Long-awaited plans to rebuild Newport Fire Station are set to be delayed as fire chiefs try to plug a budget gap – with maintaining the existing station expected to cost an extra £100,000 every year.
Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Authority is being asked to defer rebuilds at both Newport and Droxford, in Hampshire, as part of a wider programme to reduce and reprofile planned spending.
Preparatory work has already been completed on both schemes, but construction has not yet begun, so it is now being recommended that the projects are deferred, allowing money earmarked for the work to be released in the short term.
However, putting the Newport scheme on hold will come at a cost. An additional £100,000 a year will be needed to maintain the existing wholetime fire station until the rebuild can eventually be funded – whenever that may be.
It has also emerged that the amount already allocated to the Newport project would no longer be enough to deliver the planned rebuild. Fire chiefs say the latest estimates indicate construction costs are likely to be higher than originally anticipated, meaning additional funding would have to be found if the project went ahead.
The Authority says this is partly because it is “consistently experiencing higher costs for construction on the Isle of Wight than for comparable work on the mainland”. It describes the additional expense as an “Island premium”, which it says is not adequately reflected in the Government’s fire funding formula.
The wider financial review will also defer spending on vehicles and other estate projects. Across the revised capital programme as a whole, more than £10million of expenditure would be moved out of 2026/27.
It warns that some deferred estate expenditure may eventually have to be financed through borrowing if other capital funding cannot be found.
