Midlands, North East fire and rescue services to use Motorola control room platform

Motorola Solutions has gained a new contract with fire and rescue services (FRS) in Hereford and Worcester, Shropshire, Cleveland Fire Brigade, and Country Durham and Darlington to use a shared control room platform.

Working together, the four fire and rescue services operate 77 fire stations, covering a population of 2.5 million people, and they will now deploy a control room solution (CRS) to allow the four control rooms to work independently, as well as in a collaborative services hub capacity, to ensure greater efficiency and scalability for emergency services.

As part of the deployment, the shared platform encompasses an integrated communication control system (ICCS) for call-taking, computer aided dispatch (CAD) and data recording to help each FRS increase the effectiveness and resilience of incident response. The platform also integrates call-taking, dispatch and data management to improve response times, standardise processes and enable seamless collaboration during high-demand situations.

As it combines workflows from initial call-taking to dispatch, the unified response system, the platform will standardise data and processes. This, said Motorola Solutions, will allow them to provide control room staff with the ability to more quickly respond to incidents and be able to scale operations and capabilities in times of high demand.

“By adopting this innovative approach, fire and rescue services can enhance capabilities, improve service delivery and minimise costs by sharing the same underlying infrastructure,” said Motorola Solutions UK and Ireland country manager Fergus Mayne. “By choosing a hub solution, emergency services foster standardisation for seamless information exchange during joint operations and increase scalability to accommodate varying demand levels – especially leading to faster response times.”

Drilling deeper into one of the forces, Hereford & Worcester Fire and Rescue Service has 25 fire stations, with 41 fire engines strategically located across the two counties.

Each year, it attends a wide variety of incidents, including property and countryside fires, road traffic collisions, water rescues, rope rescues, collapsed structures, hazardous materials and animal rescues. The service has around 250 wholetime firefighters and 380 on-call firefighters, supported by some 20 fire control staff and approximately 100 support staff. It also hosts one of 29 national urban search and rescue specialist units.

Chief fire officer Jon Pryce said: “Our control room is an essential function and the first point of contact to our communities in any emergency situation.

“By creating this new multi-agency hub, our four fire services can manage incidents together when they need to, such as in spate conditions, when a control room may need to cover a large amount of incoming 999 calls,” he added.

“The new control room solution will help us to maximise the capabilities of our control room staff, and use the latest technology to mobilise and coordinate frontline staff.”