Revised plans approved for delayed Rugby fire training centre

The delayed new fire training centre in Rugby nudged a step closer after county councillors approved tweaked plans this week.

Permission for the facility where fire and rescue situations can be simulated was granted for the vacant plot of Warwickshire County Council-owned land on Paynes Lane, Rugby, back in June 2023. The site was most recently used as a highways depot but has lay dormant since 2021.

Alongside the fire house, there will be a welfare building containing changing rooms, showers, toilets, storage, offices, meeting rooms and a kitchenette.

The county’s regulatory committee, the panel of county councillors which takes such decisions, was asked to refresh its permission to allow changes to the site layout, including an extra storage building and new dimensions for the welfare building, and landscaping.

The welfare building will still be two storeys high but now slightly wider and 65 centimetres taller, although the fire training unit will still be significantly taller.

Planning officer Georg Urban said: “The reason for this change is that the applicant (county council) needed to appoint a contractor to construct this building and the original design was not chosen, a different contractor and manufacturer was chosen for this building.

“This is a modular building which would be brought to site in various sections and then bolted together.”

The additional 2.5-metre high equipment store is set to be placed on the northern edge of the site near the welfare building.

The revisions were approved without dissent, meaning work that started in February towards the council’s target completion date of “mid-2024” can continue.

In September 2023, a council report said the unit was due to be “sited and fully operational by February 2024” at a cost of just shy of £2.5 million.

By December, that date had moved out to April 2024 with costs jumping to £3 million, a doubling of the original budget which required £1.512 million to be transferred from money allocated to sprucing up Warwickshire Fire & Rescue’s headquarters in Leamington Spa.

Neither of those estimates accounted for the £750,000 fire training unit itself, something that was separately budgeted for.

In recommending approval of the changes, Councillor Adrian Warwick (Con, Fosse) said: “The principle of development has been approved for this site already.

“These are not major deviations from the original plan. It is an important facility, we need it, we have agreed that we want the facility and I see absolutely no problem with what has come before us today.”