A CONTROVERSIAL government plan to close Cumbria's fire control room and move it out of the county as part of a national regionalisation scheme has been branded dangerous and likely to end in failure by the Fire Brigades Union.

The union says that the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister's report on fire control centres was sent out to fire authorities with all the key figures and financial estimates deleted. But the FBU claims that hidden figures, which have been leaked to the union, show the government plan to be "expensive" and "precarious".

FBU General Secretary Andy Gilchrist said ministers were hiding the true costs from authorities and had made public claims that could not possibly be justified.

"This dangerous plan will axe all our excellent command and control centres and be a financial burden on the fire service and council tax payers for years to come," he said.

"It's expensive, it's risky, it won't save a single life and could end in total failure."

Under the proposals Cumbria Fire Service's call handling centre at Cockermouth would be merged with those in Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Lancashire and Cheshire in a central fire control base for the North West, possibly based as far away as Warrington.

Some of the details from the leaked report picked out by the FBU include: The risk of "delay or even total project failure" is assessed as being very high/high.

There is a high risk "that the current timescales may not be achieved" which would "increase project cost".

Plans to close all existing centres and open nine regional centres will cost £754.5m at today's prices figures concealed from Fire Authorities.

Cuts in staff would see calls routinely transferred so 999 calls for incidents in Cumbria could be handled in Kent.

Those campaigning to stop the Cumbria control centre being moved say the details highlighted by the FBU concur with the concerns being raised locally. Spokesperson for the Save Our Control group Jackie Harvey said: "The cost savings have failed to materialise and cost increases will be incumbent on the tax payers.

"Secondly, the risk of failure of the project as a whole means ultimately this could lead to the loss of life."

Cumbria County Council gave its full support to the campaign at a meeting in November. Coun Colin Nineham, who chairs the environmental quality scrutiny committee, which has been looking at the information provided by the Government, said: "The Government is trying to realise a dream. What they don't mention here is that its (centralisation) is just for emergency calls. What about other things the control centres do? There is no costing for that," he said.

Portfolio holder for safety services at CCC Coun Jack Richardson said the biggest worry was what happened if the computer system serving the whole region had problems.

A statement released by the fire and rescue services minister Nick Raynsford said the Government would not support any proposals that could lead to a worse fire and rescue service. "In saying that the project is very high risk, the FBU has quoted material from the draft outline business case totally out of context," he stated.

The statement added that the new regional control centres would provide a modern, resilient system that would be much more efficient and free up more resources for other fire and rescue services, so saving more lives.