Staffordshire fire control staff struggle with Black Country twang

Two 999 call operations were merged a year ago, bringing staff formerly based in Staffordshire into Birmingham.

And since then, there has been a battle against misunderstood words, phrases and accents between command centre staff, firefighters and members of the public.

A meeting of Stoke-on-Trent and Staffordshire Fire and Rescue Authority heard how confusion over the pronunciation of place names and the giving of directions were among the problems.

The merger between the Staffordshire Fire & Rescue and West Midlands Fire Service control centres was brought about to save £500,000 and speed up response times.

Rob Barber, Staffordshire's director of response, said: "There are quite distinct variations of accent and dialect across Staffordshire and the West Midlands.

"Due to the differences, it could occasionally be difficult for operators to understand firefighters and callers and vice versa.

"As fire control staff and firefighters have got to know each other, communication is no longer an issue. Regarding members of the public reporting an incident, locations can be traced through their mobile phone or landline and the quickest resources can be mobilised to an incident. Crews can be mobilised using this information so there is no impact on response times."

The accent issue was one of 100 first raised about the merger, which saw staff formerly based in Stone move to a unit in Vauxhall Road, Duddeston, Birmingham.

Mr Barber said: "We had a list of 100 issues when the shared control started and this has fallen to 11.

"These are often minor matters to do with staff getting used to unfamiliar local accents, for example, and how some place names are pronounced. We have recognised the issues and put things in place to handle them. It has taken a long time because of data security and we are dealing with them now. We are also using mapping controls which is similar to GPS."