Heat Decarbonisation

The Authority is committed to reducing the impact of the organisation's operations on the environment and reducing its carbon footprint. This has been affirmed by positive action including the signing of the Emergency Services Environment and Sustainability Group Charter' by the Fire Authority in February 2023 and by conducting strategic planning with the production of an estate heat decarbonisation plan (HDP) using specialist consultants Faithful + Gould (now Atkins Realis). The Authority has also made the positive step of revising its strategic sustainability objective by recognising the climate emergency along with the release of the RBFA Sustainability Strategy on 08 October 2024. The HDP work was funded by central Government using the Low Carbon Skills Fund(LCSF) administered by Salix and resulted in five sites being prioritised on 07 November 2023 for an application to the Public Sector Decarbonisation Scheme (PSDS) Phase 3c grant funding. The five priority one sites were:

• Langley
• Newbury
• Reading: Caversham Road (accommodation annexe)
• Reading: Wokingham Road
• Whitley Wood (fire station)

The PSDS 3c application for the five priority sites was successful on 20 February 2024 with an offer of £927,845 in grant funding being made by Salix. Thereafter, the Fire Authority agreed on 22 April 20241 to contribute funds of £842,155 as provided for in the SAIF, setting a total budget of £1.77M for decarbonisation work on the five priority sites. This allowed the Salix offer to be accepted and for detailed survey and design work to commence in earnest, committing the Authority into a governed process and conditional timeline for delivery by 31 March 2026.

The Authority utilised 2 stage tendering procedure (similar to a restricted procedure under The Public Contract Regulations 2015). The Invitation to Tenders (ITT) and related documentation was issued with the Contracts Finder Notice and the PAS91 PQQ. The SQ document and the tender package was released to all bidders on 8th January 2025 with the deadline for SQ response was 29th January 2025.

The tender was published on In-Tend Portal https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/5056c386-3d13-49c8-bd8c-8da685a434f0 .