Fire Service College

The Fire Service College is responsible for providing leadership, management and advanced operational training courses for senior fire officers from the United Kingdom and foreign fire authorities. It is located at Moreton-in-Marsh in Gloucestershire, England. The nearest railway station is Moreton-in-Marsh. It has been owned by Capita since February 2013, having previously been an executive agency and trading fund of the Department for Communities and Local Government.The College provides the full range of training for firefighters at all levels, including initial training for recruit firefighters. 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.The College has a wide range of facilities for theoretical education and practical training in fire fighting, fire safety and accident and emergency work.HistoryUnder the Fire Brigades Act 1938, 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 about 3 km outside the village of Moreton-in-Marsh.