LIVES and property could be exposed to a “lethally high fire risk” if proposals for a major shake-up of local fire and rescue services go ahead, fire service chiefs warned this week.

In a bid to save millions of pounds a year, Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service will tomorrow (Friday) look at possible cost-cutting options.

These include closing Porlock Fire Station – which was nominated only last year as the most efficient in Devon and Somerset – moving one of Lynton’s two fire engines and restricting Williton Fire Station’s second engine to night-only duties.

The proposed shake-up could see 46 firefighters’ jobs axed, eight stations closed, engines mothballed and fully-manned stations downgraded to part-time operations.

The proposals, from the fire services’s director of service improvement, are being considered today by the Devon and Somerset Fire and Rescue Service’s community safety and corporate planning committee which made recommendations to tomorrow’s meeting of the fire authority committee.

Should this committee agree, the six proposals will be subject to a 12-week public consultation from July 1 to September 20.

Final decisions on which go ahead will be made in November and December and any changes will take place next year.

A Fire Brigades Union (FBU) spokesman claimed this week that firefighters were “furious” with the six cost-cutting proposals and were demanding that the fire authority rejects them.

And local MP Ian Liddell-Grainger said he believed the local fire service was now “a complete shambles” and Exmoor would be exposed to a “lethally high fire risk” if the Porlock station closure went ahead: “The situation this would create would be unthinkable.”

Full report in tomorrow’s Free Press (June 28).