The emergency services in Wales are leading the way in public safety after members of the fire and rescue, police and ambulance services have exceeded expectations by completing the combined Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP) team training three months ahead of schedule.
The JESIP programme was developed following large scale and complex incidents, including The King’s Cross Fire and 7/7 bombings in London. During the subsequent inquests into these events, first responders were criticised for their ineffective communication and poor decision making on scene. The JESIP programme was instigated to address some of these problems by introducing a training programme that would work towards improving communication at the early stages of major and complex incidents. The ultimate aim being to ensure timely and effective decision making processes at all times.
The training programme, which began in Wales in January this year, was due to be completed by the end of September. However, the three Welsh fire and rescue services were successful in training almost 580 incident commanders by the end of June 2014.
Head of Training for Mid and West Wales Fire and Rescue Service, Richard Walters said, “This is an excellent achievement and shows how much commitment there has been from the blue light services in Wales towards improving our service to the public. Now we have completed the process of training our incident commanders, we are focusing on keeping the momentum going by training the rest of our staff as well as looking at working with other responders such as the coastguard and Natural Resources Wales.”
Chief Fire Officer Chris Davies said, “The JESIP programme is an extremely important process in enhancing multi-agency decision making at the scene of any emergency. I am extremely proud, that here in Wales, we are the first region in the UK to have trained all our commanders ahead of the planned schedule.
“This is testament to the dedication and desire of our training staff who have worked tirelessly to continually improve and support the programme since its introduction. I now look forward to extending the programme out to other key partners, so we can ensure any emergency in Wales is dealt with as effectively and efficiently as possible.”
This year’s Emergency Services Show, which takes place at the NEC from 24-25 September, features an Interoperability Seminar Theatre, which is free of charge to all visitors. The seminar programme has been put together in partnership with JESIP and features examples of interoperability best practice – register for the show for your chance to visit these sessions. You can find out more here.
