FIRES have increased a whopping 12 per cent in just one year - at a time of constant strikes and job cuts in Worcestershire.

Your Worcester News can reveal how Hereford and Worcester Fire Service had to tackle nearly 2,000 blazes in the last financial year, a 12.3 per cent hike.

Crews dashed out to 1,987 fires in the 12-month period up to April, compared to 1,770 in the previous year.

The increase came during a year of mass unrest which saw repeated strikes across Worcestershire and Herefordshire, leading to around a third of engines being out of use during walkouts.

The release of the data, contained in a report for the attention of Worcestershire County Council, comes at a time when the fire service is looking to go from five crews on engines to four by cutting jobs.

Julian Jenkins, chairman of Hereford and Worcester's Fire Brigades' Union, said: "We get all this propaganda that fires are going down and therefore we need less firefighters, but it's nonsense.

"We are not car manufacturers, treated like widgets where people buy less so you make less - fires still happen and they still require the same number of people to put out.

"There are less property fires but that's because we're good at going into houses and telling people how to avoid them, so we're victims of our own success - but let's not pretend our workload is dropping, it's not.

“Questions have got to be asked. Fires still happen and we are busy now as we always were, the figures show that.

“We’ve had five or six pretty poor summers now, where it’s been wet and so fires fell (until the new data) but what happens if after last summer we get five or six good ones?”

Councillor Richard Udall, Labour group leader on the fire authority, said: "This demonstrates the need to keep good cover - we can get sudden peaks which occur very rapidly.

“We don’t know when it will happen or where, but we’ve got to be there. The problem is that the Government has reduced our funds and we are unable to respond as we would like.”

He said over the last year, he has spent £2,500 of his own county councillor's divisional fund on fire detection equipment on student properties in St John's.

The report says in 2012/13, the wet summer weather meant a typical seasonal rise in fires did not occur.

In 2013/14 fire crews also attended 1,458 'special services' like car crashes and water rescues, a fall of 14.1 per cent.

That meant the overall number of incidents, including false alarms, was 6,622 compared to 6,643 the previous year, a difference of just 21 call outs.

It means the overall workload has remained steady.

Councillor Derek Prodger, fire authority chairman, said despite the rise in fires his crews "never not responded to a 999 call".

"Some people will make the link between the strikes and the increase in fires but crews have never not responded to a 999 call," he said.

"Property fires are in long term decline, it's those secondary fires likes fields where there's been a lot.

"But I don't think it raises any cause for concern, more people have smoke alarms, which is very good to see, there's been a good push for more sprinklers in the workplace, and manufacturers are doing their bit by making sure furniture and curtains are more resistant to fires now than they used to be.

“But we will always respond and the construction industry is doing its bit to help.”

The fire service is cutting 34 jobs in a bid to save £6 million, going from five crews on engines to four.

Fire chiefs originally announced a proposal to remove 10 fire engines and close four rural stations, but shelved the plans after a public outcry which saw 27,000 people sign a petition.

The fire service has still got to find £1.7 million of the £6 million worth of savings, and has opted to remove secondary engines from Tenbury and Ledbury.

The strikes are because of a dispute over pensions between the FBU and the Government.