Fire chief says Brighton has busiest crews

Preston Circus Fire Station in Brighton is the busiest fire station run by East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service.

Crews from Preston Circus attended 362 fires in 2012-13, according to Chief Fire Officer Des Prichard.

The second busiest stations were Eastbourne and Bohemia Road in Hastings, both with 237 fires, followed by Hove with 216 fires and Roedean in Brighton with 199 fires.

The numbers were in Mr Prichard’s annual performance report which he presented to the East Sussex Fire Authority in Eastbourne on Thursday (12 September).

The report showed that firefighters from Preston Circus also responded to more “special service” call-outs than any other East Sussex station. These include car crashes, floods and lift rescues.

Des Prichard

Preston Circus dealt with 510 special service call-outs, Hove dealt with 269 – the fourth highest number – and Roedean was fifth with 220.

The picture was similar with false alarms. Preston Circus responded to 1,031 – the highest number. Hove answered 535, the third highest number, and Roedean 403, the fifth highest.

The number of false alarms fell 30 per cent compared with the previous year.

Overall, Preston Circus responded to 1,903 call-outs, the most, Hove 1,020, the third most, and Roedean 822, the fifth most.

The three fire stations in Brighton and Hove responded to 3,745 – or more than 40 per cent – of the 9,276 call-outs answered by the 24 fire stations run by East Sussex Fire and Rescue.

There were 285 deliberately started fires – arson attacks – in Brighton and Hove during the year to the end of March. Of those, 83 involved cars or vans.

Crews were to blame for 11 accidents – all at low speed – during the year.

And officers carried out almost 3,000 home safety visits.

Mr Prichard paid tribute to all staff, including those in supporting roles.

Brighton and Hove is represented by six councillors on the fire authority, including Sven Rufus, the Green councillor who is the vice-chairman.

The others are Conservatives Carol Theobald and Garry Peltzer Dunn, Greens Steph Powell and Christopher Hawtree and Bob Carden for Labour.