MANY service industries and businesses of all kinds use call centres which are not necessarily in the same county or even the same country.

But while they are ideal for managing some operations there are areas where local knowledge is needed - as a number of firms have found to their cost when customers became upset because they set up centres in the Far East.

Where emergency services are concerned logic suggests that geographical knowledge is very important.

Someone who is distressed is unlikely to be able to give precise directions and a postcode when ringing for help.

Lancashire police experienced real problems when they first set up divisional call centres rather than have people ringing local police stations.

And here staff are only a few miles away and comparatively local.

But replacing the county's fire brigade control centre with a regional operation in Warrington is more worrying.

Years of expertise at Fulwood are likely to be lost because existing staff will not be able to travel such a distance to work.

The government's justification for the rationalisation is that regional centres are needed to cope with "terrorist attacks."

But more people die in accidental fires every year than through terrorism. The public need reassurance that response times will not suffer and lives be lost.