All options open for fire service control centre in Cornwall

Guy Herrington from the Fire Brigades' Union said moving the centre could risk people's lives

All options will be considered by Cornwall Council regarding the future of the fire service's 999 call centre, a committee has said.

The neighbourhoods overview and scrutiny committee discussed proposals to change how fire service 999 calls could be handled.

A proposal to merge its control centre with another outside of Cornwall was put before the council in September.

The committee were met by dozens of firefighters outside New County Hall.

A total of 19 questions were put forward in the meeting on Thursday regarding the future of the control centre, as reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Alongside its first decision, the committee said all options must be considered for improving and retaining its current centre, voting unanimously in favour of the recommendations.

Cornwall Council said it would review the control centre in order to make the service more efficient and sustainable, confirming rising costs had led to the proposal being put forward.

Fire Brigades' Union (FBU) regional secretary Guy Herrington said it had been campaigning to "get a new option on the table" since the proposal was released.

"Without the public and political support that we have seen over the last two weeks, the closure of the control centre could have gone through this morning," he said.

Committee member Dominic Fairman said he was concerned about the safety of the proposals.

He said: "A lot of the evidence that I have heard from the questions from the public and firefighters and emails we have had is around the safety aspect of it.

"I want to know how we as a committee are going to evaluate safety."

'Not just about money'

Andrew Long, the Mebyon Kernow member for Callington, said supporting the proposal would be "ridiculous".

"We should not be giving up control of any of our public services as once lost you can never get them back," he said.

Kathryn Billing, chief fire officer, said a business case would be produced between October and January and presented to the committee.