Liverpool council warns of fire service cuts

by Featured News

Following a mistake resulting in a large increase in the city’s energy bill, Liverpool City Council has warned that the error could result in fire safety cuts.

Lib Dem councillor Andrew Makinson said Merseyside Fire and Rescue Servic’s (MFRS) energy bill would be £1 million extra due to the council’s incompetence, noting that that the energy deal coverts the Labour-run council’s properties, maintained schools and MFRS.

A spokesperson for Liverpool City Council (LCC) said: “The new tariff will begin from July, and LCC are working to establish the costs of the city’s electricity – and will be able to calculate that exactly once the bills for this quarter are in.”

Mr Makinson, who is an opposition leader on Merseyside Fire and Rescue Authority, told the BBC: “The council now needs to do the right thing and give a guarantee that schools and the fire service will not have to pay for their mistakes.”

He added: “It is not acceptable that this Labour council imposes cuts on firefighters and in our classrooms because of their incompetence.”

An MFRS spokesperson said it had been “in discussion with Liverpool City Council with regards to the situation, and at this time we await the outcome of the independent review, actual costs and suggested remedy before considering our next steps.”

Six-month National Fire Service 999 call redistribution pilot scheme launches

by Featured News

The National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) is has announced that new arrangements are in place in the UK to assist with the national redistribution of emergency 999 calls into fire and rescue service control rooms during times of significant demand.

The Home Office and the National Fire Chiefs Council worked together, in conjunction with British Telecom, to develop the new procedure, Operation Willow Beck, with the majority of fire and rescue services in England, Scotland and Wales signing up to be part of it. 

Fire and Rescue Services will continue to have their own arrangements in place for their calls to be redirected to other fire services during increased demand but sometimes the number of calls are too high for those partner services to deal with, putting pressure on the emergency 999 network.

The new procedure, Operation Willow Beck, will provide a pre-determined call distribution plan, meaning that during times of extreme call demand the calls can be spread to a wider number of control rooms, limiting the number of calls taken by one single control room to prevent becoming overwhelmed.

It is hoped that this will allow for quicker call answering, and improved resilience across all control rooms at no extra costs to individual fire and rescue services.

NFCC have also produced guidance for fire service control rooms on the call handling process if Operation Willow Beck is instigated by a Service due to a high volume of 999 calls.

The launch on the 4 April began a 6-month pilot of the scheme. Some testing of the redistribution plan and processes were carried out in the lead up to the pilot launch, with another one taking place in early May following the launch.

Fire Minister, Lord Greenhalgh, said: “I am delighted that Operation Willow Beck has now gone live.

“This scheme will allow BT operators to divert 999 calls from busy fire services to several other services who can provide assistance. This will not only provide extra resilience to our Fire Control rooms during times of high demand, but also help reduce pressure and help save lives.

“This is a huge achievement due to the collaborative hard work and effort of the Home Office, NFCC and BT.”

Odisha Fire Service to carry out audit after Delhi blaze

by Featured NewsIndustrialIndustry Sectors

Odisha Fire Service has directed all units to carry out a fire safety audit in all important state establishments by 21 May following a fire at a four-storey commercial building in Dehli which resulted in the death of at least 27 people and injured several more.

On Saturday (14 May) DG Fire Service Santosh Kumar Upadhyay directed all units to carry out fire safety audits in hotels, lodgings, guest houses, and educational buildings of more than 12 metres in height or having built-up area over 1,000 square metres, as well as cinema halls, multiplexes and apartment complexes.

Fire service officers have also been asked to carry out safety audits at clinical establishments above taller than metres or having more than three floors, and business or office buildings larger than 12 metres in built up areas of more than 500 square metres.

Officers have been directed to make sure that different establishments display the fire safety certificate on all their floors.

Upadhyay said: “Assistant fire officers in districts, deputy fire officers of all circles and range fire officers have been asked to strictly enforce the guidelines as per the Odisha Fire Prevention and Fire Safety Rules to avoid any untoward incident.”

Bedfordshire fire & rescue service pioneers cloud-based control room solutions from Motorola Solutions

by Projects

Motorola Solutions has announced that Bedfordshire Fire & Rescue Service is the first fire service in the United Kingdom to utilise the combined Motorola Solutions cloud-based control room solution CommandCentral CRS, the data storage solution CommandCentral Vault as well as the integrated CAD solution delivered by Motorola Solutions partner 3tc.

By upgrading its operations into one platform, the new solution helps the fire and rescue service in Bedfordshire to manage their end-to-end workflow. CommandCentral Vault, in addition, offers an encrypted, secure, centralised storage solution for all operational digital media assets and associated meta-data. In addition to the Motorola DP4000 two-way radios used by Bedfordshire Fire & Rescue Service, the new solutions offers a next-generation control room experience, designed to increase operational efficiencies in incident response and streamline processes and critical communications across the organisation as a whole.

Bedfordshire Fire & Rescue Service serves a population of 665,000. As part of its ongoing digital transformation, it needed to replace its legacy control room functionality. The new control room solution provides the control room staff – who receive over 60,000 calls per year – the best digital tools to respond effectively. It also provides IT staff with a fully reliable end-to-end workflow, which is easy to manage through the cloud. Together with enhanced security and availability, the CommandCentral software offers integrated voice, data and multimedia communications on a single platform where all data is easily captured and processed, so that incidents can be responded to and reported as efficiently as possible.

The new cloud-based control centre simplifies IT management including the ability to scale data capacity at busy times and reduce costs through the automation of tasks, such as reporting, that were previously done manually. A hosted solution also enhances resilience and support for agile working, so that staff can work remotely and from different sites. In addition, being cloud-based ensures equipment is more secure and resilient.

“We strive to provide an outstanding Fire and Rescue Service to the citizens and visitors of Bedfordshire and lead the way with the latest digital technologies to respond faster and more effectively,” says Paul Fuller CBE, Chief Fire Officer at Bedfordshire Fire & Rescue Service. “Our control room is at the epicentre of our operations and needs to be failsafe so that every vital piece of information is captured and responded to as efficiently as possible. Through our work with Motorola Solutions and 3tc, we wanted to make a future-proof investment and be the first Fire and Rescue Service to adopt full cloud technology for our control room to further improve our robust, 24/7 operation to make us more responsive and help protect our community.”

“Bedfordshire Fire & Rescue Service is clearly a pioneer when it comes to developing a cloud-based control room,” says Fergus Mayne, Country Manager and Head of Sales UK & Ireland at Motorola Solutions. “As the next evolution of public safety technology, the new solution can be relied upon as it can be managed remotely with 24/7 support with greater resilience. Ultimately, the new platform enables control room staff to focus on the job at hand – resolve the call at the first contact or dispatch resources in the most efficient way possible to protect the public.”

The CommandCentral software suite is the industry’s most integrated end-to-end mission-critical software solution for public safety that unifies data and streamlines incident management workflows.