Traffic casualty figures increase by a third - fire service

The number of people killed or seriously injured on Cambridgeshire’s roads has gone up by a third, a Fire Authority committee has been told.

There were 478 casualties in 2016-17, compared with 360 the year before, according to the latest figures presented to the authority’s Overview and Scrutiny Committee.

But members were told the sharp increase reflected a rise in the number of people suffering serious injuries, rather than those being killed.

The committee said it would continue to work with partner agencies to reduce the number of people being killed or injured.

Fire engines having to travel longer distances and the need to use specialist crews for some incidents have hit Cambridgeshire fire service’s response times.

The committee heard that 92.22 per cent of the first fire engines to arrive were within the all incident 18 minute target, just under one per cent down on last year and 2.78 per cent below the target of 95 per cent.

Members heard that more on-call appliances were unavailable, causing other crews to travel further and that water and animal-related incidents required specially-trained crews who also had to travel longer distances.

In urban areas the first engines to arrive were a fraction over the nine minute average time target and in rural areas they were two seconds under the 12 minute average time.