Oxfordshire's deputy chief fire officer has admitted the county will have to go along with new regional fire control rooms -- but said he wished the Government would just get on and announce where the South East call centre will be.

John Hurren said his service was sweating on the announcement -- already delayed several times -- which will sound the death knell for Oxfordshire's control room in Kidlington.

Under plans by the Government to better equip the country against the threat of a major terrorist attack, all 47 control rooms across the country will be scrapped and replaced with nine regional call centres. And while the fate of the Kidlington headquarters appears to be sealed, no-one knows the location of the control room to cover Ox- fordshire, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, East and West Sussex, Surrey, Kent, Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

An announcement will now be made in late summer or the autumn.

Mr Hurren said: "The Government is pressing ahead with the plans despite all the representations that have been made. My job is to ensure the service to the community is at least as good as it is now -- and that will not be through a lack of effort. The trouble is we do not have anything to compare regional fire control rooms with, but opting out is not an option.

"The county council has made its thoughts known. This is a decision central Government made with very limited -- almost non-existent -- consultation in local areas.

"I feel most for the control staff who are involved because they are decent, hard working people and this is an insecure situation for them."

Supporters of the regional project claim the new control centres will save 30 per cent in costs. The average cost of responding to an incident is £76 per authority -- under future arrangements it will be £52, the Government claims.

Local Government Minister Nick Raynsford said: "The existing control rooms do a good job but they are not designed to deal, in a co-ordinated fashion, with major regional or national incidents."