The future of fire and rescue control rooms in Aberdeen and Inverness remains in the balance after a decision yesterday left five Scottish centres facing the axe.
Members of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service board voted 6-5 to progress with plans to cut the number of centres nationwide from eight to three.
They rejected proposals to scale back to just two.
One of the three centres that would be retained as part of the planned shake-up is at Johnstone in Renfrewshire.
Yesterday’s agreement leaves a closure decision to be made on two others from a list including Aberdeen, Inverness, Dundee and Edinburgh.
The remaining call centres at Brooms Road on Dumfries, Thornton in Fife and Maddiston in Falkirk are now facing closure.
The shake-up will also involve the sale of property across the country, including the old North Anderson Drive headquarters of Grampian fire brigade in Aberdeen. A fire station will be retained at the city site, however.
The board was told that if no action was taken, required budget savings of £4.7million would have to be met elsewhere, which, in terms of firefighter numbers, would result in the loss of 162 posts.
Continuing with the existing property portfolio would also require an extra £9million of investment to deal with a backlog of maintenance, the board heard.
Last night, Fire Brigades Union (FBU) Scotland chairman Alan Paterson described the board’s decision as “premature” and said the union had been given sight of a report detailing the plans only four days ago.
“It has clearly not been discussed enough between board members,” he said.
“There were initial discussions and work that has included Fire Brigades Union representatives, but there was no final position reached for us to consult with our members on.
“I don’t want to make the same mistake. I want to speak to our members first. We will be directed by them.”
An emergency meeting of the Scottish regional committee will be held on Monday to determine the union position, Mr Paterson added.
Chief fire officer Alasdair Hay had told the board earlier that £12million had to be trimmed from the service’s national budget.
He defended plans to centralise the control rooms, and used the example of the Johnstone centre – which covers a population of about 2.5million and 12 local authority areas – as a model to quell fears that local knowledge would be lost.
Mr Hay said: “Local knowledge is not vested in physical buildings. It is in the professional knowledge of our staff.
“I joined the fire service to save lives. I’m a professional firefighter and the one thing that we will not compromise as we deliver these plans is community or firefighter safety.”
The board was presented initially with plans to reduce the number of control rooms from eight to two, but voted 6-5 in favour of an amendment from Grant Thoms to retain three.
A full consultation on the proposals will now be carried out and Mr Hay stressed the service’s agreed strategic plan would take “a number of years” to implement.
Board chairman Pat Watters insisted that no final decisions had been made on the closures and gave an “absolute assurance” to staff that there would be no compulsory redundancies.
He said: “We are only at the start of this journey. It is not a race. We don’t need to get this done quickly. We need to get this right.”