The joint emergency control room at police headquarters in Devizes will be home to just the county’s police force after Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service announced it is going to move its call handlers out.

The fire controllers will be relocated to the fire service’s headquarters in Potterne, saving £200,000 a year, and comes three months after the ambulance service stopped using the joint control room in Devizes to concentrate on its control room in Bristol.

The joint control room, or tri-centre, was the first of its kind in the country when it opened in 2003 at a cost of £7million.

Following the cancellation of the regional fire control centre in Taunton in December 2010, Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service has been working with Devon and Somerset, Dorset and Hampshire fire services to develop a partnership on updated fire control services.

The Government has given £7.2m for the services to develop new computer software which will enable each service to answer 999 calls and mobilise fire engines when a neighbouring county is overun with calls, for example at a major incident.

John Aldridge, Wiltshire’s Deputy Chief Fire Officer, said: “The concept at the end of the last century of having all three emergency services in the same room to work together is not needed now. With technology we can link up with each other.”

The fire service pays £200,000 a year to rent the joint control room. There will be a cost of £250,000 to refurbish offices at fire headquarters in Potterne to become a control room.

No date has been set for the move. It is anticipated that Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service will switch over to the new software in a year’s time.

A spokesman for Wiltshire Police said: “Any changes will not impact the 999 or 101 functions that we already provide.”