Plans to rebuild fire stations in Bath and Weston-super-Mare have been put on hold.
Avon Fire and Rescue Service said the plans were still “on our radar” but they did not want to be tied down as the time was not right to borrow money for work on Somerset’s two fire stations.
The move comes as costs have risen on the redevelopment of Bedminster Fire Station in Bristol.
READ MORE: GP surgery to relocate as a building considered to be of “worst quality”
At a fire authority meeting on February 17, Bath and North East Somerset council member Shelly Bromley asked when the rebuilding of Bath fire station would take place.
The fire station was built in 1938 and now has defects that need to be corrected.
Angela Feeney, director of corporate services for Avon Fire and Rescue Services, said: “It’s certainly still on our radar and it’s definitely something we want to do.”
But she said that it was not possible to put a date on it.
READ MORE: The charity transforming access to mental health services in Bath and North East Somerset
She told the gathering: “It’s been a disappointment for us as well, both that we can’t do that and we really wanted that three-service flagship, right? We spent considerable time on that, so it’s a disappointment for us.
“What we have said in (the fire authority capital programme) is that we will look at our capital strategy, particularly around Bath, over the next few years because obviously we need to find the optimal time to borrow, which is not in this moment.”
He added: “You’ll see in our capital program that we’ve built a facility to do some work in Bath in the meantime, given what we know about the state of that building.”
Avon Fire and Rescue Service property services manager Simon Richards added: “Obviously the building shows a number of flaws which we will need to address, possibly within this capital programme, so we have booked some money to do it.”
He added that plans to build a stand-alone fire station could be “reinvigorated” if it turned out to be a better time to borrow.
But he said: “It’s hard to give a date, and things are so volatile right now that we really wouldn’t want to tie ourselves to this at this stage.”
£1.8m has been allocated for general maintenance and structural problems at the fire authority over the next three years. In the same period, £3.1 million was allocated to finance the redevelopment of Bedminster Fire Station in Bristol.
READ NEXT: