THE county's ambulance control centre is to close next week, it has been announced.

The emergency operations centre (EOC) at Bransford, near Worcester, will close at 7am on Monday when all calls and dispatch of vehicles in Worcestershire and Herefordshire will be handled by the EOC at Brierley Hill, near Dudley, West Midlands.

Staff, local politicians, local residents and your Worcester News fought a long and hard campaign to try and save the centre from closure, with more than 2,000 people signing a petition against the plans.

People were concerned the closure could lead to a diminished ambulance service in the two counties because of a loss of local knowledge, and ultimately put lives at risk.

However, the West Midlands Ambulance Service NHS Trust board decided to go ahead with the closure in November 2007 and move to a new integrated system with three EOCs in the region – at Brierley Hill, Stafford and Leamington Spa.

Richard Burt, Liberal Democrat parliamentary candidate for West Worcestershire, who was instrumental in the campaign, said: “It is bitterly disappointing. We fought a very very strong, well-argued and determined fight to keep the centre serving the two counties but the ambulance trust, in their wisdom, decided the better option was a single service at Brierley Hill.”

Harriett Baldwin, Conservative parliamentary candidate for West Worcestershire, said: “The West Midlands Ambulance Trust board knows many local politicians will be continuing to hold them to account for the speed of response in Worcestershire. We will be monitoring response times for Worcestershire as well as the availability of ambulances resources serving rural areas.”

The trust said that no redundancies were being made following the closure of Bransford.

Chief executive Anthony Marsh said: “Staff will be moving to a variety of other positions within the trust that they have chosen. These include transferring to the EOC at Brierley Hill, working on A&E ambulances, becoming part of the patient transport service and in one case working as a trainer for community first responders in the two counties.

“Once the switch has been made, there will continue to be a dispatch desk dealing exclusively with the vehicles in the two counties. This will be staffed by the staff from Bransford or from the pool of staff from Brierley Hill who have been supporting Bransford for the last 12 months.”

Ray Salmon, regional officers for public services union Unison, said staff were disappointed with the closure. He said: “We were very much against this from the start. We don’t believe it’s in the long-term interests of patients or staff and we will be monitoring the situation very closely.”

Mr Marsh said no ambulance stations were closing and there was no intention for that situation to change.

He said: “During our consultation, a number of people raised concerns that all of the vehicles in rural areas would be people ‘sucked into Birmingham’. We have examined the flow of vehicles between counties since the closure of the control room in Shrewsbury and that has very not happened. This proves beyond any doubt that the steps that we said we would take to ensure it didn’t happen are working.”