Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service is allowing some on-call crews to have three firefighters attend incidents to improve rural response time.

The smaller crews will be sent to all incident types in line with practices in neighbouring Suffolk, and some other fire and rescue services.

The service says it is struggling to recruit on-call firefighters in some areas and if stations have less than four firefighters it makes them “unavailable for use”.

This results in stations further away with more staff being called in. The new three-crew plan will allow engines to reach an incident faster.

Currently, the aim is to have five firefighters on each engine but also allow only four firefighters, only allowing a crew of three to attend some incidents and rescues.

Chief fire officer, Chris Strickland, said: “We are always striving to improve the time it takes us to get a fire engine to the scene of an emergency from the initial 999 call.

“Our rural towns and villages are covered by on-call fire stations, so firefighters carry pagers, go about their daily business and if an emergency occurs in their area, their aler goes off and they rush to the fire station to crew the fire engine.

“We struggle to recruit on-call firefighters – for a whole host of reasons – and often our rurally based fire engines are deemed ‘unavailable for use’ as there are less than four firefighters available to crew them.

“We therefore often send the next fully crewed fire engine that is available but that can be several miles away, increasing the time it takes for us to arrive.

“By allowing a crew of three to respond to all incident types, we can get a fire engine to incidents much quicker and the crew can either deal with the incident safely, or get everything ready to start dealing with the incident as soon as more resources arrive to make it a safe operation.

“My greatest wish is that we always have at least five firefighters available day and night at our on-call stations and it’s certainly what we will continue to strive for.”