REVISED changes to South Cumbria's fire services have been given the green light - but concerns still remain over safety.

As part of its Integrated Management Plan, Cumbria County Council (CCC) proposed changes to crewing arrangements at Ulverston Fire Station.

However, the proposal to change the town’s existing full-time fire cover to an eight-hour day shift model, with on-call fire fighters outside of those hours, met with a public outcry.

In response to the concerns, CCC announced revised proposals, including the day crew working a 12-hour shift rather than the proposed eight.

It also proposed bringing forward pre-existing plans to create a new full-time night-shift crew at Kendal.

At a meeting of of CCC's cabinet, Ulverston councillor James Airey presented a petition on behalf of 'hundreds' of South Lakes residents in opposition to the removal of the full-time crew.

"I think the residents that I represent are pleased that at least there will be a full time crew under these proposals," he said. "Kendal does rather well out of this. This is to be welcomed and many of the concerns raised in consultation were about cover across South Lakeland, so I think in part there is a huge improvement in the proposals."

However, he said that although he wanted cabinet to support the proposals, he asked members to go away and rethink the 'essential' full time cover for Ulverston.

"I think residents in our area still remain to be convinced of the safety element of these proposals that we have now," he said. "So there is still some work to do on that now."

Cllr Janet Willis, CCC cabinet member for fire and rescue said that she 'understood' residents had concerns.

"But until four years ago Ulverston, for the last 40 years, had been covered by on-call crews and there was no concerns or issues raised at that point," she said.

"Our task has been to ensure, in these financially challenging times, our available resources are used most effectively to keep the people of Cumbria safe.

"We accept that these changes might not satisfy everyone and some people feel they have not gone far enough. But we believe they are proportionate, sensible and consistent with our overall aim of ensuring our resources are aligned to the risk profile of the county of Cumbria."

Deputy leader Cllr Ian Stewart added that he fully understood the request from communities to have more fire cover.

"But we've got to fit our ability to meet the risks from the resources that we have available," he said. "If central government were to recognise the constraints that local government were working upon there may be more that we could do."