Councillors to debate plans to sell Staffordshire fire headquarters

Councillors will debate controversial proposals to sell off Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Service’s headquarters.

Staffordshire Commissioner Ben Adams is looking at potential options for disposing of the fire service’s HQ at Pirehill, near Stone, and using the funds to build a new facility elsewhere.

Plans to outsource the service’s training and development function are also being considered.

The proposals are at an early stage of development, and no final decisions have been taken.

But elected members at Staffordshire Moorlands District Council have raised concerns over the potential impact on residents’ and firefighters’ safety – particularly with the likelihood of hotter summers with more wildfires in the coming years.

They say that maintaining ‘first class’ in-house training facilities will help ensure a quality service for Staffordshire.

Councillors will debate a motion calling on Mr Adams to withdraw the proposals during the full council meeting on Wednesday, 16 September.

The motion states: “The fire service is an emergency service that responds to a massively diverse number of incidents and with crews that are professionally trained to the highest standards. The benefits of that training have been demonstrated to all during this summer heatwave’s record number of fires. That sustained pressure on an already depleted service is only likely to increase.

“Firefighters are disciplined professionals working in teams and with an ethos instilled in them through a rigorous training programme. The Staffordshire headquarters sits at the heart of that structure with a first-class training facility run by operational instructors who have come through the fire service – from probationary firefighter through to professional qualified instructors.

“This structure ensures that each and every firefighter is trained to the highest – and to the same – standards. It helps make the fire service a family that live, work, and train together and with a bond of trust that could not be replicated by a commercial organisation.”

Mr Adams declined to comment on the motion ahead of the council meeting. But he has previously told Radio Stoke of the need to ‘balance the books’ while investing in frontline services in the face of government funding cuts.

Newcastle-under-Lyme MP Adam Jogee wrote to Mr Adams last month to express his ‘profound concerns’ over the proposals. He said that losing the service’s in-house training function would ‘inevitably raise legitimate questions about firefighter safety, organisational resilience and, ultimately, the safety of the public’.