Thames Valley fire control centre opens

New £5.4m centre up and running in Calcot

A NEW control centre to take emergency fire calls for Berkshire, Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire is up and running in Calcot.

The Thames Valley Fire Control Service, based at the Royal Berkshire Fire and Rescue Service headquarters in Calcot, answers 999 calls and mobilises fire engines on behalf of the three fire and rescue services to incidents across the region, between them serving a population of more than two million people.

The new facility became fully operational last month.

It replaces the individual control rooms, following the termination of the Government’s national FiReControl project in 2010.

A new mobilising system has been installed at the centre, allowing control operators to identify the exact location of an incident more quickly and pinpoint the precise position of each available fire engine and officer.

The control service cost in the region of £5.4m, funded by the three services’ combined grants from central Government.

It is predicted to make a combined saving of £15,871,672 by the end of the financial year 2024/25.

TVFCS programme senior responsible owner for RBFRS, Bryan Morgan, said: “We are very pleased that the TVFCS is now operational and we look forward to it providing a more resilient, cost-effective and improved service to the people of the Thames Valley.”