Construction will soon start on a new training facility at Ashford fire station.

The existing 17m live fire training building will be demolished and replaced with an 18m high-rise and a detached two-storey support building.

The new building will allow the fire brigade to practice “compartment firefighting” – firefighting in buildings broken up into separate compartments – such as blocks of flats.

The fire station itself on the Henwood Industrial Estate will also be renovated and remodelled.

Matthew Deadman, assistant director of Kent Fire & Rescue Service (KFRS), told Ashford Borough Council’s (ABC) planning committee that the Grenfell tower disaster in 2017 has influenced the service’s plans for training.

“This event has caused all fire services to review how they prepare their firefighters,” he said.

“We need our firefighters to be at the top of their profession at any incident they attend. To do this they need realistic training facilities.

“What you see before you in this application is exactly that – the ability for us to replicate compartment fires at a range of scales and a range of scenarios.

"It allows us to replicate fires we can reasonably foresee happening in tall buildings in Kent, of which Ashford has a number.”

He also touted the new training facility’s environmental credentials: “This new development is a clean burning and environmentally friendly one.”

Firefighters from around Kent will use the building for training, Mr Deadman told the council.

Cllr Geoff Meaden (Green), despite supporting the development, suggested KFRS had not properly sought the opinions of residents.

He pointed out that the service sent out 900 questionnaires to residents, and ABC sent out six, and there were no responses.

“I find this actually quite astonishing,” Cllr Meaden said.

“I read somewhere that the fire brigade will do their survey again if they get planning permission, well that seems to me most unethical because the whole business of a survey is to find out what local people think about the site, so that certainly needs addressing,” he added.

KFRS assistant director for corporate services, James Finch, said: “We followed consultation procedure and provided full details of the plans with the local community for them to provide comments if they wanted to – we didn’t receive any comments.

"As we continue with this project, we will continue to communicate with local residents and business to keep them up to date with what’s happening.”

Cllr Meaden also worried that the renovated fire station would not host solar panels like the current one, arguing “it would be a waste of space if no solar panels were on the roof”.

However, the solar on the current fire station will remain there, and the new two storey support building will also host a small number of them on the roof.

“There is an aspiration for the new two-storey support building to be self-sufficient, with solar panels and rainwater harvesting,” Mr Finch added.

The redevelopment will also include energy efficient heating, a smoke filtration and extraction system in the training building, and solar shading - to stop the fire station from being unnecessarily warm indoors.

While the new training facility is being constructed firefighters will instead train elsewhere in Kent - and sometimes outside the county for breathing apparatus training.

The demolition of the existing training facility and construction of the new one is expected to take about 12 months, according to Mr Finch.

Planning permission for the redevelopment was approved unanimously at ABC’s planning committee meeting on Wednesday, October 12.