What's being proposed
Gloucestershire County Council's cabinet has agreed to launch an eight-week public consultation on changes to fire cover across the county.
At the centre of the proposal is a shift in how crews are deployed: ending 24-hour, round-the-clock cover at Cheltenham West fire station and instead staffing it as a whole-time day crew. The firefighters reassigned from Cheltenham West would be used to establish a new whole-time day-crewed community fire station at Cinderford, in the Forest of Dean.
Cheltenham East would remain on 24-hour cover and continue to host an on-call crew. Both Cheltenham stations would be fully staffed during daytime hours.
The case for change
Chief Fire Officer Mark Preece says the proposal is about putting resources where risk, demand and community need are greatest — and that the case is built on independent modelling, not guesswork.
According to the service, residents in the Forest of Dean currently wait around 13 minutes for a crew to attend, compared to roughly seven minutes in Cheltenham. Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue's overall target is an average response time of nine minutes.
Preece has openly acknowledged that the change will have an impact on response times at Cheltenham West, but argues that overall county-wide cover would improve — particularly in the Forest of Dean, where the gap in attendance times is described as "substantial."
The service also points out that around two-thirds of incidents occur during the day, which is exactly when both Cheltenham stations would be fully crewed.
The case against
The Fire Brigades Union (FBU) is firmly opposed, and they've taken their argument public.
Kate Yhnell, the FBU's Gloucestershire organiser and a serving firefighter, has launched a petition against the move that has gathered more than 740 signatures at the time of writing.
The union argues the service is already "paper thin" and that crews are "stretched to the limits every day." The petition describes the loss of night-time cover at Cheltenham West as "not just inconvenient, it's dangerous and potentially deadly," pointing to tens of thousands of new homes being built near Cheltenham and the new M5 junction as reasons cover should be increasing, not reducing.
The FBU also highlights the numbers: Cheltenham West responded to 351 night-time mobilisations in 2025, and had already attended 229 by July of this year. Their argument is straightforward — that's real demand, at night, that would have to be covered from further away.
Crucially, the union says it initially backed the Cinderford move — but only on the condition that it came with 14 new firefighter posts. Due to funding restrictions, those posts have been withdrawn and the crews will instead come from Cheltenham West. The FBU argues that resilience "can't come at the expense of operational provision elsewhere."
Two stations, one debate
What makes this proposal particularly difficult is that both sides are arguing for better public safety — they just disagree on how to get there within the funding available.
The service's position is that holding on to resources where they're under-used overnight, while another community waits nearly twice as long for help, is hard to justify. The union's position is that you don't fix one gap by opening another, and that Cheltenham's growth makes this the wrong moment to reduce any cover.
Both points have merit, which is exactly why the consultation matters.
What happens next
The proposals are currently out for public consultation, running for eight weeks. No final decision has been taken, and both the council and the service are encouraging residents to have their say before anything is set in stone.
Whatever your view, this is a decision that will shape fire cover in Gloucestershire for years to come — and it's being made now.
Have your say below — we want to hear from serving firefighters, retained crew, residents of Cheltenham and the Forest of Dean, and anyone who'll be affected by these changes. Keep it respectful, keep it real.
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