Cost of long-awaited fire and rescue training centre in Rugby now double

Warwickshire Fire & Rescue’s delayed training centre in Rugby is set to double in cost with the budget for an office revamp slashed to pay for it.

Warwickshire County Council’s deputy leader and portfolio holder for finance and property Councillor Peter Butlin (Con, Admirals & Cawston) has been advised to sign off the switch of £1.512 million to the project from the budget that had been allocated to sprucing up the service’s headquarters in Leamington.

It tops up an existing budget of £1.5 million for the training centre that the council proposes to build on a vacant plot of its own land at Paynes Lane, Rugby, near the Cemex plant.

On top of the £3 million for the centre, the Minerva fire training unit itself is costing more than £750,000 but that has been budgeted for.

The facility will give firefighters somewhere to simulate fire and rescue situations, allowing them to run through scenarios such as entering a building that is on fire or filled with smoke and undertake breathing apparatus training and multi-pump exercises.

It is set to include a welfare building with changing rooms, showers, toilets, storage and drying rooms for equipment, offices and meeting rooms and a kitchen area.

The service’s offices in Leamington had been due to receive more than £2 million worth of funding “to upgrade and modernise the office space”.

That work will now be scaled back to fit within a budget of £640,000, a position Warwickshire Fire & Rescue Service area manager Dan Glorioso explained in the report that will inform Cllr Butlin’s decision on Thursday (December 14).

It read: “The Leamington office space is dated but meets the basic requirements of a workplace.

“Since Covid-19, there has been significant change to the ways in which staff use workspaces. The council estate is now used much differently and colleagues work in a more fluid and agile way.

“Whilst the Leamington office space is still utilised regularly, seven days a week, colleagues now work from a variety of locations including Shire Hall, fire stations and from home.

“Such changes in working patterns and locations mean that there is less pressure on the Leamington office space and therefore less of a need to invest capital to the same extent on upgrading the office space.”

Explaining the cost increase for the training centre, the report cites problems with settling on a suitable location having procured the Minerva unit, adding: “In addition, market conditions have also changed fundamentally and inflation has led to increased costs for capital works, meaning that the overall cost of the scheme has grown.”

It also says the training centre “is programmed to be delivered in April 2024”.

In September, a different council report said it was due to be “sited and fully operational by February 2024” at a cost of just shy of £2.5 million.

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