The reward for loyal and flexible fire emergency control room staff in Oxfordshire will be redundancy, according to the county's chief fire officer.

John Parry has warned that as many as 18 people could be made redundant within weeks as the county finally loses out to regional- isation.

Staff manning the command headquarters in Kidlington could lose their jobs when the venue for the new South East control room is ann- ounced.

All 47 control rooms across England, which handle 999 calls for fire emergencies, will be scrapped and replaced with eight regional call centres between now and 2009.

While every other region now knows the location of their centre, no decision been made on where it will be in the South East.

An announcement was due in March this year and the favourite is Guildford, in Surrey.

Over the past few months, six support staff have left Oxfordshire Fire and Rescue Service because of uncertainty surrounding their futures. Although they have been replaced, losing staff hampers shift patterns because new employees have to be thoroughly trained to deal with emergency calls. The control room is manned by four shifts of four people and two managers.

Mr Parry said: "I can't say how many redundancies there'll be, but there will be redundancies because I haven't got 18 vacancies.

"The reward to people who are flexible, loyal and providing a first-class service to the public in Oxfordshire will be they have no job.

"I would not want to undermine public confidence, but it does give us a problem."

Some staff in the Kidlington control room have applied for jobs at nearby Thames Valley Police headquarters.

A spokesman for the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister said: "Negotiations are at an advanced stage and we'll make an announcement as soon as possible.

"We recognise that establishing the new network will inevitably result in change for staff.

"We're putting a strong emphasis on the retention of staff who provide a valuable contribution to the fire and rescue service, even if their future roles may not be traditional control room ones."