A fire chief has “guaranteed” that services will improve with the controversial closure of the Aberdeen and Inverness control rooms.
The Granite City control room is scheduled to shut in November with workers from Dundee, Inverness and Aberdeen joining forces in a new facility on Tayside by March 2017.
The plans been heavily criticised amid fears loss of local knowledge will put lives at risk.
Fire service area manager Tony Hughes was quizzed by members of Aberdeen City Council’s infrastructure services committee yesterday.
He confirmed there are currently 24 staff in Aberdeen and that just five had chosen to re-locate to Dundee.
But Labour member Barney Crockett quizzed him about the justification for Dundee being considered to be in the “north of the country”.
He added: “I think the general perception in Aberdeen is that it is the Scottish Government’s forgotten city.
“I think we will all reel when hearing that Dundee is in the north of Scotland.”
Mr Hughes said scouting exercises had been carried out to train new staff in local dialects and that the new control room would allow the service to better co-ordinate responses across Scotland.
SNP group leader on the city council, Stephen Flynn, asked: “Can you guarantee the standard of service won’t be affected by any closure?”
Mr Hughes said that he guaranteed “the service will be improved”.
