The future of fire service's call centre decided today

Crunch meeting in Reading this evening (Wednesday) will decide where emergency calls will be answered

THE future of Berkshire's fire control room, where calls to the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service are answered, will be discussed at a crunch meeting in Reading this evening (Wednesday).

The Fire Authority will discuss whether to pursue plans to merge the control room in an regional centre with Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire or to join forces with on in London.

The authority looks set to approve plans to pursue a merger with Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire as the preferred option.

The option of a merger into a London-based control room would then be kept as a secondary option.

Berkshire's fire control room, where calls to the emergency service is answered, is currently located in Dee Road, Tilehurst, but the merger, at an estimated cost of £5.4m, is being considered to increase capacity to deal with larger volumes of calls, to modernise the service and to save money.

This has lead to fears that Berkshire's of job losses – the centre currently employs 32 telephone operators – and that calls may in future be answered in a geographically distant centre, leading employing operators with less local knowledge.

At the fire management meeting held last week, members highlighted a merger with Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire as their preferred option, but stressed that such a merger would also have to be approved by the two other authorities.

Fire authority member and West Berkshire councillor Paul Bryant (Con Speen), said: “If only two of these brigades can be brought together, then we should still try and progress with that.”

The move will largely be funded by a government grant worth £1.8m to each of the three brigades.

RBFRS fire officer Bryan Morgan said that the move flowed from the cancelation of the Labour government's plans to create nine regional control rooms that would have covered all of England, dubbed FiReControl.

He said that the modernisation of the control centres were essential, because of a lack of spending that occurred in anticipation of the now defunct plans: “One of the main benefits the technological improvements and combined centres would bring is resilience - allowing us to cope with bigger events such as regional floods.”

Mr Morgan conceded that job losses were likely, with numbers across the Thames Valley region cut by half in the case of a merger with Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire, or even more in case of a merger with London.

In a recent speech in Oxford, the Parliamentary Under Secretary with responsibility for fire and resilience, Bob Neill (Con, Bromley and Chislehurst) spoke in favour of mergers of fire control rooms, saying: “There are many more areas where a strong collaborative fire and rescue approach, perhaps facilitated by Chief Fire Officers Association, would bring further benefits and increase the influence of the Fire and Rescue Service. For example the future control rooms' bids are an opportunity not only for local solutions but for delivery of these broader aims.”

Also up for discussion at the meeting yesterday was the future of the Heavy Rescue Unit, used in major incidents, such as multi-vehicle accidents and large building fires.

The unit is currently located at Newbury Fire Station, but may be moved to another centre.

Full details of the meeting will follow on www.Newburytoday.co.uk tomorrow (Thursday).