Our Station
Opened in 2005, Newcastle East Community Fire Station (formerly Fossway Community Fire Station) is located on Union Road, Byker on the east side of Newcastle city centre. It covers areas of both Newcastle and North Tyneside Councils, which include Byker, Walker, Heaton and Jesmond.
The station has three fire appliances and is staffed by 48 full time fire-fighters and 8 support staff. The staff are the main asset and, in addition to responding to emergencies, undertake a range of Community Safety (CS) activities that are primarily aimed at preventing fires and deaths and injuries in fires.
The station includes a Community Safety Centre, which houses the Community Team, Centre Administrator and Young Fire-fighters Association (YFA). A further police presence in a local beat office is also contained within the nearby Clifford Street Police Station providing for all the community’s safety and security needs.
The Community Safety Centre also boasts a 40 seater auditorium which has modern IT presentation capabilities and a meeting room for use by community groups. Computer facilities including access to the Internet, will also become available for further educational learning. This entire facilitywhich 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 Area
The geographical area served by Newcastle East Community Fire Station, varies greatly from relatively affluent residential to significant areas of social deprivation. Heavy industry was once the mainstay of this area with the shipyards and associated light industries supporting, however much of the heavy industrial areas continue to be replaced by modern light industrial and retail developments.
The population, based on the 2001 Census, is 72,451 persons who are predominantly from Anglo-Saxon background with an ethnic group accounting for 5.4%. There are 34,553 dwellings within the Station area with approximately: -
Single parent families occupy 7% of dwellings, with 16.2% single pensioner households.
Levels of unemployment across this area indicate 13.4% for males and 6.7% 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 by the red areas, which also link to many of the traditional heavy industrial areas, housing many of the lower paid and unemployed. The red areas indicate those 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.
New developments include the retail shopping park on the old PTE bus depot site on the Fossway and the continual re-development around the Shields Road and Byker Wall areas.
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