New Shrewsbury fire control room could bring £75,000 of savings
Shropshire Fire and Rescue Service have introduced an innovative scheme to staff its state of the art control room for rapid mobilisation of fire engines answering 999 calls.
The first of its kind in the UK, the new state of the art control room is estimated to save £75,000 in staffing costs.
Secretaries, a firefighter and backroom staff including a stores delivery man, have all volunteered and been trained as Control Room operators to be drafted in during major emergencies and to cover sickness and holidays.
The scheme is run on similar lines to the rural brigade’s retained duty firefighters, who have daytime jobs but “drop tools” to respond to emergencies from 22 of the county’s fire stations.
The new system was put to the test during a recent spate of flash floods in which one man died, traffic chaos was caused and property damaged.
“Within minutes we were able to increase our staff from three to seven qualified control room operators,” said Group Manager Kevin Faulkner.
“This meant we could answer all the available emergency phone lines, maintain excellent communications with neighbouring fire and rescue services and police, using the latest multi agency radio channels.”
The new “on call” Shrewsbury fire control staff attend weekly drill night sessions for training and development to maintain required competency levels.
“They are able to respond within ten minutes of a major emergency either from their existing jobs within the service or from their homes at night,” said Mr Faulkner.
“We have worked closely with the Fire Brigades Union and the trial is continuously being reviewed to explore alternative ways of working.
“There were early reservations as to how it might work but the initiative has been welcomed by everyone and gives us the resources and resilience to support Fire Control.
“We made enquiries nationally to see if anything like this was being done by other fire and rescue services and it became apparent that no-one had ever looked to do this in the way we planned.
“We not only wanted staff who could be available on a pre-arranged basis to cover staff holidays or sickness but also staff who we could contact for immediate call to duty.”
On call Fire Control operator Jayne Turner, who works as PA to the chief officers’, said: “Being paged for duty during the recent flash floods was quite daunting as it was the first time we had been called in. But as soon as I started dealing with calls, any nerves were instantly forgotten.
“It was great being part of a team, putting all my training into practice and seeing how Fire Control operators, firefighters and officers all worked calmly and seamlessly together to ensure that the correct resources were dispatched to deal with the emergencies.”
The trial, which began in February, runs until March 2013.
