North Yorkshire's Deputy Mayor says This summers moorland fire near Fylingdales has highlighted some of the funding challenges being faced by the county's fire service.
Jo Coles says she will be speaking to the the government minister about the level of funding provided for rural fire services.
"I do think that there are some funding challenges that we need to be picking up which I'm already alive to and have been speaking to the chief Fire officer about regularly and will be picking up with the new fire minister who's own only recently being appointed.
And so we will keep up those pressures because I know that in a rural fire service like ours, these pressures are not going away, and we need to make sure that we have enough resilience in our service to ensure that we can continue to do what you have all done, Herculean efforts from everybody, to ensure that we in this ongoing incident, kept everybody safe."
The fire started on August 11th and while the above ground fires have now been extinguished there is still deep-seated heat within the peat with the potential for further flare ups.
In late August national support was requested by North Yorkshire Fire service with fire appliances and crews being sent from as far away as London to help provide additional support for the local crews.
Mayor David Skaith, who is also the Police, Fire and Crime Commissioner for North Yorkshire, has acknowledged the need for extra resources in general, but did not specifically commit to reassessing the level of resources allocated to the coast after the Langdale Moor fire, the mayor said:
“We understand that going forward, things like wildfires and flooding are going to become the norm, unfortunately,”
“Understanding that our fire service has the equipment, the expertise, and the personnel required to be able to deal with those flare-ups is absolutely key.”
This year, the fire element of Council Tax bills within York and North Yorkshire was increased. For a Band D property, the precept was set at £107.02, an increase of £24, over the 2024/25 level.
Mayor Skaith said that the precept increase was needed to address
“the shortfall in funding that happened to the fire service over the last 15 or so years, which is why we looked to fill that gap last year, and why, in an incident like this, it is exactly why you need that resilience and those extra resources”.
The fire was downgraded from a major incident two weeks ago, but North Yorkshire's deputy Mayor says it's still requiring daily management by the fire service.
"Even though this isn't still on the news every day as it was a few weeks ago it doesn't mean it's still not affecting local communities and businesses and the fire and rescue service.
We've still got firefighters there, as we did have on day one, and we just need to make sure that the challenges are acknowledged as challenges that are ongoing.
Whether it's the smoke, whether it's the impact on families and firefighters, those are ongoing because the incident is still ongoing."
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