Fire brigade 'may charge fee' for moving obese people » Communities » 24dash.com

A fire brigade said today it is considering starting to charge if it has to help move fat people.

Fire chiefs in Lancashire say they are considering the fee to be charged on hospitals, nursing homes, the police or other agencies if they are called in to move grossly overweight members of the public.

A spokesman for Lancashire Fire and Rescue Service said charging individual members of the public was not under consideration.

Fire crews are often called upon by police, hospital, nursing home or ambulance staff simply because they alone cannot move grossly fat members of the public.

Charging other agencies for help was one idea put forward in a Risk Management Plan where the lifting of people who are "bariatric" - the medical term for obese - was considered.

The spokesman said crews had been called out a number of times to people weighing in excess of 30 stones.

Last year, the brigade was called out eight times to assist other services in lifting obese patients - double the number in 2004.

He said one fire crew was called in to move an extremely obese man who had to go from his home to hospital for an operation and he could not be lifted from his bed and down the stairs.

They had to take out a window frame, call in a "cherry picker" mechanical lift, then strain to put the patient into a mechanical cage before lowering him to the ground.

The spokesman added, "Sometimes we get a call, 'We have got someone who is 40 stone, we can't lift them. Can you get a crew down?'

"If you magnify that with the number of fire and rescue services in the UK it is not frequent but still a regular occurrence.

"We are not prejudiced against these people, we are helping them out.

"Since we are a publicly funded organisation we have to consider whether it is appropriate in some cases to charge other agencies for our services."

No figure had yet been put on any possible charge.

It would not apply, even to other agencies, if they were called to emergency 999 situations and the person to be moved or rescued was obese.

The move comes as a Government report warns a majority of Britons will be obese by 2050 if weight gain in the population continues at the current rate.

Scientists predict that in just over 40 years, 60% of men, 50% of women and a quarter of all children in the UK are likely to be clinically obese.

The consequent impact of chronic health problems on society would cost Britain more than £45 billion a year.

And yesterday it was revealed that a firm making fire and rescue equipment in Corwen, North Wales, has manufactured a 28-stone training dummy to help emergency services cope with the growing number of obese people they have to rescue.

The heavyweight dummy, which takes six people to lift, is believed to be the heaviest and largest in the world.

Nigel Evans, Tory MP for Ribble Valley, said: "It is a ridiculous notion. People have already paid once for a level of service and to ask them to pay again on their size is patently unfair.

"Are people going to be charged for everyday mistakes - leaving the iron on, locking themselves out, falling down a hole and getting stuck?

"The image of the Fire Service turning up to the scene and requiring a fire officer to make a snap decision as to whether somebody is obese and then informing them that they will be charged if rescued is bonkers."

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