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If there was going to be one image I could use for this end of year round-up, it had to be one of the many amazing dogs at The Emergency Services Show. Looking straight down the lens, this pooch gives me the opportunity to share our first year as a purely digital publication and why it was definitely the right decision.
We published over 1,400 stories this year, covering news, senior appointments, supplier contract awards and innovations as well as lots of interviews with senior leaders and posts celebrating anniversaries as the RNLI did as it reached its 200th year. With around 200k visitors to the website, we have broadened our readership well beyond anything we did in print.
We are agile and responsive, writing up and sharing news quickly so that you can stay up to date. Adding weekly, and more recently daily, newsletters to our offering has been a huge driver of traffic to our website.
It’s been a massive year for news. The shocking riots in the summer challenged the emergency services across the country after the awful murders of three young girls at a dance class in Southport. Phil Garrigan, Merseyside fire chief told me how proud he was of the response, although we learned from a report by the police inspectorate in December that while the national mobilisation of police resources was instrumental in ending the disorder and restoring peace to towns and cities, the national response plan should have been mobilised earlier.
Not long after the change of government in July, the new Health Secretary Wes Streeting commissioned healthcare expert and peer Lord Darzi to look at the state of the NHS and in a detailed and frankly alarming report, he found it in ‘serious trouble.’ As a result, Streeting kicked off a ‘national conversation’ about the NHS to develop its 10 year strategy that is ongoing.
In early September, I spent a morning in an office block near Paddington poring through the second and final report into the Grenfell Tower fire. It’s more than seven years since the fire and the care and attention to detail in that report is astonishing and the right thing to do, but it’s what happens next that’s critical and the government’s response due around April time will be part of that.
It’s clear to me that our readers are really interested in people – whether that’s the turmoil in the leadership of the West Midlands, Northamptonshire or Shropshire or the appointment of a new chief or deputy, these posts are always popular. I spent a lot of time following the developments in the West Midlands because it was so unusual and it’s not over yet with the government commissioned Best Value report expected in the early part of 2025.
I am a big fan of interviewing senior leaders and getting insights into their world. You loved the interview I did with CFO Dawn Whittaker about the new direct entry scheme for station managers in fire and rescue services. It was our most viewed story of the year. Lanna spoke to leaders from HM Coastguard, mountain rescue in Scotland and is fast becoming our expert in air ambulances with visits to Essex and Herts and the national conference.
There was change at the top of the ambulance service with Daren Mochrie stepping down after five years at the helm of NWAS and his national role at AACE. Jason Killens picked up the national role and just this week we learned that Salman Desai will lead NWAS from 1 January.
Our visit to see the first electric ambulance in London was also popular with you. On a chilly March day in Waterloo we got up close and personal with the Ford vehicle, checking out what makes it different from its diesel peers and why shaving off every ounce of weight was critical to making range anxiety a thing of the past. It was great to have an entire stage devoted to Sustainability at The Emergency Services Show and decarbonising fleet is going to be a big theme for us in 2025 – watch this space for a new report from us on this topic later in January.
Finding out how industry is supporting the emergency services is a big part of what we do here at Emergency Services Times. We went to see how fire hoses are made in Norfolk, rapid response vehicles kitted out in Yorkshire and more recently what it takes to make drones by visiting a manufacturer in Surrey. We attended the second Exercise Winter Storm to see how police, fire, ambulance and mountain rescue collaborate and use kit in extreme temperatures.
We also partnered with suppliers for our webinar series, all part of our new digital world. We hosted 17 webinars during 2024 with topics ranging from wildfires to flooding, from biodiversity to fire prevention but it was the Luton Airport car park fire that proved to be the most popular one of all with nearly 600 registrations.
And in addition to all of that, for the first time, we put together the content programme for The Emergency Services Show and The Emergency Tech Show. That’s 55 sessions over five stages involving 133 speakers. Watch this space to find out how you can relive the experience and listen to the sessions, we’ll be kicking off 2025 with access to plenty of CPD accredited learning for you to start the year in style.
What a great year it has been, digital is the way to go and we hope you enjoyed it as much as we did. See you in 2025.
Relive the highlights of our 2024 journey in our EST Wrapped on LinkedIn.
