ONE fire brigade to cover the whole of the North-East could be established within two years.

Plans to create the "super brigade" - a merger between four brigades - have been hastened by the threat of terrorist attacks on Britain.

Radical proposals to establish a regional control room for the brigades covering Cleveland, County Durham, Tyne and Wear, and Northumberland were announced last year.

But now it has been admitted for the first time that the move could be the catalyst to a single brigade serving the region's 2.4 million residents.

The plan to ultimately have one control room and one brigade -with a separate one covering Yorkshire and Humberside - is opposed by union leaders, who branded the idea "crazy and dangerous".

A location for the command centre will not be known until November at the earliest, but the new headquarters would need to meet strict security conditions in the wake of the September 11 atrocities and the increased terrorist threat to the UK.

Cleveland Fire Brigade's chief officer, John Doyle, said: "It is all part of national resilience - the capacity for an area to be able to respond not just to the local risk but also the national risk."

John Burke, the brigade's director of service support, added: "From a Government point of view, that is very much the driving force to make the fire service and the command and control systems resilient to that sort of large-scale attack."

Members of the County Durham and Darlington Fire Authority have voted to accept moves to merge the region's four brigades.

Chief Fire Officer George Herbert said: "They think it is a good way forward in probable economy efficiency."

But Fire Brigades Union regional chairman Alan Blacklee said: "We are perturbed that chief fire officers and fire authorities seem to think regional brigades and control centres are a great idea.

"It doesn't take a genius to work out that after September 11 all the terrorist needs to do is take out one control room and the whole region is affected. It's crazy."

Tyne and Wear Fire Brigade's chief officer, Richard Bull, said: "It is not about cutting costs, it is about modernisation and improving the services by improving public safety and by ensuring resilience.

"The design specifications for the new control rooms are much higher.

"Much more prominence will be given to security in the way in which they are constructed, designed and operated."