A HAMPSHIRE fire station could lose half its full-time staff under cost-cutting plans affecting almost every base across the county, the Daily Echo has learnt.

Winchester Fire Station will be unable to guarantee overnight cover if 14 of the station’s 28 full-time posts are cut, a concerned firefighter has said.

They are the first details of proposed cuts under Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service’s bid to cut up to £5 million from its budget by 2017/18. As reported in yesterday’s Daily Echo, the service has to plug a £12.2 million budget black hole.

Winchester firefighters were told this week that their positions are up for review, but fire chiefs refused to confirm the proposed cuts or whether they would be matched at other stations.

The Winchester base currently employs 46 staff – 28 full-time and 18 part-time – but this would be cut to 28 overall, evenly split between full and part-time posts.

A city firefighter, who asked not to be named, said: “It is worrying at this stage. If this goes ahead there will be no guaranteed cover in Winchester overnight. We have been going through the risks. There’s a lot of heritage and life risk in Winchester.

“It’s scary,” he added. “You kind of get the impression that the figures will not be understood, so they won’t realise what’s happening.”

Under the draft plans, between two and five part-time staff would be on call overnight – meaning they can leave work and go home if they wish.

When asked about the cuts, chief officer Dave Curry said: “If I started to talk about that in the public domain then I’m maybe presetting a very, very important stage of this process.

“I fear I will overshadow those professional firefighters’ views. I’m visiting all my stations and conversing about the future of the services.”

No stations are expected to close, but at a performance review and scrutiny meeting on Tuesday, Mr Curry said almost all of the service's 50 bases will "change in some way”.

Cllr Mark Cooper, Hampshire county councillor for Romsey, said staff were worried about the effect the cuts would have on performance.

Detailed county-wide plans will be presented to Hampshire Fire and Rescue Authority on September 9 ahead of a formal 12-week consultation. If the proposals go ahead unchanged, Winchester will lose half its full-time posts in April 2016.

Cllr Keith Chapman, chairman of the performance review and scrutiny committee, told the Daily Echo: "We're looking at all possibilities of delivering the service probably slightly differently to what we have done before, because things have changed much in firefighting techniques, our responses and all sorts of stuff.

"The techniques are changing completely, so regardless of whether we're saving money or not, the way the service is going is changing completely."

He stressed that no decisions have been made.