Plans to build a new fire station in Glossop have been put on hold and will be revised, fire chiefs have confirmed.

An application was submitted last December to High Peak Borough Council to demolish the existing station and outbuildings at Whitfield Park, which were built in 1972 and are viewed as being no longer fit for purpose.

The proposals also involved constructing a new station and a new smoke training building on site, with increased parking within the development.

Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service has said it has deferred the planned build for up to 18 months due to rising material costs and interest rates as a result of the current economic climate, with the estimated cost of the project jumping from £3.3 million to over £6 million.

The plans for Glossop were part of the authority’s capital programme of work, which also included building new stations in New Mills and Matlock by 2025 at a combined initial cost of almost £9 million.

Speaking to the Chronicle at Glossop's Charlestown Road station, Derbyshire's Deputy Chief Fire Officer Rob Taylor said it was "a really difficult decision" to defer the new build but also one that enables a more cost-effective solution to be found. 

Artist impressions of the plans for the new fire station, which were submitted to High Peak Borough Council in December 2021

“Primarily we’re keen to put a new state-of-the-art facility in Glossop to serve the community but also for the firefighters here,” he explained. “We’ve got mixed duty systems here with a big on-call contingent so there are a lot of people from the local community who work here.

“It’s an old station and our Asset team say it’s coming to the end of its structural life. Around two years ago, we made the decision through our Fire Authority to put a new state-of-the-art station here with the best facilities for the firefighters and the local communities.

“The initial build was pitched at around £3.3 million and, at various points over the two years since, we’ve taken it back to the Fire Authority as the scheme has crept to say revised estimates based on inflationary materials, prices and labour costs has kicked it up another several hundred thousand pounds.

“We took it back in and said this is where we are, at the time we still recommended there was good value for money here so we progressed with it. Then it came to a point around three months ago, after about the third or fourth time we took it back in, that the revised estimate was around £4.9 million. We got approval from the Fire Authority, it was a harder sell but said we still think that represents reasonable value of money and we recommend you progress and they gave approval up to £5 million.

“Unfortunately when the tenders came back after we went out to tender, those prices were over £6 million so almost double the price of the initial scheme. That made the decision really difficult on whether it was still the right thing to put that fire station as we’d defined it and wanted to build it here and whether that represented value for money for the communities.

“It was felt at the time that it wasn’t the right use of public money and we needed to firstly defer it or put our foot on the ball. By doing that we’re hoping the wider economic picture might slacken a bit, some of the cost of borrowing and material costs might come down and as the building industry slows a little bit, we might see some more competitive and favourable quotes.

“So we’ve got an eye on that but also we thought actually it’s probably not the right build for Glossop based on what we can get for our money so let’s have another look at the build - predominantly the footprint I think is what we’re going to look at, the same facilities - and see if we can revise that provision and build it at a time where we get the best value for money.”

Rob Taylor, Deputy Chief Fire Officer for Derbyshire Fire and Rescue Service, at Glossop Fire Station 

Five options considered 

Mr Taylor said five options were considered by chiefs before it was agreed to defer and reimagine the plans for Glossop.

“We took it to our senior management teams and people across the organisation to look at the way forward,” he said. “The first option was to accept the tender is what it is and progress anyway - that was unanimously rejected as not the right thing to do and not the right value for public money.

“The second was to stop and scrap the current scheme as it was and look at refurbishing the station. The issue with that idea is when it came in two-and-a-half years ago for approval for a new station, we did look at refurbing it and at the time it was felt that the money to put into refurbing it for the extension of life wouldn’t add up.

“That’s even worse now when we look at it so we’re talking well in excess of £2 million for a refurb to bring it up to somewhere where we’d like it to be. What it wouldn’t do is fundamentally change the life of the building or alter the structure - we would still have an outdated 50-year-old fire station that we’ve pumped even more money into so we felt it would be an even worse use of public money.

“The third option was to defer it separately so not look at revisiting the plans, just to defer and wait out the economic climate and see if there’s a better time where we get more for our pound. The fourth option was to revise the scheme so have a look at the plans, bring people on board and see if we can do something a bit smarter and cleverer with the build.

“The fifth option was to do the third and fourth options together so both wait out the economic environment and at the same time draw up some new plans so when we feel like the time is right we can push the button ready to go, get a new smarter station and more for our money. So that is where we got to and what the Fire Authority approved, so that’s what we’ve been talking to our organisation about.

“The crew were disappointed when I came to speak to them about it which I understand but they were absolutely professional. Once that had sunk in, they were really keen to get on board with what’s on the table and what we can make out of it so that was really encouraging.”

What do Glossop firefighters think? 

We spoke to several crew members to see what they thought of the news. Although there was disappointment that they will have to wait longer for much-needed new facilities, there was general agreement that the authority has taken a sensible course of action in these challenging times.

David Pitt said: “Practically for us, this station does what it needs to do. There could be a better version of it but, financially for the service, it’s more beneficial for Glossop to have two appliances and enough people to run them, rather than a great big shiny station with nobody to be here.

“In the fire service, as soon as you take money from one area to build something, it usually cuts something else. The last thing we want is to lose frontline appliances or personnel. So we’ll make do with this as long as it keeps a couple of fire engines here and the right amount of people.”

Reece Barker added: “With the rising costs and mortgages going up, they just need to see how it’s going to play out. Obviously when you’re talking millions of pounds, it adds up a lot so they just need to see where they are financially. It is what it is. It’s disappointing because we would have got better facilities sooner but you can’t get £6 million from nowhere and we’ve got everything we need here at the moment.”

(from left to right) Adam Mears, Reece Barker, Josh Charlesworth, Beth Kent, Rob Taylor and David Pitt outside Glossop Fire Station 

Beth Kent said it’s clear that the facilities at the current station need to be improved in the long term.

“For now they are fit for use but long term it’s not going to last,” she told us. “It’s disappointing they’re not going to proceed as planned but obviously prices are going up so it can’t really be helped.”

Adam Mears added: “I’m only on rotation so I don’t know all of the ins and outs but it does make sense to postpone it at least for a bit but you can definitely see the need for it, when you compare it to more modern stations, that it needs a revamp or potentially a new station.”

Crew manager Josh Charlesworth said training facilities would be the biggest improvement required of a new station.

“Operationally it’s important we have more specialist facilities for training,” he explained. “We’ve got a tower here where we can put ladders up but we would have a specialist building practising breathing apparatus which is quite modern where you can move about so it will keep firefighters refreshed with their BA skills which will in turn keep them safer.

“We’ll get there eventually, it’s just disappointing now. It’s quite an old building and it costs a lot to maintain it but we will get something hopefully. But at almost double the price, it’s not feasible really.”

Listen to more of the crew members' reaction to the news here:

'Glossop certainly isn't being forgotten about' 

In a final message, Mr Taylor said he wanted to reassure the local community and firefighters that Glossop “certainly isn’t being forgotten about”.

The DCFO commented: “Glossop remains a strategic priority for us as an organisation. We’ve invested quite heavily in recent years in recruiting for our on-call establishment here to try to improve our levels of fire cover so the community are getting the service they deserve.

“I think some fire stations are getting forgotten in their communities, fire stations always used to be the heart and the hub of communities. We would really like to put Glossop back on the map, let people know where it is and what it’s about.

“We will do some workshops locally where we’ll reach out to local residents and partners to ask for their opinion and we would be really interested in hearing from them.”

You can listen to the full interview with Rob Taylor here:

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