The Area
The geographical area served by Sunderland West Community Fire Station varies greatly from former mining community residential villages to large 1960’s built private and council estates, and numerous light and heavy industrial factories of varying sizes. It also includes the largest vehicle manufacturing plant in England, namely NISSAN, with its associated satellitte industries.
The population, based on the 2001 Census, is 67,291 persons who are predominantly from Anglo-Saxon background (98%) with a relatively small ethnic group (2%). There are 27,725 dwellings within the Station area with approximately: -
Single parent families occupy 8.4% of dwelling, with 12.1% single pensioner households.
Levels of unemployment across this area vary from 9.6% for males and 5.6% for females. These figures reflect the wide variety of socio-economic groups residing within individual neighbourhoods, which can be linked to the risk of dwelling fires occurring within the area. This is illustrated in the above map of the station area (the red indicates areas where the risk of having a dwelling fire is well above average, orange is above average, yellow is average, blue is below average and green is well below average).
There is a great deal of new development being undertaken in the Washington area, with older estates such as Blackfell and Striding Edge being demolished and replaced by new housing, and a massive turn around in industrial units as companies move on and new companies relocate. This unfortunately means that at any one time there are a number of vacant industrial units that if not secured satisfactorily, invariably mean that they have the potential to be set on fire.
