WORCESTER'S ambulance call centre is not fit for purpose, say health chiefs who want to close it down.

More than 300 people have signed our petition against plans to close the Bransford centre but health chiefs insist it is not adequate for modern operations. 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 Leamington Spa, they could operate a more co-ordinated approach across the West Midlands.

"It's only a matter of time a region such as ours is the target of a major incident," said chief executive Anthony Marsh. "We need to ensure we have the resources to respond."

Under the trust's proposals the call centres at Bransford and Shrewsbury would close. The sale of Bransford would benefit the trust by 650,000. Staff at Bransford are outraged at the plans.

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," 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 e-mail them to consultation@wmas.nhs.uk