Plans to redevelop Bath and Weston-super-Mare’s fire stations have been put on hold.
Photo courtesy of Avon Fire & Rescue Service
Avon Fire and Rescue Service said that the plans were still “on our radar” but they did not want to be tied down, as it was not the right time to borrow money for the work on the two Somerset fire stations.
The move comes as costs have increased on the refurbishment of Bedminster Fire Station in Bristol.
At a meeting of the fire authority on 17th February, Bath and North East Somerset Council member Shelly Bromley asked when the rebuild of Bath Fire Station would take place.
The fire station was built in 1938 and now has defects which need to be fixed.
Angela Feeney, director of corporate services for Avon Fire and Rescue Services, said: “It’s certainly still on our radar and still definitely something that we want to do.”
But she said that it was not possible to put a date on it.
She told the meeting: “It has been a disappointment for us as well, both that we are not able to do that and also we really wanted that tri-service flagship didn’t we and spent some considerable time on that so it is a disappointment to us.
“What we have said in [the fire authority’s capital programme] is that we will be looking at our capital strategy, in particular around Bath, in the next few years because we obviously need to find the optimal time to borrow — which isn’t at the moment.”
She added: “You’ll see on our capital programme that we’ve built in facility to actually do some work in Bath in the interim, given what we know about the state of that building.”
Avon Fire and Rescue Service’s property services manager Simon Richards added: “The building is obviously displaying a number of defects that we are going to have to address, potentially within this capital program, so we have allocated some money aside to do that.”
He added that plans to build a standalone fire station could be “reinvigorated” if it became a better time to borrow.
But he said: “It’s difficult to give a date, and things are so volatile at the moment that we wouldn’t really want to tie ourselves down to this at this stage.”
£1.8 million has been allocated for general maintenance and structural issues across the fire authority in the next three years.
In the same time period, £3.1m has been allocated to fund the refurbishment of Bedminster Fire Station in Bristol.
John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter
