2020 target date for new £12 million Telford fire station

Ahead of the Shropshire and Wrekin Fire and Rescue Authority Meeting, it has been revealed that plans for the new station are progressing.

In June, members gave their approval for the significant programme of works for the redevelopment of Telford Fire Station at Stafford Park.

The fire authority and West Mercia Police are working together to cost up the plans.

It has been revealed that the work could cost as much as £12 million although this would not become clear until discussions have been completed with West Mercia Police and until fully costed tenders have been received from prospective contractors, which will not be for another several months yet.

West Mercia Police will have training facilities on the premises and will cover some of the costs involved.

The fire service is now in the process of procuring the professional project design and management services, required to support the project, and work has already started on refining the requirements of the work.

Although the discussions on cost are still to be finalised, the service is continuing to plan to the assumption that the project will be completed by April 2020.

Revealed as part of the Integrated Risk Management Plan Update papers which will go to the meeting on Wednesday, it says any reserves available from the fire authority were likely to make up a substantial amount of any funding required.

The report says: "But these balances will not cover the entire project and therefore other options will require consideration by the authority.

"Some of these options will involve increases in the revenue budget and the authority should compare the additional cost to the taxpayer with the value to be gained from improved facilities at Telford, when making their determination on which option to take.

"Any final funding decisions will be made after the tendering process is complete, and the actual cost of the project is clear."

The project is one of three projects being run as part of the authority's integrated risk management plan.

Another is changes to wholetime duty system, made by the fire authority in December 2016.

The changes to the system for on-call system were made in a bid to save the authority £400,000 a year up until 2020.

The report says: "The pilot of this new system was started on January 1 2017 and, at their meeting on 26 April 2017, members were informed that the new system was running very effectively, with 100 per cent availability of the wholetime fire engines being maintained and approximately £100k of savings already having been achieved, in comparison to the same period the previous year.

"The pilot has continued to run just as effectively, since April, with 100 per cent availability of the fire engines continuing to be maintained and current predictions being that at least £350k of savings are likely to be accrued during this pilot year; well on track to achieve the targeted efficiency savings by 2020."