RESIDENTS and businesses in the Okehampton area are being assured they will see no change in the level of fire brigade cover when whole-time stations begin strikes over pay next Tuesday.

Okehampton, North Tawton, Chagford and Hatherleigh are retained or part-time fire stations with members in the Retained Firefighters? Union, which has a non-striking policy.

Station commanders are reassuring the public that operational duties will continue as normal and people should not be afraid of calling the brigade immediately should an incident occur, however minor.

Devon?s Fire and Rescue Service consists of 58 stations, but 47 of these are retained stations and six are combined whole-time and retained.

Ian Donovan, who has been station officer at Okehampton for the past 19 years, said everybody had been seeing the coverage in the national media about the impending strikes and were naturally anxious.

He said: ?I have been getting a lot of calls, but as far as the public in Okehampton and the surrounding area are concerned they will not see any difference.

?There will be some difference to ourselves in that our control room will be at Middlemoor Police Headquarters rather than the fire control room at Clyst St George, but the public will not be affected.?

Station commander at Chagford Fire Station Iain Rice said the only time whole-time crews were drafted in to help with incidents in areas like Chagford and Okehampton was when more than ten appliances were needed.

He said: ?The retained fire service in this area is pretty much self-sufficient and Okehampton can provide extra breathing apparatus to stations in the area if needed.

?In terms of road traffic accidents the cutting equipment we carry is no different from what the appliances from Exeter carry.?

Mr Rice said the only unsure situation would be

if army resources were insufficient to deal with a large incident outside the area.

All the local station commanders said although they sympathised with the plight of the whole-time crews and that there needed to be a pay review for the fire service in general ? retained crews get a third of what whole-time crews receive ? they did not agree with the way it was being done.

The Fire Brigades?

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Union is asking for a 40% pay rise, but has been offered an interim offer of 4% until an independent review is completed.

Twiggy Lake, who is station officer at North Tawton, believes there is no way the Government is going to give in to these demands because it would have to do the same for other services.

He said: ?We would all like our pay to be brought up to a decent level and there is a big gap between what retained crews receive compared with whole-time firefighters.

?But we are in a non-striking union purely for the fact that we do this for the community ? nine times out of ten full-time firefighters live away from where they work but we don?t. We live amongst the community we save lives in and we have a personal involvement.

?For this reason I do not want anyone to be afraid of calling us during this strike period.?