FIRE brigade staff refusing to man a new £6.8m joint emergency control room have won unanimous backing from their union.

The 18 workers, all members of the Fire Brigades Union and currently based at Potterne, claim they need a separate room from police and ambulance colleagues for handling 999 fire calls.

Val Hampshire, one of the control room staff, said: "We are highly trained in our job and we are currently in a room that is purely made up of fire controllers. We have no distractions.

"Under the plans, there will be fire controllers in a room with up to 40 or 50 others from the other services and the noise distraction will be unbelievable.

"If a fire operator is talking to a person who is trying to escape from their house which is on fire, they need silence in the room to concentrate on that. It is a very stressful situation."

Now a meeting of the Wiltshire FBU committee has backed the rebels' stance.

A statement issued by the committee this week said: "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."

Neil Wright, chief fire officer for Wiltshire, said: "I am disappointed with the FBU response as I don't believe it is in the best interests of the members or in the best interests of the community of Wiltshire."

He said there were no plans to reduce the number of staff in the control room and they would not answer calls for the other emergency services.

Mr Wright added: "A new, purpose-built control room will enhance the health and safety and welfare of our staff and I believe it will improve the overall response from the three services."

"The response times will be improved, I believe, because the information will reach us quicker as it will be going into one control room and will be available to all three services. At the moment, if someone needs more than one emergency service, they go through to one service and that service passes it through to the other two services."

Talks between Wiltshire Fire Service and the union have broken down and the dispute has been passed to both parties' national bodies.

Val Hampshire said: "We are not unreasonable people and we are open to negotiations on reasonable terms."