STATION ACCOMMODATION AND CATERING FACILITIES

Station accommodation has been subjected to a brigade-wide audit, often resulting in the removal of personal belongings.

The brigade maintains, rather inflexibly, that, as a fire station is a workplace, there is no place for the keeping of personal belongings anywhere other than in personal lockers.

This approach gives no regard for the welfare of members, who spend long hours at stations and often work under extreme stress and pressure. Further, LFEPA is now forcing through its latest version of the Asset Management Plan (AMP), a retrograde policy which seeks to scrap privacy-for-all and will do nothing to support women fire-fighters and help to develop a diverse workforce.

Managers have constantly ignored FBU arguments that privacy-for-all would better advance their objectives in these areas.

hey have also ignored our concerns about the excessive cost and poor quality of works carried out on stations. Included in the AMP is a new station design brief which makes provision for the removal of cookers from kitchens, to be replaced with combination microwave ovens.

It is clear that the brigade does not recognise the need for fire-fighters to eat healthy, cooked meals.

Managers maintain that members should bring in their own food, to be cooked individually in the small microwave ovens, with the added problem this brings of not being able to prepare, cook or even eat within the allotted time.