An “out of the blue” end to a cost saving partnership between Cambridgeshire and Suffolk fire services will spark no imminent staff cuts but £500,000 needs to be found, the county’s fire chief has said.

Suffolk Fire and Rescue Service has announced plans to leave the shared control room and to set up its own by the end of 2024.

The Chief Fire Officer for Cambridgeshire Fire and Rescue Service, Chris Strickland, said this news came “out of the blue” and that at least £500,000 a year will now need to be found by the service.

The two fire services have shared a control room in Huntingdon since 2011, which Cambridgeshire Fire said has saved both areas around £12million.

Mr Strickland said: “[We need to find] at least half-a-million. To put that into context, since 2011 we have seen £7million worth of grant funding reduction in our service and part of those reductions were offset by going into an amalgamation with Suffolk.

“We saved at that point in time £400,000 a year, which was taken out, so we don’t have £400,000 or £500,000 under the mattress waiting to be used, we will have to find that from our budget, unless someone gives us some extra cash.

“Inevitably you can’t take half-a-million-pounds from a service that is as lean as we are without having an impact.”

Mr Strickland confirmed that there were no imminent plans to cut the number of staff working in the control room.

He said: “We have always supported our staff and we will stick with exactly what we have until such times as Suffolk leave and move into their own arrangements.

“At that point in time we will run with our system for a period of time to see what our resource requirements are and then at that point we will decide whether we need to reduce or stay the same.

“What I would say there is when we took on Suffolk we increased the number of staff in our control centre by four, so not a huge number.

“At worst case scenario if we find that is the case, because things have changed since 13 years ago and there is a lot more requirements placed on them, we might have to lose four; there are four watches so that is one person per watch, which we would anticipate we could easily do through natural wastage.

“But until such time as we have moved over, we are talking some time in advance at least December next year, there will be no change.”

Suffolk said issues and delays implementing a new IT system in the control room had led to the decision to end the partnership.

Mr Strickland said the pandemic and global “economic difficulties” had impacted the project, and said the company also faced “internal difficulties”.

However, he said at a meeting with his counterpart in Suffolk on May 22, they had agreed to wait until July to see how things had progressed, so said the news was a “big surprise”.

Mr Strickland said the plan to move to the new IT system was “now progressing well” and that he hoped for it to be in place in early 2024.

He said the two services were splitting all the costs of the new system “half and half” and that he expected Suffolk to move onto it before setting up its own centre.

Mr Strickland said he was open to the possibility of working in partnership with another fire service.

He said the service’s last two inspections showed it was “really good” at running the two services.

Jon Lacey, chief fire officer at Suffolk Fire and Rescue, said: “Following detailed talks with Cambridgeshire the decision has been made to bring fire control back into Suffolk.

“This decision has not been taken lightly and will take time to implement, however, we are confident it is achievable and the right way forward.

“Clearly a lot of time has gone into our collaborative work to date, so I would like to thank the teams for doing everything they could to make this work.

The proposed new control centre will be brought to Suffolk County Council’s cabinet for approval in September 2023.