Wiltshire Emergency Services

Wiltshire Emergency Services is the collaboration of the emergency services in Wiltshire, England, including Wiltshire Police, Great Western Ambulance Service and Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service

History

The Wiltshire Emergency Services project was set up in February 1998 to investigate the feasibility of re-locating all control rooms into one emergency communications centre building, as well sharing information and services.

The plot chosen for the emergency communications centre was on the Wiltshire Police headquarters site on London Road, Devizes, which was owned by Wiltshire Police Authority.

After extensive consultation it wasn't until July 1999 that the £2.6 million required funding was secured under the Governments 'Invest to Save' Scheme.

The new building called the Wiltshire Emergency Communications Centre (later known as the Wiltshire Emergency Services Building, or WES Building) was opened by the Duchess of Gloucester in a small ceremony in November 2003.[1]

Wiltshire Emergency Services Building

The Wiltshire Emergency Services building project broke ground in 2001 when the existing Llewellyn Building was demolished and the WES building was built on top. The building is a two tiered building at London Road, Devizes and is home to all three emergency service's control rooms, as well as a conference room, staff rooms, offices and facilities.[2][3]

Wiltshire Police have been allocated half of the control room, their operators wear traditional police white shirt and black tie with epaulettes reading 'Emergency Call Operator', Senior operators have a bar above this. Operators are supervised by Force Operations Room Inspectors, who are ranked police Inspectors. There are roughly 80 operators split into teams, then workstation, who work variable shifts, non-stop, all year round. The caller is put through to the workstation assigned to the location of their incident, the call operators have detailed knowledge of the area their workstations area covers. Great Western Ambulance Service are allocated a quarter of the control room, their operators wear dark green jumpsuits with green epaulettes.[4] Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service are also allocated a quarter of the control room, their operators wear red shirts with black epaulettes, with bars denoting rank.

All information is shared instantly between the three services and they can collaborate easily if the need arises.

The Emergency Communications Centre also acts as a base in the event of a major incident.

The police non-emergency Force Contact Centre is located in a separate building, and not in the WES Building, however information is shared instantly between the emergency and non-emergency control rooms.

FiReControl

The FiReControl initiative introduced by the Labour government would see the Wiltshire Fire and Rescue Service control room relocated from Devizes to Taunton. Although this project has been cancelled by the Conservative government, the option to proceed has been made available.

Other projects

The project oversees the Wiltshire Police/Air Ambulance Helicopter, a helicopter shared between Wiltshire Police and Great Western Ambulance Service, an arrangement seen in only one other part of the UK.[5]

The WES has equipped and trained Fire and Rescue crews to use defibrillators so that they can respond to some ambulance calls when there is too high a demand for ambulances.

Another initiative allowed ambulance crews to stand by at fire stations where they have predicted their workload. Ambulance crews now have the use of facilities, when before they had to sit in their vehicles.

The WES has also overseen the sharing off stations in Mere and Bradford-on-Avon, which are shared by ambulance and fire and rescue crews.

See also

External links

References

  1. ↑ "999 project - home". Wiltshire-999.gov.uk. Retrieved 2010-08-15.
  2. ↑ "999 project - about". Wiltshire-999.gov.uk. Retrieved 2010-08-15.
  3. ↑ "Emergency Services Communication Centre Information". Wfb.org.uk. Retrieved 2010-08-15.
  4. ↑ "It's a 999 challenge for Wiltshire (From This Is Wiltshire)". Thisiswiltshire.co.uk. Retrieved 2010-08-15.
  5. ↑ "Wiltshire Air Ambulance". Wiltshire Air Ambulance. Retrieved 2010-08-15.
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