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. Whilst Scotland has its own Fire Service College at Gullane near Edinburgh, many Scottish fire officers go 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 Saltdean 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 Saltdean 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...
Read More