Our Official Response to the Fire Station Consultation

Published: 13 March 2026

At its March meeting, Wilton Town Council agreed our response to Dorset & Wiltshire Fire & Rescue Authority’s proposal to close a number of fire stations across the region, including Wilton Fire Station. Our official response is:

We recognise that the Town Council does not run the fire service and that the final decision rests entirely with the Dorset & Wiltshire Fire Authority. However, as a statutory consultee, we unequivocally state our opposition to this closure. While we cannot formally speak for the individual parish councils surrounding us, our town sits at the heart of the Wilton Fire Station administration area. This is a vast area covering 180 square kilometres. We stand with the 12,751 residents across this widespread rural network whose emergency safety net is currently being targeted.

At their public consultations, the Fire Authority has openly admitted that closing this station will increase the risk to our community. Their own internal report officially logs a 'Negative impact due to increased response times'. Their consultation presents theoretical response times based on a 'best-case scenario' where every fire engine is magically available 100% of the time. But in reality, Wilton's fire engine is currently available on average 65% of the time. The backup engines they expect to absorb our emergencies from Salisbury, Tisbury, and Amesbury are on average available just 57%, 59%, and an appalling 4% of the time, respectively. Furthermore, Tisbury faces a 21-minute travel time to reach us. To rely on a backup engine from Amesbury that is unavailable 96% of the time, or one from Tisbury that is over 20 minutes away, is a systemic failure. More alarmingly, their own data proves that closing Wilton will delay the second arriving fire engine to a house fire by a staggering 2 minutes and 23 seconds. Because of this delay, they will fail their own 13-minute safety standard in 11 out of 13 cases-an 85% failure rate.

Let us be clear: a preventative chat about smoke alarms does not pull someone out of a burning building, nor does it rescue someone from an upside-down car when the backup engine is delayed by nearly two and a half minutes.

The Fire Authority has repeatedly told the public that their funding has been cut by central government, that MPs are not listening, and that we should be lobbying them on their behalf. Yet, they have just been handed a 3-year financial settlement, giving them certainty. They are framing the irreversible closure of our frontline fire station as a cliff-edge financial necessity. But when we look at their own audited accounts, we see an Authority sitting on £23 million in usable reserves and an Authority that has just received a 'Red' significant weakness rating from its independent auditors for an inadequate governance culture. Furthermore, we note concerningly high discretionary spending on corporate items, including a planned £9.5 million on training facilities and £2.4 million on new IT systems. Making dedicated roles redundant and permanently increasing the threat to life in our community should be an absolute last resort, considered only after every other option has been exhausted. Yet, we see absolutely no evidence that the Authority has proactively pursued alternative revenue streams-such as community fundraisers, charity drives, or local sponsorships-to fund specialist regional assets like Wilton’s Water Carrier.

We are left to conclude that this is not a cliff-edge emergency. The Fire Authority has the money in the bank to keep these stations open right now. Over 27% of Wilton’s population is aged 65 or over; we are a vulnerable community facing deep rural isolation, and we will not accept this risk.

Therefore, our formal consultation response will demand that they use their financial buffer to pause these cuts, engage properly with the community on alternative funding, and look for much more strategic options to make the best use of what taxpayers actually expect their money to be spent on our 999 emergency response"