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Bond Dickinson advise on £70m London Fire Brigade undertaking

Newcastle-based law firm have advised London Fire Brigade on a £70m PFI project for nine community fire stations across London.

he project will see major improvements to Dagenham, Dockhead, Leytonstone, Mitcham, Old Kent Road, Orpington, Plaistow, Purley and Shadwell fire stations.

Eight of the stations will be completely re-built on their existing sites and one station, Mitcham, will be built on a new site.

The final contract has now been signed with London Fire Brigade’s Private Finance Initiative (PFI) partner Blue3 London, which is a Kier lead consortium with further equity investment from Dutch Infrastructure Fund and external private funding provided by Aviva Public Private Finance.

Neil Walker, based in the firm’s Newcastle office and director in the firm’s Projects & Procurement team, led the team who advised London Fire Brigade. He was supported by Associate Ben Halfpenny, also based in Newcastle, and other specialists across the firms’ real estate, construction and banking teams.

He said: “We are delighted to have advised London Fire Brigade on this project, which will have such a positive impact on the communities and bring much-needed improvements to the fire stations in these areas.

“We have been involved in advising the Fire and Rescue sector on these types of projects for over 10 years and it has been great to be able to use that experience to help the team at London Fire Brigade deliver these new stations.”

London Fire Brigade’s Assistant Commissioner for Technical and Service Support Dominic Ellis said: “This is a key project for us; some of our fires stations are over 100 years old and struggle to meet the demands of a modern fire and rescue service.

“This rebuilding programme will bring some of our oldest stations up to date and provide us with brand new facilities fit for the 21st century. Bond Dickinson’s expertise in PFI work and in the Fire and Rescue Sector in particular has been key for this Project.”

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Bond Dickinson .