‘Momentous day’ as training centre opens in Cookstown

A long delayed training college for the Northern Ireland fire service has been described as “out of this world”.

The chief fire and rescue officer said the opening of the state-of-the-art facility, just outside Cookstown, was a “momentous day”.

Trainee Caoimhe McNeice said the facilities were “mind-blowing”.

The plan for the centre was first announced more than 20 years ago, and initially it was going to be a larger training college that included the police and prison service.

In 2015 plans for the college were radically redrawn and in 2021 planning permission was granted for a £42m facility that catered for the Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service (NIFRS) only.

Both the prison service and the police were instead given extra money for training and to refurbish existing facilities.

Trainee Caoimhe McNeice, from Belfast, said she had wanted to be a firefighter for as long as she could remember.

“I knew whenever I arrived here that it was going to be tough, it was going to be challenging and it was,” she told BBC News NI.

“But it’s blew my mind, the facilities here are out of this world and they’re real-life scenarios.

“I know that whenever I go out, I’m going to be fully prepared for what I’m going to see out at the station.”

Another trainee, Pearse McCaffrey, said the facilities were incredible.

“The most real thing that I’ve done is in a burning building and bringing the hose up in through three storeys of a building and going into a live fire and searching for casualties,” he said.

“It was very real, it was very warm and really gets you to understand where you are and understand your surroundings.”

NIFRS chief Aidan Jennings told Good Morning Ulster the facility was “a symbol of our commitment to excellence and life-long learning and the safety of the community we serve”.

“Our profession is unique, every second counts, every decision matters and this college I know will prepare our people for the instances they will face and today is the beginning of that learning and training and development,” he added.

Mr Jennings said he was delighted the “world-class” training centre was open and his officers could now train in environments they have never been able to replicate before.

“They’ll experience what it’s like to enter burning buildings, to rescue trapped people from road traffic collisions, work in high and confined spaces, collapsed structures and to work in that water rescue facility in serious flooding conditions,” he said.

The Northern Ireland Fire & Rescue Service Learning & Development College (LDC) at Desertcreat includes a floodwater rescue facility, a call-out village, a training warehouse, a barn and slurry pit and a tactical firefighting facility.

It represented the largest capital investment in the fire service’s history.

Proposals for the site at Desertcreat have been dogged by problems since the Policing Board initially announced in February 2004 that a £80m police training college for Northern Ireland would be built there.

Planning permission was first granted in 2005 for a state-of-the art college, but it was later reported the same year that the new academy would cost £50m more than expected and would not be completed until 2009.

Then in February 2007, the government announced it planned to provide all the funding for a new joint police, fire and prison service college at the 210-acre site.

Planning permission was granted for that training centre in 2013, but in November 2014 a steering group overseeing the development said the project should not continue.

The scheme was subsequently scrapped and it later emerged that Northern Ireland had lost £53m of public money that had been earmarked for the joint training college, with a Stormont committee being told the Treasury had withdrawn the funding.

Plans for the college were then radically redrawn in 2015.

It was announced the fire and rescue service would get a £44m purpose-built complex at Desertcreat, while the PSNI would be given about £20m to refurbish its existing training facilities in east Belfast.

The prison service instead received funding for training at Maghaberry and Magilligan prisons.