Closed center costs pounds 5k a day.

Byline: STEPHEN CAPE

A MOTHBALLED North East firefighting centre is costing pounds 150,000 a month to maintain - and will do for another 20 years, the Chronicle can reveal.

Angry union leaders said pounds 5,000 a day of taxpayers' money is being used to keep the North East Fire Control Centre on Belmont Business Park in Durham - which is now effectively "an empty building". And it has emerged the Government is now locked in to paying millions in rent until the end of the lease in 2027.

Andy Noble, a North East representative of the Fire Brigades Union, said: "The cash could have been used to stop the cuts in the fire service."

Originally it was Labour's plan to replace 46 existing fire control rooms with nine hi-tech regional centres across the UK.

But the award-winning fire control centre was one of the casualties when the Government decided to scrap the idea last year because of delays, spiralling costs and technology problems.

By then it was too late - the lease had been signed in 2007 and rent started the following April. It is set to run until 2027.

So far the Government has forked out around pounds 5m in rent and running costs to a group of private investors who have bought a stake in five fire centres across Britain, including the one in Durham. The deal was struck through an offshore company in Jersey called The Control Centre General Partner Ltd, which allows investors to avoid stamp duty if they sell their part in the arrangement.

The union told the Chronicle the centre had been kitted out with the latest gadgets including a "massive video screen and a fancy coffee maker". But all the appliances gathered dust until they were eventually removed.

Coun Brenda Forster, a key member of the organisation which oversaw the setting up of the fire control centre, said "only a coat hanger" could be found in the building now.

The councillor, chair of the local area board the North East Fire Control Company Ltd, said: "The building has now been cleared. I thought the regional control centres were a good idea. It was a terrible waste of money to scrap them."

She said the building had been used for meetings and a project team was based there for a time, but that it was never used for its intended purpose.

One fire service source said the demise of the control centre in Durham will mean more expense for the region's fire authorities to improve the existing facilities.

A spokesman for the Department for Communities and Local Government said: "We shut down the fire control centre because it was not delivering."

CAPTION(S):

MOTHBALLED The North East Fire Control Centre WASTE Andy Noble of the Fire Brigades Union says money spent on the empty centre could have prevented cuts

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Publication:	Evening Chronicle (Newcastle, England)
Date:	Jun 1, 2011
Words:	474
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