COUNTY fire chief Darran Gunter has welcomed a government report calling for the transformation of England’s fire and rescue services.

The report, by Sir Ken Knight – who has recently retired as the government’s chief fire and rescue advisor – suggests tens of millions of pounds could be saved by merging services, introducing new shift patterns, forming partnerships with the private sector and increasing the use of retained firefighters.

More than 80per cent of DFRS’ fire engines are already crewed by on-call or part-time firefighters.

Welcoming the report, Mr Gunter said: “We will be considering the key findings over the coming weeks with a full discussion at the meeting of the fire authority on June 24.

“We requested to be one of the services to take part in this review and while not selected, we provided a comprehensive submission about how we serve the communities of Dorset, Bournemouth and Poole.”

Sir Ken’s ideas also include establishing a single fire service covering the whole of England.

His conclusions have not been offered as concrete recommendations, rather ideas that could be taken onboard by regional fire and rescue services in a bid to make efficiencies.

Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service’s chief officer John Bonney, who also said he welcomed the report, added: “We were pleased to be one of the 18 fire and rescue services that were visited and sharing our ideas and progress with Sir Ken.

“We are pleased to see that a number of innovative approaches to making efficiencies are cited in the report, some of which directly support the approaches taken by Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service.”

Mr Gunter, who insists DFRS is already an “efficient and effective” service, said: “We will continue to look for cost effective and innovative ways of conducting our business.”