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That does not sound very positive.

I want to ask you about one other issue—maintenance, for which you use your capital budget. We have talked a lot about the large chunk of people’s budgets that goes on resource and pay and, indeed, future pay increases, which is a whole other ball game that we have not discussed yet, and the complications of the effect of that on your budgets, but capital budgets are also important. For example, you say that if you receive no increase in your core capital funding, that would run the risk of safety-related incidents and also make it virtually impossible for you to meet your carbon reduction ambitions. Will you elaborate on that?

On the modelling of a potential 5 per cent annual pay rise for the next couple of years—it sounds as though that has been rejected at this stage, so it could be more—and with a flat cash settlement, you would be looking at a reduction of more than 780 full-time equivalent firefighters and around 30 full-time appliances out of 120. That is quite a big reduction. What are the consequences of that?

I presume that the 17 per cent would be what we would classify as front-line officers—people who are out in the communities and on the streets responding to events and interacting with the community.

Thank you.

In that case, if a 5 per cent pay offer were rejected and you had to pay more to keep officers—or, at least, to stop industrial action, strikes or whatever method would be available to them—what would happen to that 4,400 figure? Would we be talking about 5,000, 6,000 or 7,000? Would it double? Would a 10 per cent offer mean a reduction of 8,000 or 9,000?

So it is 225 people for every percentage-point pay rise.

We quite literally did not fix the roof while the sun was shining. The roofs have fallen down in some fire stations. That must present a huge challenge and risk. Fourteen stations is a lot to not be in satisfactory condition. It is no wonder that the unions are up in arms over that. It sounds as if the working conditions for some people are unacceptable.

Half a billion quid is a lot of cash to have as the cost of a backlog, and that developed when inflation was low, construction costs were low and budgets were going up. Now we are staring the opposite in the face. It seems very unlikely that you will ever get that amount of money. If you did not get what you asked for when times were good, how are you going to get £62 million when times are tough? What would be your request to the Government, given what we are talking about today in relation to cash budgets?

How much of this is about your putting on a face to show a strong message to the Government that a flat cash settlement is simply not on? Is it realistic to say that you would close down the 101 service? Is it realistic to say that you would have to pick and choose which call-outs you attend? In reality, would there be a delay in answering 999 calls? In reality, would those calls not be responded to or even answered at all?

Thanks for that further clarification. To be clear on the numbers for the modelling of the 4,500, did you say that you had modelled a 17 per cent reduction in police officers and a 31 per cent reduction in staff, which would be back-office operational staff—non-warranted staff?

Are you talking about a scenario in which, given reduced numbers, you would only send officers out if something was dreadfully serious, such as a life-threatening situation or serious violence?