Officers at Essex County Fire and Rescue have said they have no current plans to merge in the wake of a review which called for a radical shake-up of the way fire services are managed.
Former fire adviser Sir Ken Knight, who visited Essex during his research, said the government should consider replacing the 46 organisations up and down the country with one national body.
The report, Facing the Future, called for station sharing, more frequent use of part-time firefighters and ultimately, the closure of some expensive services in a bid to save £200 million.
The review was in response to figures which showed a drop in call-outs over the last decade while firefighter numbers and costs remained broadly the same.
But Essex Fire and Rescue pointed at its existing programme of cost savings.
Deputy chief fire officer Adam Eckley said: "We are midway through a major workforce transformation programme designed to completely overhaul the organisation, its people and its processes.
"We are implementing new ways of working to use our people in the most efficient and effective way to cover temporary shortfalls on fire stations and improve the availability of fire engines across the County. We have reduced firefighter numbers.
"Over the last two years, we have changed the crewing system for two appliances – at Brentwood and Canvey - to use on call crews as recommended by Sir Ken.
The overall number of incidents in Essex fell from 28,314 in 2003/04 to 14,082 in 2012/13, with the number of fires dropping from 12,529 to 4,234 in the same period.
The cost per head of population equates to 85p per person per week, the service said.
"We have delivered significant savings over the last few years against a political mandate from the Fire Authority that there should be no fire station closures, no reduction in the number of frontline appliances serving the County and no compulsory redundancies among our uniformed personnel.
"Over the next few years, we are anticipating a need to deliver services with significantly less money, so clearly some of the strategies Sir Ken outlines will continue to be on our radar."
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