DORSET Fire Authority has voted to freeze its share of the Council tax.

But residents have been warned that frontline services could be hit as a result.

Several budget options were discussed at the meeting of the Dorset Fire Authority yesterday at Dorset Fire and Rescue Service’s Poundbury headquarters.

These included accepting the one-off government council tax freeze grant, estimated to be worth £535,000, or accepting the recommendation of the Budget Working Group to increase the council tax precept by at least 3.5 per cent.

This would represent a rise in council tax of four pence a week for the average Band D household.

The report stated that while the authority would benefit from the freeze grant in 2012/13 there would be significant adverse effects on funding for future years.

The predictions of the authority are that around £430,000 would be lost in 2013/14 and £457,000 in 2014/15 and 2015/16.

Authority member Ronald Coatsworth said that they should accept the freeze grant. He said: “Council tax is a huge burden on a lot of people, particularly those who are not well off.”

Chairmen of the Fire Authority Rebecca Knox said that raising the council tax would have given the authority the stability in planning for the future.

She said: “Raising the council tax by less than 4p per week would have meant that we had consistency in planning the way forward in years 2013/14 and 2015/16.

“The one-off grant does not provide that. We want to make sure the residents of Dorset and our firefighters are protected as much as possible and we now have an awful lot to consider in terms of a recovery plan for the years ahead.”

Chief Fire Officer Darran Gunter said that Dorset was one of the highest performing but lowest funded authorities and warned that cuts could mean reductions in frontline services. He added the service had already made £1million of savings and would now be looking to make further savings.

Mr Gunter said: “The options for achieving further significant savings without impacting on frontline services – which is something that we are desperate to protect – are now very limited despite the one-off freeze grant injection.”

Currently 33 of the service’s 40 fire engines are crewed by retained staff, with six whole time crews are in Poole and Bournemouth.

Mr Gunter added: “West Dorset has only got one whole time crew at Weymouth. If we were going to make savings it would have to be Poole and Bournemouth.”

Another way to deal with a deficit in future years could be to merge with either Wiltshire or Hampshire fire authorities.

DORSET Fire and Rescue Service (DFRS) covers the whole of the county and includes the conurbations of Bournemouth and Poole, responding to more than 8,000 incidents per year.

These include animal rescues, co-responder callouts, road traffic collisions, specialist rescue capability and, of course, fire-related incidents to name but a few. On top of the incident response and management, the service also has very robust prevention measures in place delivering more than 10,000 home safety visits in the last year, with a commitment to increase that number in the future.

While the average fire authority in England was charging £67.70 per household per year, and the most expensive was £87.84, based on 2011/12 band D council tax, Dorset charged £60.39, making it one of the lowest of 24 combined fire authorities in England. It also charges the lowest council tax precept of all our neighbours – compared to £71.77 in Devon or Somerset and £62.38 in Wiltshire.