THE prospect of another national fire strike has receded but local action by Wiltshire full-time firefighters seems increasingly likely.

Members of the county's branch of the Fire Brigades Union are being balloted over whether to take industrial action in sympathy with their colleagues in the brigade control room who are refusing to operate from the new joint control centre due to open in May at police headquarters in Devizes.

The result is due on March 28.

The control staff are concerned that they will be forced to work with equipment that is not as good as that which they are working on now, and they say there is a threat to the safety of firefighters and members of the public.

But Wiltshire's chief fire officer, Neil Wright, insists that the dispute over the centre, which is the first of its kind in the country, is being driven from union headquarters in London.

He said: "This is a national issue that is being imposed on Wiltshire. At their annual conference in 2001 the Fire Brigades Union turned their faces against joint control rooms in principle and they are using Wiltshire as a test case because we are the first to have a joint control room."

Mr Wright said they had been answering the union's queries for the last three years, including giving an assurance that there would be no move toward "multi-skilling," making fire officers do a number of different jobs.

But Val Hampshire, who has been a control operator for 17 years, denied that the dispute was being led from London.

She said: "We are going for a ballot on industrial action because the chief has failed over the last four and a half years to convince us that the new set-up will not lead to a less safe service for fire brigade staff and members of the public.

"He hasn't met our points of concern, particularly over job losses. They are looking for capital and revenue savings in the service through rationalisation. Rationalisation in anyone's language means job losses."

Jerry Willmott, the chairman of the Wiltshire and Swindon Fire Authority, has been involved in national negotiations on the union's 40 per cent pay claim and was confident the two sides were about to reach a compromise.

This was bolstered by the decision of the union to call off its next strike, due to start at 6pm this evening.

On the issue of the control centre, he said: "How is it that police and ambulance control staff are quite happy about going into the new joint control room and only the fire control staff, and not all of them, are unhappy?"