Cheshire firefighters set for a boost with station refurbishments

That’s the message from Gus O’Rourke, assistant chief fire officer at Cheshire Fire and Rescue Service.

It comes as the Cheshire Fire Authority embarks on an £8.5 million renovation programme, which will see 21 of the county’s ageing fire stations be upgraded in the next five years.

He said: “We always try to be a good, responsible employer. We want to look after and protect the people of Cheshire, but we also want to look after our own people.

“I keep saying this to anyone who will listen to me – the men and women who work at our fire stations are prepared to do and give a lot. They give literally everything and they deserve better.

“A better team spirit, a more cohesive team, better training facilities – that makes for a better team when a 999 call comes in and they are obviously going to perform better.”

Middlewich Fire Station will be one of the first to be upgraded in 2019-20, while Holmes Chapel and Northwich are among the stations to follow in 2020-21.

Knutsford Fire Station is set to be upgraded in 2021-22, while Winsford is expected to follow in 2022-23 and Wilmslow is due to be refurbished in 2023-24.

Meanwhile, Cheshire Fire Authority is pushing through plans for new stations in Chester and Crewe, while four new stations have already been built elsewhere in recent years.

But with fire chiefs emphasising the need for state-of-the-art facilities in Chester, will the refurbishment of the other stations be good enough for the firefighters who work there?

Mr O’Rourke said: “We have done a survey of all our sites. The decision for Chester was that it did need to be knocked down and rebuilt, but some of the sites need only a small refurb.

“If you think of some of our on-call stations, they are very small buildings that only house one fire engine, so they don’t need anything near the amount of money spent on them.”