KENT Fire Brigade has launched a major review of the way it provides its services throughout the county that will bring a greater emphasis on fire prevention and a reduction in the number of frontline fire-fighters.

A discussion document submitted to the Kent Fire Authority also suggests the Brigade needs to "modify" its response to false alarms and hoax calls.

Deputy Chief Fire Officer Charlie Hendry said this could mean that the Brigade might not respond at all to a call that is "obviously a hoax call". It would also mean that fewer appliances would be despatched to alarm calls initially, until it had been confirmed that a fire was progress.

At present, the Brigade assumes that every call is genuine and provides a 100 per cent reaction service. However, Mr Hendry said that most of the proposed changes were internal re-organisations and the public would notice no difference to service provision.

Mr Hendry said: "There will be no closure of fire stations, no reduction in the number of fire appliances and no compulsory redundancies."

However, there would be a net loss of between 50 and 60 posts through natural wastage, and a further 30 firefighters would be re-deployed to join new dedicated fire prevention teams.

But the Brigade emphasised that no decisions had yet been made. Proposals will be put out for public consultation in October.

The Fire Authority would consider responses to the consultation in February and again when the consultation period concluded in March, when a final plan would be drawn up.

Mr Hendry said the value of increasing the community safety role had already been proven. Deaths in fires in Kent had fallen from 178 in 2000 to 55 last year, which he attributed largely to fire prevention advice.

Mr Hendry said that in a pilot scheme last year, in 98 per cent of cases control room operators had correctly identified hoax calls, although a full response had still been made.

Mr Hendry stressed: "We find that for genuine calls, we rarely quickly get just one call from the public, so it quickly becomes obvious in the control room which calls are genuine."

The proposals also see a greater role for Kent's retained fire-fighters, the volunteers who provide part-time cover. Savings in full time staff would be made by "reviewing" the number of personnel needed to operate specialist appliances such as height vehicles and re-organising shift patterns.

Mr Hendry said: "The Government made it clear that the pay increases awarded following the recent pay dispute have to be paid for by modernisation and that is what we are doing."

Harry Sawyer secretary for the Kent FBU said: "We are not going to make a knee-jerk reaction. There is a long consultation period and we shall consider the proposals carefully. But we do have initial concerns about staffing levels on the height vehicles, the changes to working conditions and the response to false alarms and hoaxes.

"We don't go to false alarm calls, we only come back from them. Every call is a call when it first comes in."