Elmwood campus in Cupar is set to become a temporary fire station.
The college has offered up an agricultural building at its Carslogie Road site for Fife Fire and Rescue Service to use during the refurbishment of its Cupar station.
And the service said the building is ideally located to accommodate the town’s two appliances while the work takes place.
Station manager Stephen Thomson said: ”Response times will be potentially quicker. Cupar fire station was built to serve the town centre.
”Where the fire station sits just now, appliances have three junctions to go through but at Elmwood college there is just one set of traffic lights.”
Cupar is served by 19 retained firefighters. The station is unmanned, except when crews are responding to call-outs.
Mr Thomson said the college is well placed for the firefighters, who are expected to take just six or seven minutes to reach the station when responding to incidents.
A planning application has been lodged by Fife Council to transform the college building into a temporary fire station. The work will include the construction of a temporary building and the installation of a telecommunications mast.
Once given the go-ahead, the work to upgrade the fire station in Millgate is expected to take 10 months to complete. It will cost around £700,000. The first phase will be asbestos removal, which will take about a month.
Mr Thomson said: ”The station was built in 1978. It was probably a modern fire station in its day.
”The only way we were going to get a significant refurbishment was to remove the asbestos. Obviously there were cost implications.
”It’s been a long time coming for Cupar. It was dependent on funding and funding became available.
”Planning permission is imminent. Once we get that we will move out of the old station into Elmwood College. There’s no definite date but we’re working towards the end of the month.”
He said the college, which this month became part of Scotland’s Rural University College in a merger, had gone out of its way to help the service.
”It’s been a godsend. It’s a cracking facility and the college has done a lot of work to make it better for us.
”They’ve also provided us with a classroom. They’ve really gone above and beyond to provide us with this facility for the time being.
”We’re looking forward to moving back to the new fire station and it’s going to be seamless moving up to Elmwood.”
A site at Prestonhall business park was considered for the temporary station, however the location was not suitable because it was too far from the town centre.