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Thames Valley Fire Control Service has celebrated ten years of providing 24/7 emergency call handling and dispatch services for the three neighbouring fire services of Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire.
The combination of the three fire services’ control rooms in 2015 was a pioneering move that came after the government’s troubled Fire Control programme was abandoned and saw these three services pool their grant funding to create a tri-service solution. Wayne Bowcock, Chief Fire Officer for Royal Berkshire says that having had one control room for three services for ten years, it has become “business as usual.”
“The goal was to provide a more resilient, cost-effective and modernised control room service to the people of the Thames Valley, and I am proud that we have delivered over and above that aim.”
CFO Wayne Bowcock.
With 41 staff providing services to the Thames Valley region, the control room is using technology from NEC Software Solutions and it will start a procurement exercise for a new solution that should be in place in 2028. They are also looking at using video solutions to connect control room officers to the incident ground and also say they are ‘MAIT ready’ meaning that this control room can communicate seamlessly with those in Thames Valley Police and South Central Ambulance Service.
Since opening in 2015, Thames Valley Fire Control Service has taken more than 350,000 calls, an average of just under 100 calls per day. Over the ten years, the three services estimate that they have saved £17m compared with if they had retained three separate control rooms.
Control room staff mobilise fire engines on behalf of the three fire and rescue services to incidents across the Thames Valley, serving a combined population of more than two million people. This aligns with the same geographical footprint of Thames Valley Police but they do not share a control room with the force. Wayne says that there was some discussion about this when the tri-service control room was under consideration but it wasn’t taken forward and the fire and police control rooms continue to operate separately.
The celebration event hosted at the Reading base of Thames Valley Fire Control Service coincided with the publication of Royal Berkshire’s inspection report. His Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services rated the service Good in eight areas with three graded as Adequate.
The report contains many references to the collaborative approach taken by the service. Wayne says the service has a “healthy approach to collaboration where it brings benefits to achieving our purpose.” RBFRS has a joint procurement with his neighbours for fire appliances creating, “huge efficiencies” and a standardised approach that supports “borderless mobilisation.”
With so many similarities and joined up thinking, it begs the question why are there still three fire and rescue services in the Thames Valley? Former Conservative Police and Crime Commissioner Anthony Stansfield briefly toyed with the idea of taking on governance of the fire services in the Thames Valley but that didn’t get very far and was dropped in 2017.
Eight years on, the Thames Valley still has a Conservative PCC (Matthew Barber) but with a Labour government now in office the policy of creating Police Fire and Crime Commissioners has gone out of fashion. This government has big plans to expand devolution in England which would see more mayors taking on local powers, moving them away from Westminster and that will impact fire and police governance too. The Thames Valley is not on the government’s list to have a combined authority mayor for now although that could of course change in the future.
Read more about how control room operations are developing watch our recent webinar on catch up – The challenges of taking a multi-channel approach to communicating with the public, sponsored by NEC Software Solutions.
