Once again, over to you Ms Rudd

Amber Rudd clearly does not either read The Observer or, if she does, just ignored my letters calling upon her to take action over the parlous state of fire cover in her constituency.

In the first of these I referred to the fact that Hastings could only send two appliances to a fire St Helens Wood Road and had to call for assistance from four other fire stations, two of which were over 15 miles away.

In the second one I drew attention to another outbreak in the town where appliances from five other fire stations outside Hastings had to be called upon, that time not only from Bexhill, Battle, Broad Oak and Pevensey but also from Brighton, which is nearly 40 miles from the town.

Now, according to a recent edition of the Observer, there has been another outbreak, this time in St Margarets Terrace, when Hastings could only supply one appliance and had to be helped out by units from Battle, five miles away, and Rye, whose fire engine had to travel over 15 miles to get to the scene of the fire.

No lives, thankfully, were lost in any of these fires but they so easily could have been and all because the town no longer has the number of appliances and crews that it had in the past.

I concluded my last letter by calling upon Amber Rudd to fulfil her promise, that the people of Hastings would always be her first priority, by ensuring that the town has the fire and rescue cover that it needs and deserves.

So far, no response from the town’s Member of Parliament, but there could well be one from the people of Hastings, whose door bells might start ringing any day now if a General Election is called.

This, together with the fact that there is talk of Ms Rudd being the next Prime Minister, may well concentrate her mind fully on the needs of the town’s voters, a primary one of which must be a return to the same number of fire engines and firefighters that the town had before her party cut the finances of the East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service to the bone. Indeed, they went even further than that and cut right into it. Once again, over to you Ms. Rudd.