Cleveland Fire Brigade is appealing to its 694 fire fighters not to put lives at risk by refusing to work.

But Fire Brigades Union branch secretary Alan Blacklee claims industrial action will only be taken to protect the service.

Voting papers for a strike ballot arrived at the stations yesterday. Confident of a 'yes' vote, Mr Blacklee said: "I am sure we are going to win it quite convincingly. We have been going around the stations and we seem to have a lot of support."

The dispute revolves around plans for the fire, police and ambulances services to share the same control room facilities. This move is being resisted by the FBU. Mr Blacklee claims a Home Office consultants' report warns that on occasions response times with a new integrated system will be slower.

He said: "The specifications for the new system will not get the job done any quicker. We believe it will slow it down. We are protecting the service the public are paying for.

"We are presently turning out between 30 seconds and 60 seconds of receiving a call. With the new system it will be between two and three minutes."

Mark Whelan, director of operations with Cleveland Fire Brigade, said: "The new system has yet to be tried and tested. Until then we cannot say how it will perform; but it has been designed using the most modern, state-of-the-art equipment available to emergency services.

"The aim of the new project is to provide a superior, not inferior service, and if on testing the system it is found that the new system does not at least match the performance of the 'old' system the fire service will not use it. Management has always said that and it still holds."

He insisted: "Until personnel agree to train on the system and allow us to test its competence no-one can make an intelligent judgement on whether it will perform quicker, slower or the same as the current system."

Mr Blacklee said the brigade had broken its promise to involve fire fighters in the design of the new system.

"We are not going to test a system when we have not been involved drawing up the specifications," he said.