Currently most local control rooms can't automatically locate their vehicles, or communicate through 'in cab' computers that can provide building floor plans, flag up dangerous chemicals known to be stored on site and show the quickest route to incidents.
The new regional business case shows that under the new FireControl network everyone in the country will benefit from the full suite of improved protection and firefighters can do their difficult job more safely and effectively.
The report clearly shows, and publishes for the first time, how few FRS control rooms in England currently have the key capabilities of the new nationally linked network.
Only ten of the 46 FRS control rooms currently have six or more of the eight key capabilities, of these two have all eight, but they will still benefit, like the rest from being part of the fully networked national system that gives automatic shared call handling when call volumes generated by major emergencies are very high.
In the North East of the four FRS control rooms:
- one control room has seven of the key capabilities,
- one has five,
- one has four, and
- the remainder has only one.
Fire Minister Parmjit Dhanda said:
"The case for the new national network is crystal clear - every area in England will benefit.
"The Government is right to invest in this nationally important project, as well as the specialist equipment and interoperable communications, which will give everyone in England the services of a resilient fire and rescue service rather than just a few.
"The regional benefits case published today shows that, although the current control rooms in England have served their local communities well and are operated by highly professional and committed staff, the existing disparate systems do not provide an adequate response to the threats, risks and uncertainty the public and firefighters now face in today's world.
"The staff that work in existing control rooms do an excellent job and through the FireControl project, control room operators will be provided with best in class technology to enhance the critical service they provide to the public.
"I am pleased that the Fire and Rescue Service is helping us to deliver this critically important project. "
Of the current 46 diverse control rooms and systems, out of the eight key capabilities within their current control rooms and available to all fire crews that will be provided by the new network:
- only two FRS have all 8
- three have 7
- five have 6
but
- seven FRS have only 2 out of 8
- three have only 1
- and two have 0 (zero).
The current control rooms are stand alone and are unable to back up each other easily in times of high numbers of calls or major failure. Last summer's floods demonstrated the need for a new linked network - where despite the magnificent response by control room staff - control rooms in flooded areas were overloaded with calls as were their neighbouring 'buddies'. This resulted in many 999 calls being taken by other control rooms and then the details had to be faxed back to the already overstretched control room as they were the only ones able to mobilise appliances for their area. Overload happens in some FRS on a monthly basis, not only causing delay to mobilisation for rescue, but highly stressful to the control room operator who may have taken a distressing call for which they are not able to effectively mobilise a response to.
The case for the new system was supported in the FRS and the Floods review by the Chief Fire and Rescue Adviser published earlier this year.
Under the new system over flow calls would automatically be transferred to the least busy control centre. All control rooms would have the access to the same data about appliances, resources and locations and be able to respond to the caller wherever they are calling from. The same would apply if a control centre was unusually unable to operate even though the new resilient buildings are designed to operate for at least seven days without mains services.
The current fallback system requires calls to temporarily be diverted by the telephone service provider (BT or Cable and Wireless) to a neighbouring 'buddy' FRS, while the primary control room gets their secondary control room up and running. The majority of buddies do not generally have the ability to mobilise appliances and thus take messages to forward once the FRS is up and running again. Secondary control rooms are generally not of the same standard as the primary control room and designed to operate only for a short time. Set up times vary but FRS report that it can take up to 60 minutes to get secondary control rooms up and running.
The aim is that the public will not notice any difference when actually making a call, but the callers location whether land line or mobile will be known - currently only 17 of the FRS have this facility. It will also help in identifying hoax calls which can cost lives.
However, the new system will help deploy the nearest available by travel-time appliance and track appliances even when outside of home boundaries when supporting other FRS with major incidents. Control centres will all share the same database, and staff will be able to view screens showing maps with resources or incidents overlaid. Live incident and resource data is fed back to FRS headquarters to enable best resource and incident management.
Firefighters will have consistent and timely information through the provision of on-board computers in their cabs. This will provide firefighters with satellite navigation technology and access - 24 hours a day, 365 days a year - to vital information such as: floor plans of buildings and details of known risks and hazards, information about safe handling of chemicals and motor vehicle design and hydrants and water supplies.
A development from the project of benefit to the FRS is an agreement with the 23 water companies to provide detailed data on the location and size of water hydrants which will be of use to crews operating outside of their normal area.
FireControl is about resilience and equipping the Fire and Rescue Service for today's world. The Regional Case explains how the running costs of the new control centres
compare to the existing control rooms. Some FRS will make a saving and all will breakeven supported by a Communities and Local Government resilience payment. The resilience payment national total is approximately £5.5m per year, and will be reviewed after three years.
