Sir, The Deputy Prime Minister believes there should be greater co-ordination between fire brigades. Of course many, if not all brigades, already foster cross-border' co-operation but anything which improves the co-ordination even further is to be welcomed (Gazette, October 22, Fire control rooms to be slashed').

I understand the government has now agreed the conclusions of a study undertaken by consultants Mott MacDonald, to reduce the local authority control centres from the current 43 to just nine regional control rooms in order to effect that efficiency.

I believe the arguments in favour of these proposals are flawed. In the provision of emergency services, efficiency is clearly important; that's about value for money. Even more important, however, is the need for operational effectiveness, whether it is attending at a highways accident, a fire incident, a flooding problem, or even a civil disaster of whatever magnitude.

There is no guarantee that regional control rooms would be any more resilient' or effective than those that are locally based. So, if it isn't broken, why fix it?

In addition, the Government case appears to ignore international experience, including New York where there are plans to move towards five more local rather than a single regional-style control room. The number and variety of control rooms builds in strength and inherent resilience which will be lost with fewer and bigger control centres.

Evidently, the capital cost of establishing the regional fire control centres is put at an estimated present-day value of more than £100m, although this does not take account of the inter-operability requirements, new software, and modernisation of information and communication technologies.

The government's original proposals put the capital payback period at 20-25 years; I believe it has now risen to 47 years.

It does appear that the business/ economic' case for integration is far from convincing. So even the efficiency savings are not guaranteed.

It does particularly concern me that local democracy and local accountability of the fire brigade are likely to be severely weakened by the introduction of regional control centres.

Given the excellent partnerships that we in Cumbria have been and are developing and which are aimed at intervention and prevention of fire incidents, it seems to be most important that these initiatives are not compromised.

External inspection of Cumbria's Fire Brigade clearly indicates that we have very good fire service. In addition and paradoxically, the Mott MacDonald study appears to support the autonomy and freedom of the police and ambulance services to develop their own solutions and architecture whilst denying the same privilege to the fire and rescue service. That seems a little bizarre.

Emergency fire control rooms are cost-effective and the local people who work in them know the area, save lives and are highly professional. We should not lose those valuable qualities. The Mott MacDonald assessment of the work done in control rooms is based on only a fraction of the work which is actually done, thereby artificially inflating apparent savings from job losses.

Here in Cumbria our fire control staff also undertake work associated with out-of-hours call handling for Highways (daily from 5-8.30pm and weekends), work for Social Services, statistics and accident reporting, maintaining data bases, providing chemical information, and other administrative tasks.

I fear the government is presiding over an exercise in the centrally-dictated destruction of a system which has been proven to work time and time again. It is an agenda which is being driven by government civil servants and political ideology from Westminster, not local councils.

Improving democracy is about enhancing the opportunities for local communities to make their own decisions. The government's proposals will, therefore, weaken local democracy. It should be opposed.

Jack Richardson Cabinet Member for Community Safety, Cumbria County Council