Suffolk Fire and Rescue is planning to spend millions of pounds bringing its control room back to the county - just 13 years after it controversially merged with Cambridgeshire.
Merging the Suffolk fire and rescue service with that in Cambridgeshire and sharing its Huntingdon headquarters was one of the most controversial decisions of the "new strategic direction" era of the late noughties.
Suffolk's own fire control centre was based at the former fire headquarters in Colchester Road in Ipswich - a site that has now been redeveloped as housing.
It closed at the end of 2011 despite a long political battle.
Now, however, things have turned full circle and Suffolk County Council has announced it plans to return the fire control centre to Suffolk by the end of next year.
Cabinet member for public safety Andrew Reid and Chief Fire Officer Jon Lacey said things had changed significantly over the last 10 years - and what was right in 2011 was not right now.
The catalyst for the move has been the difficulty in installing a new computer system in Huntingdon which was brought in during 2019.
That has not worked - and the French company behind it is now in administration which makes it difficult to iron out the problems.
Mr Lacey said that over the last few years there had also been other systems that had been installed by other fire services that were easier to operate and just as effective.
Mr Reid said: "It reached the stage where we realised it was best for the people of Suffolk and the firefighters if we brought the control room back home."
Back in 2011 cost was a key factor - and both Mr Reid and Mr Lacey accept there is a cost associated with this decision.
Mr Reid said: "There is a cost. It is in the low millions - nowhere near the tens of millions.
"We haven't identified a location yet but the county council has a large estate and we should be able to find somewhere that is appropriate."
Mr Lacey said it would need to be easily accessible and secure to protect its systems.
He added that computer systems had moved on significantly over the last 15 years so it was much easier to set up a control room from scratch using tried and tested technology.
The original merger had arisen out of ill-fated proposals by the Labour government in 2004 to create a network of nine regional fire control rooms to replace county centres.
The East of England centre was built at Waterbeach, near Cambridge.
However the technology never worked and it was impossible to link it with individual services and the whole plan was abandoned in 2010 - leaving the £30m headquarters as an empty white elephant for more than a decade.
One issue likely to be faced by the Fire and Rescue Service is recruiting staff for their new centre - it is unclear whether any from Huntingdon will want to move to a centre in Suffolk.
However Mr Lacey said he was confident there would be a mixture of new and experienced staff at the centre.
Official opposition leader and Green councillor Andrew Stringer welcomed the return of the control centre: "It should never have gone to Cambridgeshire in the first place - but I am worried at the impact the council's decisions will have on the budget."
And Labour's Sandy Martin was a critic of the move in 2011. He said: "They should have brought this back many years ago.
"There is a belief that merging services saves money - but to prove that you really have to delve into all the costs and I am not at all sure this move was justified."
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