MANNING the county’s firestations with part-time firefighters is becoming “increasingly challenging”, according to the county council.

A report on the issue has been presented to Oxford County Council’s safer and stronger communities scrutiny committee meeting.

It said it was becoming increasingly challenging to make sure the 27 fire appliances crewed by retained firefighters are constantly available.

The reasons for this have been put down to the loss of social clubs on fire stations, increasing training requirement and “societal pressures” which include people being less willing to be tied to a particular place in order to respond to an incident.

The report was produced by the chief fire officer Dave Etheridge.

Currently, the availability of retained staff at Oxfordshire’s 24 fire stations is measured at 97 per cent but the report says “any non-availability is not acceptable”. However, deputy chief fire officer Colin Thomas said in the year 2011/12 the service had exceeded its target to reach 80 per cent of incidents in 11 minutes or less.