 2023/24 to around £3.4 million by the end of 2027/28. North Yorkshire already has the fifth lowest levels of reserves of all fire services and the report says “reserves are therefore reducing from an already low base”.

Some investments planned in Ms Metcalfe’s Risk and Resource Model, which sets out how fire services will be deployed, could also be delayed to plug the shortfall.

The bleak financial outlook is putting pressure on plans to buy 16 new fire appliances at a cost of £5.3 million and spend £1.9 million on new breathing apparatus but the report does not indicate these will not go ahead.

Final council tax bills are determined by adding together the precepts charged by Ms Metcalfe’s office for police and fire services, North Yorkshire Council and parish councils.

This will be the last year Ms Metcalfe sets the precept for police and fire services — her office will be subsumed by the new York and North Yorkshire Combined Authority in May this year.