Fire staff may face the axe (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Fire staff may face the axe

FIRE control operators could face redundancy following the Government's decision, announced yesterday, to locate a regional fire control centre in Taunton.

This will mean that, unless Wiltshire fire control personnel are willing to move to Taunton, they will be out of a job when the new centre becomes operational in late 2006 or early 2007.

The decision by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister was originally expected in January but has been put off several times.

It was thought it would be announced at the recent meeting of the South West Regional Fire Authority on August 1 but it was delayed once again until yesterday.

Wiltshire Fire Brigade chief, Andy Goves, said: "Naturally, we are disappointed that the new control centre is not in Wiltshire.

"We have a first class workforce in our local control. However, we accept that this project is part of the national picture and there are winners and losers."

Mr Goves added that the South West will be among the first to "go live" with the regional centre, along with the East Midlands and the North East, while the rest of England follow suit soon after.

But members of the Fire Brigades Union say that brigades in the South West already work well together and there is a danger that lives will be lost because controllers at a centre in Taunton will not have the local knowledge that can save precious seconds.

Coun Jerry Willmott, who lives in Potterne, is chairman of the Combined Fire Authority as well as the Wiltshire and Swindon authority. Privately, he has never been happy about the move towards regionalisation, but he toed the Government line in his statement this week.

He said: "Paramount in my mind are two things. Firstly, the need to make sure our existing fire control staff are kept up to speed. Secondly, we need to make sure that what the new regional control centre delivers is right not just for the South West but also for the people of Wiltshire."

No one from the Wiltshire branch of the Fire Brigades Union was available for comment, but national union president Ruth Winters said the regionalisation exercise was a waste of money.