A £10 million fire control centre in the Black Country is to be sold off after standing empty for two years and before taking a single emergency call.

The Regional Control Centre has been scrapped after the government abandoned a national £423m scheme.

The centre was plagued by technical problems after building work began in 2006 and was completed in 2008.

It cost £9.7m and has been  costing taxpayers £1.7m a year in rent, maintenance and security costs since. The Labour government had vowed to replace 46 fire control rooms with nine regional centres, including the Wolverhampton complex.

The Stafford Road centre would have handled emergency calls for the West Midlands, Staffordshire, Shropshire, Hereford and Worcester and Warwickshire.

Ninety fire control staff in the region would have lost their jobs under the plan.

But the Con-Lib coalition today announced it has reached a deal with main contractor Cassidian to call a halt to the project.

Fire Minister Bob Neill said: “We have jointly concluded the requirements of the project cannot be delivered to an acceptable timeframe. The best outcome is for the contract to be terminated with immediate effect.”

He said details of the deal  would remain “commercially confidential.”

Since building work finished the Wolverhampton building has been virtually unused aside from meetings.

Costs associated with the project drew criticism from the Fire Brigades Union which opposed the proposals from the start.

Fire control staff today said they were “relieved” while union leaders added they were “elated” the scheme had been scrapped.