OCC Wymondham - Joint Operations Centre

Control Room - Wymondham, Joint Operations Centre

Address: CCR, Falconers Chase, Wymondham, NR18 0WW

This is the service's control room, managing all the calls for Norfolk.

The primary function of the 999 Communications and Control centre is to:

Accept emergency calls
Ensure that the mobilisation of the appropriate resources takes place as quickly and efficiently as possible.

We aim to answer 95 per cent of our calls within five seconds and mobilise resources within 60 seconds.

The control room is staffed 24 hours a day/ 7 days a week/ 365 days a year. There are four watches Red, White, Blue, and Green.

Each watch consists of a Watch Manager, a Crew Manager and three full time firefighter (control) operators per watch.

Staff work a revolving shift system as follows:

Day 1 0700 - 1800
Day 2 0700 - 1800
Day 3 1800 - 0700
Day 4 1800 - 0700
Day 5-8 Rota Days

Norfolk Fire and Rescue Service uses a computerised call handling and despatch system which enables staff to:

Identify a caller's address from a landline
Track fire appliances and officers' cars to determine the nearest appliance
Locate an area to within a 300m radius of the caller using just a mobile telephone number

Due to Norfolk's rural nature we deal with many other incidents other than fires. These are known as Special Service Emergency. Incidents include:

Road traffic collisions
Chemical incidents
Aircraft incidents
Water rescues
Railway incidents
Animal rescues
Flooding
Lift rescues

During quiet times when control staff are not dealing with operational incidents they are busy dealing with administration work and maintaining competencies.

Control staff also provide resilience to partner control staff within our consortium of the East Coast and Hertfordshire Control Room Consortium (ECHCRC). This includes Lincolnshire, Humberside and Hertfordshire.