A FIRE brigade's controversial control room move was last night branded a waste of time and money as a row over a regional command centre intensified.

Call-takers for Cleveland Fire and Rescue are poised to move into a shared control room with colleagues from the ambulance and police services.

The switch from brigade headquarters in Hartlepool to police headquarters in Middlesbrough at a cost £2.7m of Government cash, prompted the threat of strikes last year.

Now, the debate has been reignited by revelations in The Northern Echo earlier this month that talks are at an advanced stage on creating a region-wide brigade with one command centre for the entire North-East.

The plans mean fire call-takers could be made to leave the shared emergency services control room at Ladgate Lane, Middlesbrough by 2007 when the "super brigade" is established.

Fire Brigades Union regional chairman Alan Blacklee said: "The control room staff aren't even in Ladgate Lane yet, and they are already talking about moving them."

Plans to merge the four brigades which now serve the region - Cleveland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, and Northumberland - have been hastened by the threat of terrorist attacks from extremists such as al Qaida.

Radical proposals to establish a regional control room for the area's brigades were announced last year, but fire chiefs have now admitted for the first time that the move would be the catalyst to a single brigade serving the region's 2.4 million residents.

Mr Blacklee said it was a waste of money moving Cleveland calltakers to police headquarters and he dismissed the regional brigade idea as "a cost-cutting exercise which has nothing to do with providing a better service to the public".

He said: "We resisted the move to Ladgate Lane when it was first suggested because we felt it was a waste of time then, and we still do. Although the money being used for the project is Government money, it is still coming from the taxpayer."

But Cleveland's chief fire officer, John Doyle, said: "The system we have got is 12 years old and the one we are moving to is state-of-the art, so it is sensible to move."

John Burke, Cleveland's director of service support, said: "When the shared control project was put in place, there was a totally different environment to the one we are in post-September 11.

"The things we have to think about now were not even on the agenda then."