Nottinghamshire firefighters graduation ceremony to take place

The first graduation ceremony for on-call firefighters in Nottinghamshire will take place on Wednesday (27th February).

The ceremony at the Service Development Centre, Boughton, will involve a firefighting demonstration and rescue by the nine trainees, who have completed four months of intensive training, and award presentations.

The Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service trainees will now move on to Stapleford, Arnold, Ashfield, Blidworth, East Leake, Eastwood, Hucknall and Tuxford Fire Stations for 18 months of further training ‘on the job’ and responding to emergency calls.

Station Manager Christopher Clark said: “We have previously held passing out ceremonies for wholetime duty system firefighters who had completed their initial training, but this is the first time that we have celebrated the achievements of retained duty system firefighters in the same way.

“We are delighted to hold this passing out ceremony in acknowledgement of their success so far. These nine firefighters have worked very hard to get to this stage and I wish them all well for their future training and development.”

One of the graduating firefighters is electrician Neil Sweet, who had wanted to join the Fire Service since he escaped from a house fire in which his brother nearly died.

“He said: “I thoroughly enjoyed all my training. The most useful thing I have learnt from this is my own abilities as an individual and team member.”

Sales assistant Jonathan Seddon added: “I want to be challenged on a daily basis and the fact that we are here to help people is what really made me join.

“The training course has been brilliant fun, lots of hard work and I met a great bunch of lads.”