We want to reduce the number of Aerial Ladder Platform (ALP) vehicles across Hampshire and Isle of Wight from five to four.​

The reasons why we can remove one of our ALPs:

• Now we have combined Services, we have a greater resilience for specialist vehicles across our geographical area. Therefore, we don’t require five ALPs, and extensive data analysis and modelling showed that removing the second island ALP was the most appropriate course of action.
• Our data analysis indicates that we need to maintain only one ALP on the Island.
• There have been no instances where both ALPs have been used at different incidents at the same time.
• There have only been three times since 2020 where both ALPs have attended the same incident.
• The two island ALPs have only attended 169 incidents since the beginning of 2020. In comparison, the three mainland ALPs collectively attended 1,319 incidents over the same period. This means that on average, per ALP, mainland ALPs attended over five times more incidents than island ALPs.
• In the very unlikely event it was needed at the same or a co-occurring separate incident, a second ALP from the mainland could be deployed to the Island.

By reducing our ALPs and redistributing the remaining ones across the Service, we will save approximately £1 million on the cost of the replacement of an ALP.

We will remove the ALP from Newport fire station to allow the ALP at Ryde fire station to cover the whole island. We have 3 ALPs on the mainland, that we can move across to the Isle of Wight, should we need to, including two from coastal stations, at Southsea and St Mary’s.