As fire chiefs are recommended to approve a merger, the future of two East Lothian fire stations will be decided next week.
Under planned changes Musselburgh Fire Station will close and move to a newly built station in Tranent, with the town’s current facility also closing down.
However plans to also close Marionville Fire Station, in Edinburgh, which were being considered alongside the East Lothian options are set to be scrapped with a further review of the city’s stations proposed.
A report to the Scottish Fire Rescue Service Board which meets on Monday, sets out the results of a service delivery review of all stations across its estate.
It concludes that plans to shut Musselburgh and move its single appliance and full time crew to a new build station in Tranent are the way forward for the county.
However it recommends that as well as building a new two appliance station in Tranent to be crewed by full time firefighters and an on-call crew, an addition full time day shift team should be added to support on call capacity in East Lothian and wider resilience.
The report to the board says: “Concerns about population growth in East
Lothian, which increased by 12.82 per cent in the ten-year period 2014/15 to 2024/25, are acknowledged but high-level review of the 32 Scottish local authorities does not identify a direct correlation between population growth and increased incident numbers.
“Within East Lothian, however, increases in both fire and non-fire incidents together with increased response times suggest that the option could be further supported by the introduction of an additional whole-time day shift resource to support existing on-call capacity and improve alignment with risk and demand.
“This addition also improves operational resilience for Midlothian and the City of Edinburgh.
“Decoupling the East Lothian component from Edinburgh whilst adding a DSDS (day shift)resource would result in slightly different impacts in some localities but would still contribute positively to achieving the stated system delivery service review.”
The report to the board states that changes to the estate are not about saving money but are based solely on modernising and improving the service, however it acknowledges that any future funding cuts could delay some of the changes proposed.
The board will be asked to approve the recommendations on Monday, June 22.
By Marie Sharp Local Democracy Reporter
