Moving Cheltenham West's 14 night firefighter posts to Cinderford would not be right, the county's fire cabinet member says. He wants other options instead.

The plan to take the full-time night crew away from Cheltenham West fire station has been shelved. Gloucestershire County Council’s cabinet member for fire said on Friday that he is “not persuaded” the move would be right.

Cllr Paul Hodgkinson, Cabinet Member for Public Health, Communities and Fire, gave his view in a statement published by the county council on 13 November. It follows the public consultation that closed on 28 September.

“Having carefully considered all of the feedback from the recent public consultation, I am not persuaded that it would be right to move the night crew from Cheltenham West to provide a day crew in Cinderford,” he said.

What was proposed

The recommended option put to consultation over the summer would have moved 14 wholetime night posts from Cheltenham West to Cinderford, in the Forest of Dean. Cinderford would have gained a daytime crew, and Cheltenham West would have become a day-crewed station.

The council’s own modelling said the first fire engine would take 25 seconds longer to reach incidents in Cheltenham on average, and the second 40 seconds longer. The service needs to save £827,000 over four years. We set out the full proposal, and the petition against it, when the consultation opened.

It is not over yet

The statement does not close the subject. Cllr Hodgkinson said “doing nothing is not an option” and that “the challenges that led to the proposal have not gone away”.

He has asked the Chief Fire Officer to draw up other options for the county’s Cabinet to consider. In his words, they should:

  • “address the risks that have been identified in the Forest of Dean”
  • “strengthen the resilience of the service”
  • “make the best possible use of the resources available to us”

He said he was committed to working “constructively with firefighters and the Fire Brigades Union” on the way forward.

The statement does not say what the alternatives might be or when they will be ready. The consultation page had said Cabinet would decide on the proposal in December 2026. The July Cabinet report also priced one alternative that never appeared in the consultation booklet: an on-call night unit at Cheltenham West, at about £160,000 a year.

What it means for you

Nothing changes at Cheltenham West for now. The station on Tewkesbury Road at Uckington keeps its wholetime crew around the clock, alongside Cheltenham East.

The open question is where the savings and the Forest of Dean cover now come from. Fire cover is a county council matter, so the next decision rests with Cabinet at Shire Hall, not Cheltenham Borough Council. We will report the new options when they are published.