WORCESTER'S ambulance call centre is not fit for purpose, according to health chiefs who want to close it down.
Some 275 people have signed our petition against plans to close the Bransford centre but health chiefs insist it is not adequate.
The five emergency operations centres run by West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust, currently operate three different computer aided dispatch systems that cannot be linked together.
This means most of the control rooms, other than the Shrewsbury and Brierley Hill centres, struggle to communicate with each other in the event of a large scale, or cross-border emergency.
The trust claims that by creating two large regional centres, in Brierley Hill and Stafford, and a smaller support centre in Royal Leamington Spa, they could operate a more co-ordinated approach across the West Midlands.
"It is only a matter of time that a region such as ours is the target of a major incident," said chief executive Anthony Marsh. "We need to ensure we have the staff and resources to respond to such an incident. We need to ensure our control rooms are adequately able to manage a major incident effectively."
Under the trust's proposals the call centres at Bransford and Shrewsbury would close. Staff at Bransford are outraged at the plans and have vowed to fight them.
But the trust insists it is the right thing for the region. "The control rooms need to have the capacity to manage a major incident within the region and to have the ability to control and monitor the resources from a central point while maintaining the normal workload day to day," Mr Marsh said.
The trust says that currently if a member of staff is off sick at Bransford, the staff levels can drop by between 25 and 50 per cent. It claims that because of the size of the proposed new centres, sickness and holiday absence would have a far smaller impact.
There are currently up to 62 call takers on duty across the West Midlands at any one time. Under the changes there would be 110 - 50 at Brierley Hill, 50 at Stafford and 10 at Leamington Spa.
The consultation ends on Monday, October 1. People can send their comments to: West Midlands Ambulance Service Headquarters, EOC Reconfiguration Consultation, Millennium Point, Waterfront Business Park, Brierley Hill, Dudley, West Midlands DY5 1LX or email them to consultation@wmas.nhs.uk
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