After facing 15 years of cuts the new Chief Fire Officer for Cambridgeshire has said the fire service needs more funding and stability so it can continue to keep people safe.

Matthew Warren, who became the Chief Fire Officer in July, said he was “optimistic” the new government will help address some of the challenges the Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service faces.

He said the service continues to be “underfunded” after over a decade of cuts while at the same time serving an area that has seen “huge growth”.

Mr Warren said he wanted to take on the top job at the fire service in order to continue the work to tackle these challenges.

He said: “I have been with the service for a long time, for around 20 years.

“I have seen us enhance and improve the service that we deliver, despite some really significant challenges that have been faced and placed upon us from government.

“We went through austerity from 2010, this service has been, like all Cambridgeshire public bodies, underfunded on a per head of population basis.

“We receive lower grant funding per head of the population than many other services across the country.

“We had to make savings to obviously achieve the reduction in grant, but we have come out the other side with a really solid foundation and a really effective fire and rescue service.

“From my perspective I didn’t want that to be fettered I suppose and changed, or impacted upon by somebody new coming in that perhaps did not share the same values and ideas that we share collectively.

“We have been on the journey together, we have got some talented people and I wouldn’t want them to be undermined as well.

“I felt I was the best person to continue us on that journey.”

Mr Warren said growth in the county remains a “significant challenge” that the fire service faces.

He said if more homes continue to be built he will need to be able to hire more firefighters and buy more fire trucks to ensure they can keep people safe.

He said: “Ultimately I want to provide the most resilient, effective, operational service that we can deliver.

“That may mean that we have to change the resourcing model in certain areas, but the reality is we need to make sure that I get a big red truck to you as quickly as I can, wherever you are in the county.

“Hopefully government funding or changes in government will help us to do that, because there has been huge growth in Cambridgeshire over the last 15 years, and all we have done is effectively reduced the level of service that we have been able to provide because of government cuts.

“We have done our best to mitigate that and I would say we have done a good job, but at some point that growth is going to impact, so we have to have the mechanism for being able to start funding the service in a more appropriate way.

“We are going to need more resources, I am going to need more resources, more red trucks and more people to ride those red trucks, and it needs to be a model that is more sustainable and resilient.”

Mr Warren said he was hopeful the new government would give the fire service more support and funding stability to help them meet the challenges being faced.

He said: “The number one ask is actually making sure that if we are able to access funding, that we can keep that funding without them cutting in another area.

“What we have had in the past is we have been able to levy an increase on council tax payers, but then on the other hand it has been taken away from us in core grant, so actually all you are doing is subsidising one with the other.

“What I hope is in the future they leave one be, or increase one without decreasing the other, so we can actually start to invest in the service, rather than having to constantly look to balance the books.

“For me that would be the overarching ask, give us an opportunity to provide the service that the residents of Cambridgeshire need and deserve.”

Mr Warren said even if extra funding was not forthcoming he would like to at least get some guarantee as to what the service’s funding levels could look like in the coming years.

He explained that since 2019 the service had been told what funding it would receive on a year-by-year basis and therefore had not been able to plan properly for the future.
He said: “I just want some stability to be able to plan, even if it is challenging, give me that stability.

“If I can’t have all the money in the world then give me some stability in terms of what I will have for the next three years.

“We just need some certainty around funding to know what we are facing.”

While he said he was optimistic the new government would help address the concerns, he said there were plans prepared for what the fire service could look like if extra funding, or financial certainty did not come forward.

He said they were “prepared for every eventuality”, including what the service could look like if more investment became possible.

He said: “Hopefully it will be towards the optimistic end of that, certainly that is what I would hope for, because the service has been subject to so many cuts over the last 15 years.

“The key for me is actually I want to make this the best service it can possibly be.

“I think we have got a group of highly talented, highly motivated people across the organisation and I think we are really well equipped to really kick on and provide the best service that we can with the resources that we have.

“Hopefully people in Cambridgeshire will feel safe as a result.”