People are being urged to give their views on fire services in the borough as the days tick down to the end of a 10-week consultation. So far fire chiefs say they have had hundreds of responses – but want more.

The consultation run by West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service began in March and ends on June 6. Responses from the public will be fed into the organisation’s three-year Community Risk Management Plan to be published this summer.

The CRMP will outline how to keep the public safe and how fire service resources are “in the right place at the right time”.

“We would like to have thousands and thousands of responses because we always strive for more,” said area manager Matt Walker.

Mr Walker said the fire service is currently looking at investment across the county and that whilst it was “working within a cost envelope” the CRMP was “not based on cuts”.

He said local provision had come up in the feedback received so far as well as response times to incidents. Mr Walker said: “We would love a fire engine on every street corner but that’s not the case. We have to put our firefighters in the areas where we most need them.”

He added: “Response times are part of what we are looking at. We are always held to ac-count by how fast we can get a fire engine to people most in need. But we have a methodology that means we can get a fire engine to the most vulnerable people as quickly as possible.

“It’s not about removing services. It’s about enhancing services we’ve already got.”

Fire chiefs want to present a draft of the Community Risk Management Plan to a meeting of the fire authority at the end of June and hope to have even more public opinion to feed into it. Feedback has been collated since the start of the consultation. Now the final few days will be added.

A shake-up of fire services means the closure of the station in Cleckheaton, where the Hightown Road site will be shut. Staff and facilities will be relocated to the headquarters at Birkenshaw, which also houses a training centre.

Keighley’s outdated fire station on Bradford Road, which was built in the 1960s, will be demolished and replaced with a £2.2m new build. A full refurbishment of Odsal fire station is set to start this summer and the HQ will also be improved.

To take part visit here.