Pathfinder report leaked to C4
FIRE-FIGHTERS

Published: 20 December 2002
Reporter: Jonathan Rugman

Britain needs a major increase in both fire crews and fire engines - that's the advice contained in a major report compiled over three years but so far left unpublished by the Government.


To view the Pathfinder report online in your browser click here (MS word, File size: 843 Kb; 226 pages).


Alternatively right click on the above link, select "Save Target As" from the pop-up menu and browse to a desired location to save the report to your files.

Now Channel Four News can reveal that the so called Pathfinder document suggests some brigades should double in size to improve their fire fighting capabilities.


Pathfinder is potentially embarassing for the Government because it appears to contradict the official Bain Review.

Earlier this week, it suggested that firefighter numbers could be CUT.

Our Business Correspondent Jonathan Rugman has this exclusive report.

The report the Government apparently didn’t want you to see - due out last April, but never published; the report we asked the Deputy Prime Minister for on Monday, which his office said they would give us some time next year, once they'd had a chance to rebut it.

The Pathfinder report gathered information from 11 fire brigades across the UK over three years and looked into how to reduce fire deaths, which average 650 a year.

Among the findings leaked to us, that "Metropolitan brigades needed a 50% increase in applicances" that means more fire engines rural brigades also need more engines and more full time crews, while "some brigades estimate that they would need to increase in size by a factor of 100%."

And the stark conclusion that: "...if the present findings of the brigades... were adopted, the increased number of appliances and crew would result in a significant increase in the cost of running the brigades."

Pathfinder flies in face of the findings of Monday's Bain review which outlined an agenda of re-organisation and cuts, implying that 1,500 jobs a year would have to go in a modernisation programme.

On Monday Sir George called Pathfinder "fundamentally flawed" and its not even mentioned in his report.

But the union smells a Government cover up.

A spokesman for the Bain review insisted tonight that it had looked at the Pathfinder report, which is not what Sir George Bain told the press on Monday.

The spokesman said it was wrong to assume, as Pathfinder does, that sending more people and engines would reduce fire deaths and that preventing fires in the first place was far more important.

But this is a row not just about how best to reform the fire service, but about how open the Government is being in that debate.