New National Fire Estates Group To Be Set Up Posted on: December 11th, 2018 A National Fire Estates Group is being set up to enable brigades across the country to share and develop innovative property solutions. Alex Brown, Head of Property Capital Projects & Estates at the Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Services, revealed at the Blue Light Estates Development Conference said that the newly formed group are set to meet for the first time in June 2019. The group are still being established but it aims to provide technical and professional advice as well as share best practice amongst those in the sector. It will provide fire estates officers with the same kind of national umbrella body that the police service enjoys and will also develop and promote national design standard. Brown admitted that delivering co-located facilities isn’t ‘all plain sailing’ however, with many fire stations unable to relocate due to operational reasons: “Some areas must remain separate for operational or information protection requirements.” [emaillocker id=”71749″] The delivery of Berkshire’s first tri-service community fire station at Crowthorne had ‘nearly floundered’ due to the ‘inordinate time’ it had taken to sort out lease issues, whilst there had been basic ‘housekeeping issues’ over the station’s common areas. Terry Scott, Estates Manager of Nottinghamshire Fire & Rescue Service, said that its station replacement programme has ‘slowed down’ in recent years. The service, which has 27 sites across the county and a £2.5m annual capital budget, has reduced the of new fire station construction from one every two years to three. The programme is designed to deliver the service’s long-term objective to replace or refurbish all its aging buildings within the next 10-15 years. Over the last eight years, the service has seen its revenue budget decline in cash terms by £6.8mto £41.3m, which is due to fall again to £39m in 2019/20. The Nottinghamshire service’s biggest project is the relocation of its HQ onto the same site as the county’s police force – with construction of a new joint fire and police HQ at Sherwood Lodge on the outskirts of Nottingham set to start in 2020. The project will include the co-location of departments in a mix of new and existing accommodation, as well as increasing the number of car parking spaces from 400 to 950. Other current projects in the pipeline include the £400,000 replacement of Hucknall’s on-call fire station with Nottinghamshire’s first tri-service collaboration hub, which is due to start on site in early January. The tender is also due to go out in early 2019 for the replacement of Worksop’s full time fire station – with a new site already purchased. Scott also aid the One Public Estate (OPE) is funding a feasibility study to replace Eastwood’s on-call fire station to create a local services hub. The project, the biggest OPE will have undertaken in Nottinghamshire, will bring many services into one hub including: · Fire · NHS · Doctors · Library · Food Bank · Citizens Advice Simon Richard, Property Services Manager at Avon Fire & Rescue Service, said relocation onto alternative sites is often constrained by mismatches in land value: “Nine out of ten times, you could sell sites to buy another for the same cost. You don’t want to sell off the estate for housing and not have a station to deal with potential incidents in the future.” Richards also told delegates that the nature of the demand for fire services means they need to be able to recruit people within a very close radius of the building. One of the hurdles of sharing facilities between blue light service is differing levels of security requirements, he said, pointing for an example to the police force’s need to store weapons. He added that the service don’t receive as many calls from new housing-developments, which pose a lower level of risk than older properties: “The number of fire calls is reducing but we still have a growing role in prevention and protection.” Stephen McGlade, Head of Estates & Facilities for Cheshire Fire & Rescue and Cheshire Constabulary, said the county’s services have been combined over the past two years. It makes more sense for police to be co-located in fire stations rather than the other way around, he said: “As fire services, we use one vehicle that could not be located readily in police stations so it made sense for the police to use fire buildings where possible which then allows surplus stations to be disposed of.” The two forces have commissioned a feasibility study, due to be delivered in early 2019, into a combined fire and police station on a currently dilapidated site in Crewe. Due to open in 2021/22 and at an anticipated cost of £11.5m the building would be £2m cheaper than two additional new builds besides ongoing revenue savings. The Cheshire services are also working on developing further joint sites at Warrington and Wilmslow as well as undertaking an £8.5m project to modernise all of its 28 stations across the next five years. [/emaillocker]
