Hospital worker suspended over fire row

A previous fire at Sandwell caused massive damage

A West Midlands worker has been suspended for refusing to carry out extra fire duties during the current firefighters strike.

Dave Pearce, a site services officer at Sandwell hospital in West Bromwich, was asked to switch off the usual system which dials up the brigade automatically.

Instead, he was told he should decide whether a fire was severe enough to warrant an emergency call out.

The hospital said his role at the hospital would mean he is involved when fire crews are called out.

'Big responsibility'

But Mr Pearce said he is not prepared to shoulder that level of responsibility.

He said: "The management have told me they want to switch off the monitoring service and they want me and my colleagues to investigate any fires.

"We had a fire in July which was going to cost £11m to replace the Accident and Emergency Department.

"I don't want to take the responsibility for deciding whether the fire engines attend or not."

'Reduce callouts'

The hospital trust said it needs to scale down the number of false alarms which fire crews turn out for during the strikes.

Graham Seager, director of facilities at Sandwell and West Birmingham Hospitals NHS Trust, said that the automatic system was only turned off during the day.

He said: "This measure has been put in place to reduce the activity of the Green Goddesses to the hospital for false alarms and to ensure that the community is not put at risk by the shortage of this service."