Fire HQ is shot down in flames

A fire control centre project for Staffordshire and the West Midlands was today dubbed a "comprehensive failure" that wasted £9.7 million of taxpayers' money.

The centre at Wolverhampton Business Park, off Stafford Road, has never opened but still costs an additional £1.7m a year in rent, security, electricity and utility bills.

It was one of nine new control rooms commissioned by the previous Labour government that were today criticised in a damning report by the National Audit Office.

The report says the total "wasted" cost of the ill-fated project nationally had now run to almost half a billion pounds.

It says the centres, championed by former deputy prime minister John Prescott, were flawed from the start because they did not have the support of fire and rescue services.