A start date for an already long-delayed training college for the emergency services in NI is now in doubt.

Builders are being further frustrated and the Ulster Unionist Mid-Ulster MLA Billy Armstrong has demanded action on the Public Services Training College for the police, fire and rescue and prison services at Desertcreat near Cookstown.

His call comes after it emerged that a start date for the £142m college has still not been agreed as cost cutting is putting the entire project in jeopardy.

The Desertcreat College Programme is a portfolio of projects that has at its core a project for a new, shared training college replacing the existing training facilities of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, the Northern Ireland Prisons Service and the Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service.

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Despite first being 'approved' under the Direct Rule administration, the present Health Minister, Michael McGimpsey is unable to approve the funds as cutbacks have led to a complete freeze on recruitment to the PSNI and he can't "recommend proceeding with the construction".

Commenting on the news, Billy Armstrong said: "The project to build the Public Services Training College in the Mid-Ulster Constituency has been dragging on for far too long.

"I recently wrote to the Justice Minister regarding this matter and he replied that plans 'are at an advanced stage' informing me that 'the site is prepared and all survey work has been carried out'.

"So far so good," continued the local MLA, "but he also said that 'a business-case review is being carried out jointly by the Department of Justice and the Department of Health and as yet no opening or start date has been determined."

He said that, when one considers that planning approval was granted for a Police Training College on this site as far back as July 2005, "you really have to wonder what it takes to get anything done in Northern Ireland".

When the Northern Ireland Police Training College proposal for Desertcreat received the go-ahead from planners, the state-of-the-art training facility was due to open in 2007, a deadline now long since missed and showing no sign of progress to the actual construction being undertaken.

See: NI Police College proposal gains planning approval

(BMcC/GK)