Cutting costs on the lifeguard service is very dangerous

From Ted Vibert.

THE plan to cut the cost of the Jersey lifeguard service by £80,000 by giving a new contract to the RNLI instead of using the Australian system that has been in existence for over 17 years is the worst kind of budget cut one can imagine.

It is on a par with taking daily milk away from small children at primary school, charging diabetics for needles, closing the hydrotherapy pool at the hospital and cutting out the subsidy to Durell for children’s educational visits.

It is just as crass as any of those petty cuts – but an incredibly dangerous and risky one, because lives are at stake here.

Senator Alan Maclean is certainly right in assessing all the expenditure in his Economic Development portfolio and he should be applauded for this. He is also right to defend the RNLI as a highly professional and wonderful organisation for those who go down to the sea in ships.

But their lifeguard service is a totally different set-up. It’s a comparatively new venture and they have contracted with a number of individual UK councils to provide lifeguard cover to 148 UK beaches. The majority of these beaches can be classed as ‘flat-water beaches’ like St Aubin, Grouville and St Brelade.

Occasionally there are waves, but they are not surfing beaches as such and the job of the lifeguard is similar to that of a pool guard with very few real rescues.

Obviously most Devon and Cornwall beaches are in the ‘surf beach’ category.

As well as 700 full-time seasonal paid lifeguards, there are volunteer lifeguards. The professionals have to have a valid surf-life saving qualification, which is the level of the Australian bronze medallion. This is the basic requirement for an Australian volunteer lifeguard before he or she can be part of the volunteer patrols on Australian beaches.

There are over 250,000 of these volunteers and there will be a number of them making trips to Europe and getting jobs as lifeguards on UK beaches this summer.

The public of Jersey should understand that these are not the quality of Australian lifeguards who have come to the Island over the years.

To become a professional lifeguard in Australia, the bronze medallion is just the basic starting point. They progress to the silver medal and then on to the gold, by which time they have passed all the examinations in beach-rescue handling, surf-ski skills, advanced first aid, resuscitation techniques, boat handling (inflatable and rigid), crowd handling, vehicle control in soft sand, and so on.

There are only about 3,000 professional lifeguards in Australia and they are the crème de la crème of the lifesaving movement in Australia. It is from this elite pool that all Australian lifeguards employed for Jersey are chosen.

It has been admitted that the only way that the RNLI can cut £80,000 from the cost of running the service is to pay their lifeguards less. This has been confirmed by Senator Maclean.

Australian lifeguards are paid £12 an hour and the RNLI are only going to pay their lifeguards £8 an hour. No professional Australian lifeguard will come to Jersey for that low pay. This means we will have lifeguards of bronze medallion standard – the lowest grade for a volunteer in Australia.

When Senator Maclean claims that the RNLI will give Jersey an equivalent ‘or even better’ service, it is hard to take him seriously. It’s like comparing a team playing in the Trinity Shield with Manchester United.

Jersey should be aware of this dangerous piece of cost-cutting. If a life is lost by any failure in this service, it will be on our heads.