A fire chief has been quizzed over the high number of deliberate fires being set in Ayr West and Troon.
South Ayrshire Council’s service and partnerships performance panel heard that Troon ward had the highest number of both deliberate fires and accidental house fires in the second quarter of this year.
Troon not only recorded the highest number of incidents, it was also the highest per head of population in both capacities.
SNP Councillor George Weir said: “Under deliberate fire setting, Ayr West and Troon are noticeably high.
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“I wonder if you had any insight as to why that might be?”
Area Commander Ian McMeekin, of Scottish Fire and Rescue, said: “A couple of wards have increased compared to others, but the numbers are still quite low.
“We have in place a number of fire plans and thematic action plans and use operational intelligence.
“Every time we go to an incident, we gather data through incident recording systems. This helps us develop seasonal plans.
“Some areas see an increase in activity and we target resources more than others because of that historic data.”
He highlighted Bonfire Night as a specific example of events that result in increased call outs and explained how the force worked with the police.
He continued: “We also look at work with local authorities and have liaison officers working specifically in these wards.
“We can’t be there all the time, so the real focus is about education.
“In terms of deliberate fire setting, we can see a correlation to certain incident types. such as when schools are on holiday.
“What I can say is that deliberate fire setting and anti-social behaviour are linked to young people.”
He explained that there were a number of efforts made to engage and educate young people, such as the safer shores initiative, which includes work around fire setting as well as water safety.
He added that visitors to the area often came with an increase in fires and said that, as national force, work was ongoing to put a message out about fire setting across the country.
Councillor Weir said that he had seen the efforts the fire service had put into reaching out to communities but said that the performance report didn’t fully capture the work.
He said: “I don’t see in any of the documents any way of capturing your work in outreach in education. strikes for having visited you, you do a lot in that area.
“Is the only way of capturing it in seeing the side effects, the ultimate objective?”
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The area commander said that the service had important partnerships with number of different communities and acknowledged the need to show this more.
Among the programmes he highlighted as providing ‘added value’ were mentors, youth volunteer programmes, employability support and education.
He stressed that, behind all of the figures in the report, there was an impact on somebody’s life.
“Work with community planning is key and helps us to understand who our local communities are," he said.
The number of fires in each area are below:
Deliberate Fires (total 186)
Ward No. of fires Number by 10,000 population
Troon 44 29.9
Ayr West 35 20.7
Prestwick 28 19.3
Ayr North 26 15.1
Kyle 26 19.1
Ayr East 12 9.7
Maybole 9 7.5
Girvan 6 5.4
Accidental dwelling fires (total 43)
Troon 8 5.4
Ayr West 8 4.6
Prestwick 5 3.4
Ayr North 8 4.6
Kyle 4 2.9
Ayr East 3 2.4
Maybole 4 3,3
Girvan 3 2.7
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