Shropshire's fire service is evaluating a joint command and control system with others hundreds of miles away where they can help each other in times of crisis.
A meeting was told that this will help prevent fire controllers in Shropshire from being 'overwhelmed' by calls about incidents including flooding emergencies in the county.
The closest service involved is Hereford and Worcester, which has had a long-standing alliance arrangement with Shropshire where the two services can help each other out.
The other two are more than 200 miles away in County Durham and Darlington, and Cleveland.
Shropshire Councillor Adam Fejfer (Liberal Democrats, Monkmoor) asked why the partnerships were not with services closer to Shropshire.
Chief fire officer Simon Hardiman told a meeting of Shropshire & Wrekin Fire & Rescue Authority on Wednesday (Oct 15) that one of the recommendations from the Grenfell Tower inquiry was about the 'resilience' of fire control rooms.
The fire which destroyed Grenfell Tower in London in June 2017 lead to the deaths of 72 people.
Mr Hardiman said the fire service in London had 70 operators on duty who were "overwhelmed'.
"The idea is that we can scale up quickly and all of a sudden we've got four control rooms, which increases resilience."
Mr Hardiman said that flooding was a "great example".
"We know that if we get flooding we are overwhelmed with flooding incidents," he said.
He added that if flooding happens in Shropshire the chances are that local services such as Hereford and Worcester "are going to be overwhelmed as well."
And he said the geographical distance to Durham and Darlington, and the Hartlepool-based Cleveland fire service, makes the same circumstances less likely.
The joint command and control arrangement was picked out by inspectors last year who said they were looking forward to "seeing this project progress and to reviewing the service's evaluation of the benefits achieved and lessons learned from this work."
But at the same time the inspection by His Majesty's Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) identified an Area for Improvement (AFI) related to the evaluation of partnership working.
A report by Karen Gowreesunker, assistant chief fire officer, said that the command and control work is a "significant collaboration" and an evaluation of the project is "currently in progress."
Her report said strategic collaboration with other fire and rescue services to implement a resilient, multi-service fire control system "demonstrates how joint working is enhancing operational effectiveness and futureproofing critical infrastructure."
The service has added two new partnerships to its working in the last 12 months.
There are a data sharing agreement with Baywater Healthcare aimed at improving protection for people using home oxygen therapy.
The second new partnership is one with Jon Beech Recovery, which provides electric vehicle recovery services to support incident response. It is used in cases involving complex vehicle extrications.