Fire Service College

The Fire Service College is responsible for providing leadership, management and advanced operational training courses for senior fire officers from the UK and foreign fire authorities. It is located at Moreton-in-Marsh in Gloucestershire, England. It is an Executive Agency and comes under the authority of the Department for Communities and Local Government.



The college does not provide initial training for recruit firefighters; this training is provided by fire authorities at local or regional training establishments. While Scotland has its own Fire Service College at Gullane near Edinburgh, many Scottish fire officers come to Moreton on the more specialist and senior ranking courses.

History
Under the 1938 Fire Brigades Act, the UK Government set up a training centre at Saltdeane near Brighton in 1941, to train National Fire Service personnel. With the return to local authority control after World War II, the British government decided to standardise the way in which the fire service worked. The college at Saltdeane became too small and the Home Office opened the Senior Staff College at Wotton House, Dorking in Surrey in 1949, to train senior officers from all over the country. On 4 June 1966, they decided to do the same for the lower ranks and established the Fire Service College at Moreton. The College was built on a disused RAF wartime airfield about 3km outside the village of Moreton in Marsh.

Moreton was, the home station of 21 Operational Training Unit, Bomber Command responsible for the training of aircrew to fly Wellington bombers. The Station also flew operations, and sent aircraft on the large bomber raids on the German cities of Cologne, Dresden and Hamburg. The airbase remained operational until the late 1950s. The government then used the base to teach fire fighting to military personnel undergoing their National Service.

The Home Office opened the College on the 500 acre (2 km²) site in 1968. The first students while having most of the facilities seen today had no proper accommodation and were bunked in large Nissen huts (in the area that is now the cricket and football pitches), which originally housed the RAF personnel when it was an operational airbase. The Staff College at Dorking was closed in 1981 and all training was transferred to Moreton.

In April 1992, the college became an Executive Agency under the Fire Service Trading Fund Order 1992 (Statutory Instrument 1992 No. 640). In June 2001, the responsibility for the college transferred from the Home Office to the Department for Transport, Local Government and the Regions and just one year later to the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister and then to the Department for Communities and Local Government.

Today. it has a wide range of facilities for theoretical education and practical training in fire fighting, fire safety and accident and emergency work.

Education
Educationally, the college boasts state of the art lecture facilities and specialised areas such as IT suites, a chemistry laboratory and hydraulics laboratory. The tutors are drawn from both the academic world and from officers serving in fire and rescue services around the country. Courses available range from junior officer development to senior officer management courses right up to Chief Officer level. To support the educational side, there as a large administration complex and a library of fire related literature. Students come mainly from the UK but several countries such as Trinidad and Tobago, Hong Kong, Cyprus, Saudi Arabia, UAE and Gibraltar send students on a regular basis. Prior to the current troubles in various parts of the world, students from Iraq and Nigeria were a common sight at the college.

Operational training
Operational training is carried out in several purpose built areas of the college, these include
 * Breathing apparatus complex
 * Industrial complexes
 * Domestic property
 * High rise property
 * Areas for electrical, pool fire and fixed installation training
 * Small-scale versions of petroleum and chemical installations
 * A ship “Sir Henry”
 * A railway, which includes a section of rail with locomotives and carriages of various types, both passenger and freight.
 * A motorway (M96)
 * USAR (Urban Search and Rescue)
 * A range of aircraft including helicopters, military and civil passenger aircraft including a simulated Boeing 747
 * Fire behaviour units

To support the operational training the college has a fully equipped appliance room with some 25 appliances from different manufacturers including pumps, aerial appliances, rescue tenders, USAR vehicles and hazmats appliances. There is also a large workshop to maintain the appliances and all the other operational equipment used.

The M96 motorway is a short stretch of road at the college which imitates in detail a typical UK motorway; it is used to teach firefighters in training how to deal with road traffic accidents. It consists of one of the former runways of the airfield. The numbering of the motorway is not consistent with the Great Britain road numbering scheme; however its number is largely irrelevant, as it is not open to the public.

Social
The social and domestic facilities include
 * Standard and deluxe accommodation for 600 students
 * Television rooms and lounge areas
 * A chapel
 * The ’Four Shires’ Restaurant and bar complex
 * Sports complex with a 25 x 9m swimming pool, sauna, 4 squash courts a sports hall and fitness suite
 * Several football and cricket pitches
 * 2 Tennis Courts

Other uses
The college is also home to the Institution of Fire Engineers (IFE)

The BBC used the location to film the docudrama The Day Britain Stopped about a series of catastrophic transport accidents. For the purposes of the program, the motorway was temporarily rebranded "M91".

The college has been on occasions shut over weekends and used by the military and police for training, as the live fire buildings and complexes allow training in certain operational areas that cannot easily be carried out or reconstructed elsewhere.