CHANGES to Marlborough fire station were outlined to the town council at a meeting on Monday night.

Marlborough is one of the new hub stations, along with Devizes and Amesbury, where full-time firefighters from other stations in Wiltshire will be redeployed and based between 9am and 6pm, Monday to Friday.

They will be working on community engagement and risk reduction as well as supplementing retained crews by being available to attend call-outs.

Carl Barber, the new crew manager based in Marlborough, who moved from Westlea fire station in Swindon, said: “What we’ve found in the past is getting retained employees to attend the station at certain times of the day is difficult so what we’ve started doing is placing whole-time personnel at some of these stations.

“This isn’t to besmirch the retained firefighters. They do a fantastic job but with employment being out of the small villages nowadays, finding people in villages during the day is difficult.

“The retained section works as it always has. We haven’t supplanted them. We haven’t seen a reduction in numbers because of our arrival and hopefully we’re enabling them to achieve more of what they want to do.”

It is anticipated that six full-time firefighters will be in place in Marlborough by the middle of February.

The full-time firefighters based in Marlborough will also be responsible for Royal Wootton Bassett and Ramsbury with Pewsey being overseen by the Devizes hub.