Fire Service College

[Tryfan]

Out of interest does every fire and rescue service use the fire service college in Moreton for the Initial Firefighter training course or do some FRS use their own in-house training centres? 

[Carl]

Greater Manchester do it all in house.

[TandA]

Essex have normally done theirs in house, although recently we have sent a few squads to Moreton for at least the initial part of the recruit course.  Not sure if that is the intention going forward or whether that’s a temporary thing.

[Aspire]

London is normally all on house, but like Essex, did send a couple squads there due to capacity issues locally. 

[Jet]

Two weeks at Moreton used to be a core part of the LFB recruits course. That was before Babcock when it was 17 weeks.

Many smaller brigades may use it for their recruits. I know a few Irish brigades do (or did) as they tend to take on very few numbers at a time, so not worth being set up to train recruits in-house.

[Keith]

14 hours ago, Aspire said:

London is normally all on house

Is that strictly true though, given its done by Babcock? Surely not much different than by Capita at the FSC.

[Becile]

Surrey all in house

[Aspire]

9 hours ago, Keith said:

Is that strictly true though, given its done by Babcock? Surely not much different than by Capita at the FSC.

Well, my answer was given in context of the topic being specifically about FSC. The venues used at Harrow, Plaistow, Park Royal belong to LFB, but I definitely get your point.

[Luminoki]

West mids in house, i know H&W have sent the last course and the upcoming one there

[Tryfan]

Speaking to a friend she said in Cumbria (which she’s in) did theirs in house too which surprised me, as I thought now every service would just go to the fire college. Especially as the RAF firefighters have now moved from Manston to the college. 

[Carl]

5 hours ago, Tryfan said:

Especially as the RAF firefighters have now moved from Manston to the college

Not sure of the correlation here, but the FSC has simply become too expensive.

We do 75% of our Incident Command Courses in house now and invite other services in.

[Becile]

@Carlsame here

[C_Iain]

Northumberland is run in-house as well now and it’s certainly one of the smaller brigades.