SOLENT Coastguards cracked open bottles of bubbly to celebrate their joy and relief after John Prescott saved their Lee-on-Solent station from closure.

Those on duty throughout the day eagerly rang colleagues to break the good news and invite them to a big party after their shift ended.

Deputy watch manager Bob Knox said senior management contacted them with the good news at exactly the same moment as deputy prime minister Mr Prescott made his announcement.

"We're very happy. Now we can move forward," he said.

But the station still faces a move to new premises despite the scrapping of plans to relocate officers to a super-coastguard centre at Poole, Dorset.

Coastguard chiefs say the current converted boarding house at Lee-on-Solent is inappropriate and expensive to maintain. They want to house its operations room in purpose-built premises.

But the new building is likely to be on a coastal site within the Solent district.

John Astbury, the chief coastguard, said that several alternative sites had been proposed dur-ing the consultation process, including the Isle of Wight. These would be looked at in turn.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency had been looking at vacant land near the RNLI head-quarters at Poole to build a new coastguard centre housing both Solent and Portland operations rooms.

But Mr Prescott scrapped the proposal for a "co-located" centre after accepting the findings of an independent review by Lord Donaldson of Lymington.

Lord Donaldson said it was important for the public to have a visible coastguard presence in their area even if most people never visited it.

And while coastguards were public sector employees who might have to move he said some experienced officers might retire rather than pull up their roots and relocate.

The 32-member team at Lee-on-Solent, with its emergency helicopter next door, have responded to more than 1,000 incidents this year already.

Dramatic emergencies have included the lowering by helicopter of firefighters on to a stricken P&O ferry to tackle an engine room blaze.

The maritime equivalent of a Victoria Cross was given to officers for their part in the rescue of 51 young trainees from a Dutch schooner last October.

Coastguard Tom McNally described the news as "excellent".

"But we still don't know whether or not we are going to have a new station. "Our job is to get people from a place of danger to a place of safety - then we move on to the next job," he added.

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