TOP brass from Wiltshire's fire, police and ambulance services together laid the foundation stone for the new joint control centre in Devizes, despite threats from fire control operators not to set foot in the new building.

The fire communications staff were notable by their absence at Monday morning's ceremony on the site adjoining Police Headquarters in London Road, when Mr Bertie Woolnough, chairman of the Wiltshire Police Authority, Coun Jerry Willmott, chairman of the Wiltshire and Swindon Fire Authority, and Mr Kevin Small, chairman of the Wiltshire Ambulance Service, performed the stone-laying. They were joined by Chief Constable Elizabeth Neville, Chief Fire Officer Neil Wright and Chief Ambulance Officer Denis Lauder.

Mr Woolnough said: "It has taken a long time to get this far but we've made it, and today we cement the relationship which will set the pace for the whole country for emergency services to work together for the benefit of the community they serve."

The three services have made it clear from the outset they are looking for increased effectiveness and efficiency without losing jobs. Although the new centre is costing between £6.3 million and £6.8 million, the project is seen as an economising move which will also improve the speed and effectiveness of response to individual emergencies.

The planned two-storey building is on the site of the former Llewellyn House, an accommodation block used to house trainees attending courses at the former regional police driving school.

When the new centre opens in September next year all three services will be using the same computer system and work in the same operations room.

But fire control operators are unhappy about the proposed move. They maintain the system they are using at the moment is purpose-built for the job, enabling them to offer advice to the victims at the same time as directing firefighters to the blaze. They say this is not possible with the new system, installed at several constabularies in the country but not yet tried out as a joint system with other services.

Fire operators also say the experience of joint control rooms in other European countries has been far from happy.

They have won support from the rest of their colleagues in the Wiltshire Fire Brigade. and at a recent meeting, the Wiltshire Fire Brigades' Union committee voted unanimously to support their members in the fire control room in their opposition to the proposed shared emergency control room.

They issued a statement saying: "This proposed shared facility will bring a degradation to the health, safety and welfare of the control room staff, the firefighters they support and a subsequent reduction in service to the people of Wiltshire and will be opposed with all the means at the Fire Brigades' Union's disposal."

Project manager Derek Robertson said negotiations were continuing.