Estates strategy

The provision of a safe working environment and facilities to support response and training is essential. Maintaining a property portfolio that remains fit for purpose requires long-term planning, considering future potential operational requirements, the condition of the current building stock and affordability and sustainability considerations.

Our ambition

Our estates strategy supports our ambition to be an outstanding fire and rescue service in the following ways:

• By building trust and relationships with communities and partners through the provision of community access and facilities, where they are needed
• By realising productivity and efficiency gains through improved buildings management
• By providing a safe, positive and accessible working environment and good training facilities which supports our ambition to be an employer of choice
• By ensuring the property portfolio provides a safe working environment for colleagues, visitors and partners that supports organisational efficiency and enables the activities of the Service to mitigate community risk
• By working towards the decarbonisation of our estate, with a clear strategy for achieving a carbon neutral estate by 2050
• By ensuring that our property portfolio is affordable, sustainable, meets the needs of the organisation and provides long term value for money

Where we want to be

During the life of this strategy, we aim to:

• Develop a coherent and achievable strategy to deliver a carbon neutral estate by 2050, in line with the government's timescale for achieving net-zero
• Build new fire stations

  As part of our ongoing long term programme of renewal we will be redeveloping Stockhill fire station and, finance permitting, commencing work on a second new build

• Complete accessibility and inclusion upgrades

  The multi-year programme to upgrade facilities at on-call stations to ensure that facilities are appropriate and accessible for our diversifying workforce and communities will continue to completion

• Invest in our training facilities on stations, to support core operational training needs, and enhance facilities at SDC

  Training facilities on station include towers, which are the subject of a continuing programme of maintenance and repair. Enhancements to the training facilities at SDC are required, subject to available financing and the grant of required planning permissions.

  Our priorities are the provision of a compartment fire behaviour training container for the Service Development Centre to improve training capability and the installation of structural steels to replace anchor bolts to facilitate Safe Working at Height (SwaH) training

• Reduce environmental impact of our estate as part of decarbonisation roadmap

  Many of our stations still have fossil fuel heating and hot water systems and inefficient or obsolete lighting. As part of our decarbonisation roadmap, we need to increase our use of renewable energy and energy efficient building systems and solutions. Where possible, we will take advantage of grant funding to assist with the cost of decarbonisation

• Reduce the running costs of stations

  Running costs include utilities (gas, electricity, water), business rates, planned and preventative maintenance and reactive maintenance. We aim to reduce our consumption of utilities through the leverage of increased and improved quality consumption data to drive behavioural change and improve energy efficiency on our sites and stations

• Replace our access control system

  The current access control system (SIPASS) is at end of life and will shortly be unsupported. The hardware is becoming obsolete and challenging to source. The software will be replaced and all hardware and wiring infrastructure on stations will be upgraded. This will impact all sites and stations with the exception of JHQ

• Re-tender the contract for our computer-aided facilities management system

  Concerto is our current computer-aided facilities management system, and the contract is due to expire in 2027/28. A full procurement will be required to renew or replace this system, which should aim to deliver a solution that improves our efficiency and/or effectiveness

• Re-tender the MAC Hard FM contract

  The MAC is our current Hard FM planned statutory compliance and reactive maintenance and minor works contract which although not due to expire until 2027 is expected to breach the contract value threshold during the financial year 2027

• Renew Soft FM contracts

  Our soft FM contract covers services including grounds maintenance, cleaning and window cleaning. This contract expires in 2028/29. It is a large and complex contract which will take time and resource to re-tender. Through frameworks and benchmarking, we would aim to deliver efficiency savings with the new contracts

• Embed a central building management system (BMS)

  The building management system (BMS) enables centralised monitoring and control of facilities, including heating, air conditioning and lighting. By integrating stations into a BMS, we will be able to better understand their use and drive down running costs

• Renegotiate and renew expiring leases and licences

  We lease and licence the use of space in several of our stations. We also lease and licence space and/or services from others. A number of these leases and licences are coming up for renewal over the next couple of years

Operating context and drivers for change

The composition of our property portfolio is shaped primarily by the demands placed upon us by our statutory duties, as set out in primary legislation. We need to be able to provide an appropriate emergency response to foreseeable risks in our area. The number of fire stations we need, their locations and required facilities are determined by an assessment of the risks of fire and other emergencies. Similarly, the requirement for training facilities and other office space is determined by our need to support our core service delivery. All decisions relating to new buildings and major refurbishments are taken in the context of a strategic assessment of risk and a fire cover review. The demand for, and scope to accommodate community facilities is also a design consideration in major projects.

We currently have 24 fire stations located across the county, each with its own set of operational, training and community facilities. Our Service Development Centre near Ollerton is our base for initial firefighter training, core competence training and revalidation. Our incident command training is located in a purpose-built facility in Mansfield fire station.

In addition to the central training facility, training is delivered across our estate via station end facilities which have the necessary infrastructure to enable maintenance of core skills and any relevant specialist competence specific to the station. When planning new stations and designing infrastructure, ease of access to training facilities is a key design principle to ensure crews have local access to necessary core and technical training facilities e.g. BA skills, drill yard, pumping and hydrant, specialist rescue etc., and this is aligned to local risk.

Our headquarters is home to our strategic leadership team and many of our support staff. We are co-located with Nottinghamshire Police in a joint headquarters facility at Sherwood Lodge in Gedling.

The estate must provide sufficient resilience to support business continuity. Capacity for business continuity management is considered as part of all new builds and major refurbishments. As a minimum, the estate must provide:

• Alternative ICT server location with N+2 power resilience
• Alternative Operations Command Centre
• Hot desk capacity to provide alternative workspaces
• ICT infrastructure to provide for the above
• Agile and remote working capability, infrastructure and equipment

Any significant building works must comply with a range of legislation, including but not limited to:

• Buildings Act 1984 and Building Regulations 2020
• Equality Act 2010, in respect of accessibility requirements
• Health and Safety at Work Act (1974)
• Climate Change Act 2008
• Construction (Design & Maintenance) Regulations 2015
• An extensive legal framework governing the procurement of services

Other factors which influence decisions include:

• Industry best practice
• Political factors, such as local/ national government initiative and targets, Government Functional Standards
• Economic climate including inflation, fuel/material costs and availability, and the availability and competence of resources
• A statutory duty to explore opportunities for collaboration with other blue-light services, where it is in the public interest to do so, as set out in the Police and Crime Act 2017

The Finance and Resources committee of the Combined Fire Authority must authorise any acquisition or disposal of property or land prior to any offer to purchase or sell being made. The legal transfer of property into ownership must be done in the name of "Nottinghamshire and City of Nottingham Fire Authority". An approved agent must be used for all transactions involving property or land. In accordance with the 'One Public Estate' programme, any sale of property or land should be first offered to other public sector organisations before being openly marketed for sale.

We have a statutory duty to maintain a compliant estate and conduct safety inspections. All buildings and their fixtures/ equipment are subject to regular checks for safety and function. This includes checks on water systems (Legionella), electrical installations (fixed wire checks), BA compressors, gas and boiler installations (pressure systems), kitchen and laundry appliances and the fabric of the buildings. The frequency of these checks varies.

Strategic drivers for change:

• Statutory obligations arising out of any changes in health and safety legislation that may impact our estate
• Statutory obligations relating to decarbonisation, with interim targets and timescales to meet within an overall requirement to be carbon neutral by 2050
• Contaminant management to improve health and safety provisions for those working and visiting our premises
• Economic climate / pressures

Resources/ delivery model

We have a small Estates team who oversee the estates and facilities management. They also administer the security and access control arrangements across the fire service estate (not including JHQ). They take the lead in the design, development and project management of all new builds and major refurbishments.

The majority of hard and soft facilities management, including much of our planned and preventative maintenance activity, statutory safety checks and defect resolution, is outsourced to third parties through a soft services contract and a multi-activity contractor (MAC) contract.

As part of our statutory duty to collaborate, where there is benefit in doing so, we will lease or licence space within our estate to other blue light agencies, partners and community groups. The team manages a range of collaboration arrangements including:

• Accommodation within our estate is shared and / or leased by Nottinghamshire Police / Nottingham Emergency Planning Team, EMAS / First Responders, St John Ambulance and the Red Cross
• We have a fuel and jet wash sharing agreement with Nottinghamshire Police
• We are tenants of EMAS at Hucknall and are joint owners of JHQ with Nottinghamsire Police under a deed of trust
• We have an agreement with Virgin / 02 to host a Telecoms Mast

Delivering the strategy

Over the life of this strategy, we will deliver the following:

Outcomes

The successful delivery of this strategy will result in:

• A new community fire station to replace Stockhill, which will be more energy efficient with the aim of self-generating at least 50% of its own energy requirements and providing heating and hot water requirements through renewable energy sources
• Delivering the capital programme within budget/ on programme
• Efficiency savings in installing and operating more energy efficient plant, equipment and controls, and in utilising sources of data to target behavioural change on stations as part of our journey to net zero
• Replacement access control system implemented
• New Hard and Soft FM Contracts
• New CAFM Contract