A BRAND new ‘state-of-the-art’ communications centre for West Mercia Constabulary opens this week.
The Contact Management Centre North staff based in Shrewsbury will prioritise incoming calls from Shropshire and is home to about 90 staff.
Chf Supt John Jones said: “This new centre represents an investment of £2.2m. It will mean increased resilience, better answering of calls and improved technology to assist staff.
“We don’t just want to reach call handling targets, we aim to exceed them where possible while at the same time giving a consistently good service. The new technology also means more efficient dispatch of officers to incidents using vehicle location systems.
“People living in Shropshire can be assured their call is going to be dealt with by someone who has good local knowledge. Many people who call the police are in distress and need to be dealt with in a timely and efficient manner.”
The new centre replaces smaller control rooms at Telford and Shrewsbury police stations.
The force deals with 1.3 million non emergency calls a year and approximately 160,000 emergency 999 calls. There are 1200 incidents a day across West Mercia, although during the floods last summer a record number of 2,000 incidents were logged during a 24-hour period.
