Memorandum by David Elwell MBE, Communications
Manager, Essex County Fire and Rescue Service (FRS 41)
I have been the Communications Manager for Essex
Fire and Rescue Service since 1981and obviously seen many changes
many have resulted in improvements to the service in general,
However I would like to make the following observations for committee
consideration concerning the Regional Fire Control Project.
Whilst I am directly involved with both the
Fire Control and Firelink Projects and the convergence issues
arising from the respective projects and will support whatever
the ODPM and our local management ultimately dictate, I have serious
concerns about the Regional Control project.
The proposal to consolidate the six Fire Service
Controls including the one in Essex to form a regional control
centre in Cambridge will in my opinion not provide the required
resilience and efficiency. The new control will resemble a technology
driven call centre and not be conducive with all of the elements
of fire controls activities, many of which will not apparently
be undertaken by the control in any event, probably resulting
in Brigades having to effectively set a up a 24/7 ops room to
liaise with the regional control centre.
The policy to site the Eastern Region Control
at Cambridge Business Park in Cambridge on what is essentially
a busy industrial estate is not conducive with ideals set out
for such a centre. It is located near to one of the busiest road
traffic blackspots in Eastern England near to the A14. This could
result in staffing difficulties during bad weather and above normal
heavy traffic conditions. (Although I would reiterate that the
normal in that area is heavy in any event). It is apparently considered
that Local Knowledge is not important, whilst to some degree this
may be true in the event of a technology failure at one or more
regional controls local knowledge would come into its own.
The whole concept of the regional controls is
technology driven and fraught with danger, The most likely time
to lose Landlines/Telecoms Infrastructure, Electrical Power and
Radio Aerial Sites is during severe conditions where the use of
the former facilities are in maximum demand. It is appreciated
that the design concept will take into account the stated failures,
however I doubt that any resilience measures will be adequate
in the event of serious spate conditions.
The Fire Service considers it is a Community
Based Service with a requirement to educate and liaise with the
Community, however moving the control room away from the community
based activates contradicts the concept.
It is appreciated that projects such as Firelink
will improve radio communications, but it is imperative that fall
back solutions are implemented from the outset and not as in the
case of the police retrospectively.
In summary the whole concept of the Fire Service
Control Project is Technology Driven and it is well known from
major events such as the Major BT Southampton Exchange Failure,
fires involving other BT exchanges causing national connectivity
problems, and connectivity problems with networks resulting from
7 July that Communications Infrastructure will and does fail at
the optimum time for its usage.
There is no apparent cost benefit analysis available
for the original conception of the idea of regional control and
it is considered that any savings will be taken up in supporting
unnecessary high levels of technology with little or no manual
back up mechanism. A significant number of concerns and issues
have been raised as a direct result of convergence work being
undertaken by this region, brigades in different areas currently
work in different ways with variations in procedures, it is appreciated
that convergence will rationalise many issues, however IRMP variations
will occur and the attendance prescribed by the regional control
will deal with them but only if the technology is efficient or
in fact working. I appreciate that there will be many counter
arguments from government and in particular from consultants about
my views, but my assumptions are based on experience and there
are serious concerns both from my self and my colleagues in our
control room about the whole concept of control room regionalisation.
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