Developments to improve public service

Police demonstrates its commitment to improving its service to the public

Warwickshire Police is currently upgrading the Control Room in its Communications Centre into a state of the art facility as part of the force’s commitment to improving customer service.

Chief Inspector Ian Whiting, Head of Operations Support said: “We have made some quite dramatic changes to the way the Control Room works not only in terms of a new room layout and state of the art equipment including for Airwave – the new digital radio service - but also by developing our existing staff into more specialised roles. By using our resources more effectively, we aim to improve the service we offer to the people of Warwickshire.“

“For example, the Control Room has been reorganised into two distinct areas - a call centre environment and an area especially set out for controlling reactive units within the county. We hope this will assist in the deployment of police resources to ongoing incidents and should improve our response times.

“We are creating teams of call-handlers to eliminate the currently separate switchboard function and provide the public with a single point of contact as far as possible. The new arrangements will also enable staff to share the workload in very busy periods – something that is currently difficult.

“Our call centre staff are receiving skills-based training to enable them to become as efficient as possible when taking information from callers including those who have dialled 999."

With the advent of the digital age, police forces across the country, including Warwickshire, are turning to this new technology to improve the way they work.

Ian explained: “The additional facilities the digital Airwave radio system offer mean we no longer need rely on voice communication alone making us more operationally efficient and flexible.

“Officers will be able to access information held on the Police National Computer from the roadside for example, whereas before they’d ask a Controller to do this. They can also send status updates and text messages, which automatically update computer records held in force. The digital encryption means that criminals will find it extremely difficult to monitor police communications.

“A separate back-up control room away from our headquarters site at Leek Wootton will ensure continuity of service and give us an added level of resilience previously not available. All this work is being done in support of the force’s aim of providing a more citizen focused policing response to the population of Warwickshire.

Ian added: “Over 200 operational officers have already been trained to use the new Airwave handsets including Warwickshire’s road policing unit, dog handlers and firearms. The remaining officers will be trained over the coming months and the entire force will be using Airwave by the end of the year."

Airwave is being introduced as a result of a 1993 Home Office review, which identified that a new generation of police radio is needed because of the operational and technical shortcomings of existing systems. In addition, the Government has set a 2005 deadline for the withdrawal of the existing analogue radio frequencies.

Airwave benefits that the current network cannot deliver include:

• Better coverage – in urban and rural areas including from inside many buildings.
• Superior voice quality – background noise is eliminated, enabling staff to communicate more effectively.
• Emergency assistance – the safety of officers is significantly improved, with the ability to summon assistance to a location without the need to talk over the air to another officer.
• Security – scanning police radio conversations will no longer be possible. Our existing system has always been vulnerable to interception.
• Talk groups – officers will no longer need to operate on one or two busy radio channels. Many channels are available for a wide variety of tasks.
• Versatility – the handset offers many opportunities for the future including use as a mobile phone and, possibly, for transmitting text - for example, to the Police National Computer.
• Talking to others - not only will Warwickshire officers be able to talk to officers in other forces but also, in time, with other emergency services like Fire and Ambulance.

For more information, please contact:
John Stack, Media and PR
Tel 01926 415134

Photo: Warwickshire Police Communications Officer Charlie Turner using the new HQ Control Room systems.