Built in the 1970’s, Chopwell Community Fire Station is located on Derwent Street, Chopwell on the western extreme of the Gateshead Metropolitan Borough Council area. It covers Chopwell and Rowlands Gill council Wards.

 

The station has one fire appliance and is staffed by 12 part time fire-fighters. They primarily respond to emergencies and operate a rota system of call to duty from the immediate area by pocket alerter. The time spent duty at the station is mainly devoted to training.

 

Community Safety activities that are primarily aimed at preventing fires and deaths and injuries in fires.  Work is also undertaken in the Chopwell area; this involves the use of staff from the neighbouring Swalwell Fire Station. Alternative arrangements are being examined that could provide opportunities for the staff to deliver community safety work to the wider community of Chopwell and High Spen, whilst continuing to provide fire cover.

 

The station includes a Community Safety Centre and Young Fire-fighters Association (YFA). The Community Safety Centre has recently been added to the existing station, it has modern IT presentation capabilities, a meeting room with a computer suite, including access to the Internet, for further educational learning. This entire facility, which has been designed to be fully accessible and hence, enable usage by all of our visitors, is integrated within a fully functional fire station.

 

The geographical area served by Chopwell Fire Station, consists of the former mining village of Chopwell and part of the neighbouring village of High Spen. The area is of primarily rural and some agricultural land. There are also large areas of forestry.

 

Based on the 2001 Census, The estimated population is approximately 5,348persons, who are predominantly from Anglo-Saxon background (97%) with a relatively small ethnic group (3%). There are 2,464 dwellings within the Station area with approximately: -

 

 

Single parent families occupy 7.6% of dwellings, with 18.2% single pensioner households.

 

Levels of unemployment across this area vary from 11.3% for males and 5.7% for females. These figures reflect the socio-economic groups residing within individual neighbourhoods, which can be linked to the risk of dwelling fires occurring within the area. This is illustrated in the above map where the red indicates areas where the risk of having a dwelling fire is well above average, orange is above average, yellow is average, blue is below average and green is well below average.

 

If you wish to know more about the specific fire service issues in your area and how we intend to address these, details have been included in our Station Plan.