NEW regional fire control centres serving the North-East and North Yorkshire will cost £1,770,000 more a year to run than the current set-up, it has emerged.

Those figures could rise even further over the next three years, project managers have admitted.

Officials say the new North- East control centre in Belmont, Durham, will cost £602,000 more than the annual costs of the current control rooms in Durham, Hartlepool, West Denton and Morpeth.

In Yorkshire and Humberside, a regional control centre in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, will replace the four existing control rooms, including one in Northallerton, at an additional cost of £1,172,000 a year.

The figures contrast with original hopes that the centres would be able to make savings from day one.

In the early days of the project, the Government had suggested savings of up to 30 per cent on running costs could be made.

But the ambitious project has already fallen behind schedule as costs have spiralled.

The centres were due to open in autumn 2006, but this has now slipped to 2009.

John Hindmarch, who took over the North-East fire control project from retiring Cleveland fire chief John Burke last year, said the extra costs would be met by the Government.

Mr Hindmarch admitted that fire and rescue authorities, like local councils, were “under the cosh” in terms of financial settlements and the requirement to make efficiency savings, and would not want to pay any additional costs up front.

But he said he had been reassured that taxpayers would not pay more because of a “resilience”

payment from Government meeting the costs.

Mr Hindmarch added: “There will be economies of scale which suggests that savings will be made at some point after the regional control centre goes live.”

The changes have been criticised by the Fire Brigades Union.

Ian Murray, FBU chairman for Yorkshire and Humberside, said: “The original projected costs for the regional control centres were astronomical – they are now going through the roof.

“And they are spending more in consultants’ fees than it takes to run the control rooms for a year.

“This money should be spent on front-line services.”

A spokesman for the Government’s Communities and Local Government department, which is behind the changes, said: “Where there are regions that make a loss for the first three years, that will be covered by a resilience payment.”

A total of £5.5m is being made available nationally each year for the next three years for such payments and will be reviewed after that, she said.

Regardless of the resilience payment, it is thought likely that existing control rooms will be sold off at some point to raise funds.

The North-East and Yorkshire regional control centres are two of nine in a nationally-linked network across the country which is replacing 46 standalone control rooms.

The North-East control room is expected to begin receiving calls in October next year, first from the Tyne and Wear area, before the other fire and rescue areas in the North-East follow.

The Yorkshire control room is due to take its first calls in January 2011.