A Fire Cover Review of Shrewsbury took place in 2007 to look at improving service delivery and improving the facilities for Headquarters, the Fire Station and Workshops.

The existing buildings at Shrewsbury are in poor state of repair and the site is overcrowded with conflicting space demands.

Previous projects looked at a joint site with the Ambulance Service but this did not proceed because of changes within the Ambulance Service and the planned move to Regional Fire Controls.

Key to improving service delivery is optimizing the response standards. These were analysed alongside the effects of locating the Fire Station at a number of different points throughout Shrewsbury. The Fire Cover Review also analysed the effect of having two Shrewsbury Stations at each end of the town (i.e. Meole Brace and Heathgates) and compared the gains of the first appliance versus the loss in time of the second appliance.

Evidence showed that failures to response standards were few and far between and, on analysis, supported the view that the location of the Fire Station in Shrewsbury was not critical to meeting those response standards. This led to the conclusion that splitting the site into two was not cost effective, from a risk reduction point of view.

Following consultation with the staff and public the Fire Authority agreed to go ahead with the refurbishment of the existing site by extending and renovating the fire station and workshops, and demolishing the existing Headquarters building.