Kent Fire and Rescue Service
Safety and Wellbeing Plan 2022

We are starting the process of planning to redevelop our live fire training facility at Ashford. This will provide a state of the art facility for trainees and existing firefighters to practice the skills of firefighting in buildings in realistic scenarios and temperatures.

Elsewhere, if it is commercially viable, we would like to modernise and redevelop our existing site at Maidstone which houses our fire station, distribution centre, our urban search and rescue team and our training centre. Most of the buildings on this site date from the 1970s and so are in need of redevelopment. Added to this is the fact that grouping all of these functions together in inadequate and out-of-date buildings does not represent the most effective way of utilising them. As a result, our plan is to move the training centre, distribution centre and urban search and rescue centre to other, more modern and suitable parts of our estate. This is because our fire stations are more than just buildings, they play as important a role in our ability to provide an effective fire and rescue service as the equipment and vehicles that we use. And, just like all of our equipment and vehicles, it’s key that we ensure our buildings are kept up-to-date and fit for purpose. There is more detail on why we want to do this in the assets and environment strategy which is available on our website.

We also plan to make more use of home working and hybrid working and therefore will need less office space in future.