Hucknall firefighter receives award for work done in heading up Nottinghamshire's apprenticeship programme

A Hucknall firefighter has received a prestigious award as part of Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service's annual awards evening which was held at the Albert Hall in Nottingham.

Marcus Pratt was presented with the Collaboration Award for his work on developing the firefighter apprenticeship programme.

Mr Pratt, who grew up in Hucknall, attended The Holgate Academy, and still lives in the town, has worked as an on-call firefighter for the last 11 years.

His full-time job for Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service sees him head up the apprenticeship programme that wholetime firefighters joining the ranks have to undertake.

The majority of the training takes place at the service's development centre in Ollerton.

When Marcus took the job, he was tasked with creating the programme and although there were some previous training resources and methods to draw upon, he had to adapt them to fit the criteria required for a fully certified apprenticeship qualification.

Three years on, the fire service's course was awarded a 'Good' grade by Ofsted.

All of this culminated in Marcus being nominated for the Collaboration Award not only for the development of the programme but also for his work with external partners 'to continually improve the offer to our firefighter apprentices.'

Marcus receives his award. Photo courtesy of Marcus Pratt.

Speaking exclusively to Hucknall Nub News, he said of winning the award: "It's humbling in a way to at least be thought of. It's nice to be recognised and that obviously people do think you're doing a good job.

"Any firefighter that comes into the service, a wholetime recruit, will have to be an apprentice and do a level 3 qualification, it takes around about 18 months to two years for them to achieve it.

"There's me and Julie Worthington that look after the apprenticeships. I've been in the team for around three years, and it's gone from not having an apprenticeship to building it up to the point where we have got an apprenticeship. I've been the main driving force behind that.

"The nomination came just because we've been audited a lot recently. We've just had our Ofsted inspection and we got a 'Good' result. I try not to blow my own trumpet but again that's kind of down to myself and Julie.

"We've had two cohorts of firefighters go through. We've got a 100% pass rate, 50% are getting distinctions at the minute. Ofsted picked up on that and said: 'that's really good.'

Away from his day job, as aforementioned, Marcus is an on-call firefighter at Hucknall Fire Station. As well as attending emergency incidents across the county he is also part of community initiatives the crews organise such as the 12 days of Christmas the firefighters are coordinating for the foodbank.

"It's nice to give back to people and that's what I feel that you kind of do on-call," Marcus added.