Under the Fire Brigades Act 1938, the UK Government set up a training centre at Saltdean near Brighton in 1941, to train National Fire Service personnel. With the return to local authority control after World War II, the British government decided to standardise the way in which the fire service worked. The college at Saltdean became too small and the Home Office opened the Senior Staff College at Wotton House, Dorking in Surrey in 1949, to train senior officers from all over the country. On 4 June 1966, they decided to do the same for the lower ranks and established the Fire Service Technical College at Moreton. The college was built on a disused RAF wartime airfield about outside the market town of Moreton-in-Marsh. In 1981 the Staff College in Dorking closed and amalgamated with the Technical College to form the Fire Service College on the Moreton in Marsh site.