On the 3^rd June the region welcomed over forty members and exhibitors to a meeting held at the Regional Fire Control Centre building located outside Cambridge. The meeting provided an opportunity to look at two national programmes that are aimed at improving the resilience of the emergency services.

David Worsley gave a presentation on the national FiReControl project and its place in the Fire and Rescue Service resilience programme that includes the Firelink radio project and the New Dimensions response capability. This was followed by a tour of the building with an opportunity to see at first hand the capability and resilience that is a feature of these purpose designed premises. The FiReControl project combines complex business change with the delivery of a large technical systems infrastructure. The meeting provided a good opportunity to gain an insight into some of the challenges that have been faced and the lessons to be learnt in a project of this nature.

After lunch Steve Moore gave a presentation on the NHS Hazardous Area Response Team. He explained the role of the HART function, its capability and the approach taken to establish the new teams. Steve described how the Ambulance Service is now able to work alongside the other emergency services in hazardous areas to ensure that clinical support can be given to casualties in all environments. Steve had arranged for the East of England HART to attend the meeting with all of its equipment. This included the technically advanced Forward Command vehicle. This equipment was enthusiastically demonstrated by HART staff and members had a good opportunity to ask questions.

A special thanks is due to the exhibitors that supported the event throughout the day.

Traka

Abiom

Tempus Developments

Microwave Marketing

Multitone Electronics

Condico

SIS Live

AutoPage

Selex Systems Integration

Sonic Communications

Jaybeam Wireless

Westica

I am very pleased to be able to announce the appointments made at the AGM held on the 3^rd June 2010.

Chairman. David Worsley.

Secretary. John Blundell.

Executive Committee Representative. Neil Storey

Commercial Advisory Group Representative. Andy Preston

Roadshow  Representative.  Aaron Goddard

Committee Member  Dawn Griffiths

Committee Member  Dave Pring

Two further appointments deserve special mention:

The Region is very fortunate as it is the local Group for Ken Mott a founding member and the former Chief Executive of BAPCO. Ken has agreed to be a Committee Member and will be an invaluable addition to the team.

David Seelhoff has agreed to accept the post of Vice Chairman. As many will know David has been the Chairman of the region for the past fourteen years and has also undertaken the role of Executive Committee Representative at the same time. This is a tremendous personal contribution to BAPCO. Access to his considerable experience and knowledge will be a great help to the new committee.

The Committee is now planning its activity for the year ahead and is currently looking to run a seminar in November. If members have ideas on subjects to be covered, places to visit or interesting speakers, suggestions are always welcome. Please contact me or any of the Committee Members.

David Worsley

Chairman 07919492308

Competitive Package

The British Association of Public Safety  Communications Officers enjoys a high level of credibility as the independent body on matters relating to the design, specification, implementation and use of integrated information and communications technologies for public safety/civil contingency response. Our services and resources are much in demand and as you’d expect for an organisation of our type, we need strong leadership to help us drive further access.

Carrying overall responsibility for all aspects of finance, legal, strategic and business planning, here you’ll also have the opportuity to spearhead revenue generating strategies and represent us to our wide range of external partners.

You’ll need to display strong operational and financial leadership and be capable of maintaining this in a rapidly changing and political environment. This is an exciting role that calls for a person with existing senior leadership experience who is energetic, resourceful, entrepreneaurial and a first class negotiator.

A comprehensive Job Description and person specification is available from Tracey Mott at admin.manager@bapco.org.uk  Tel. 01522 543244. Informal enquiries welcome to The President Hayden Newton via hayden.newton@eastamb.nhs.uk or 01234 408974.

Closing date for receipt of applications 30th June 2010.

• Association Officers as President Elect and Vice President;
• Regional Committee Members;
• Committee Members for BAPCO 2011 Steering Committee;
• Marketing Advisory Committee.
• Members of Consultation Groups for European Research Projects

If you would like more informatiom about these and other opportunities then please contact Ray Trotter the Executive Director on 07767 342601 or send him an e-mail to: trotterr@bapco.org.uk

Pete Prater was appointed Chair of the Region in March 2007.  Previously he has served BAPCO since 1994 as Secretary to the Region and Secretary and Chair to the Association’s Commercial Advisory Group.  For his services to BAPCO he was awarded Life Membership in 2005.  Peter served in the Royal Corps of Signals for 15 years before becoming an independent technical and management consultant in 1996 since when he has worked on a variety of emergency service telecommunications related projects.  Peter joined Frequentis UK in April 2009 as Key Account Manager with specific responsibility for the Metropolitan Police Service relationship.

Richard Claridge.  Richard has been in the ambulance service for over thirty years.  He has undertaken a range of roles from Paramedic advising for BBC Casualty, ambulance training, control management and leading the project to relocate the Wiltshire Ambulance Service Control room into a shared facility with Fire and Police as part of the Invest to Save initiative.  Richard is now working for the Dept. of Health Ambulance Radio Programme as a Regional Service Manager.  Richard joined the Regional committee in April 2007 and is adding value through enthusiasm, commitment and his significant awareness of the UK ambulance service.

Keith Phillips OBE.  An original founder and Life Member of BAPCO, Keith entered the Fire Service in Gloucestershire in 1963, transferred to Avon in 1974 and to West Sussex as the brigade’s Communications and Computing Services Officer in 1979 where he led a new control room project and introduced operational and admin’ support IT to the brigade. Joining the Home Office in 1985, he took the lead on fire service related communications and control room issues, he was appointed as one of Her Majesty’s Inspectors of Fire Services in 1989. Since then he provided a pivotal role in a number of areas, including as Project Director of the Firelink Radio Project and whilst with the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, as Programme Director of the New Dimension (Counter Terrorism) Resilience Programme. During this period he also delivered the Fire Control Regionalisation plan to ministers and was appointed as an Officer of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 2004. Keith retired from his role in Whitehall at the end of 2004 when he entered the world of consultancy, finally retiring in 2007 to coincide with a move to his new home in Devon.  Keith joined the committee in January 2008.

Jason Somerville.  Jason left Southampton Institute of Higher Education in 1990 after 4 years of study, to graduate with an HND in Electronics and Communications Engineering, and subsequently joined Philips Telecom initially as a workshop based mobile radio / PMR engineer, and progressed to field / systems engineer. He has experience on a vast range of PMR / analogue microwave / paging / Trunked radio and telecommunications systems. Jason left the industry formally in 1995 and joined Hampshire Ambulance Service, where he experienced operational service as a Technician, Paramedic and Emergency Care Practitioner, along with other roles which included Ambulance Clinical Tutor, Patient Transport Services Manager and Clinical Developments Manager. Jason has recently been appointed by South Central Ambulance Service as the Lead Radio Network / ARP Project Manager, with the purpose to support and maintain the functionality of the legacy radio systems and to manage the transition from legacy VHF to digital communication provision using the Airwave Service.  Jason joined the Regional Committee in November 2007.

Jeremy Habberley.  Jeremy joined BAPCO in 2006 and has been a member of the South West and South Wales Regional committee since 2010.  He has worked for Sepura PLC for the past 5 years, supplying TETRA radio terminals for the Airwave network to the UK’s police forces and ambulance trusts, with specific responsibility for the South West and Southern Wales area.  Prior to joining Sepura, he was Sales Director for i2 Mobile Solutions supplying mobile data systems into both the private and public sectors.

Graham Weeks.  Graham joined BAPCO in 1995 and has been a member of the South West Regional committee for a number of years.  He has 32 years of Sales & Marketing experience within the Communications industry having dealt with various sectors including Law Enforcement, Government, Defence, Security, and Network Telecoms.  He has worked for a number of blue chip companies including Racal, Motorola, Allen, Andrew and Cobham covering territories in the UK, Europe, North America, Africa, Asia, Australia and New Zealand.  He is currently Regional Sales Manager with Cobham Antennas, a division of Cobham plc.

Phil Jefferson.  Phil joined BAPCO in 2004 and has been a South West & South Wales committee member for the past 3 years. Phil has 14 years Sales & Marketing experience working across both private and public sector. Following an early sales career in blue chip FMCG corporations, he moved to SunGard Public Sector in 2004 and has worked with all the Public Safety organisations in the UK on a wide range of projects and solutions. Phil is currently Head of Outsourcing & Managed Services at SunGard.

The purpose of the Extraordinary Meeting is to receive and approve by formal resolution the following:

1.  Minutes of the Sixteenth Annual General Meeting held on 22nd April 2009     
2. Report of the Executive Committee for year ending 31st December 2009
3. Report for the Fiscal Year ending 31st December 2009
4. Election of Officers for 2010/2011
5. Business Plan for 2010
6. Budget for Fiscal Year ending 31st December 2010
7. Annual Subscription rates for 2010/2011
8. Appointment of Solicitor
9. Appointment of Accountants
10. Any other Business applicable to an Annual General Meeting

The documents relating to each of the above topics/actions can be found here

Voting Members, i.e. those persons having ‘Active Member’ and ‘Life Member’ membership, are reminded that postal voting and proxy voting facilities are available and full details of these opportunities and application forms can be obtained from: admin.manager@bapco.org.uk

Best regards

Ray Trotter

Ray Trotter

Executive Director

1. Attendance:
Gordon Ross, Kevin Robson, Ian Lund, Maggie Carter, Paul McAfee, Tracey Mott, Martin King

2. Apologies:
Terry Johnson, Ian Maughan, Ian Thompson, Malcolm Davies, Ray Trotter

3. Minutes of previous meeting:
Minutes of previous committee meeting were accepted by all as a true record.

4. Matters Arising:
Database Proposal – Ian Lund spoke about the fields we will need on the new database to enable him to collate the information needed to record the skills of our members. Ian will send suggestions for categories to the committee but there will be the flexibility to be able to alter these if need be in the future.

Survey of Members – Gordon Ross ran though the results of the survey – a copy of which is attached to these minutes. It was suggested that we put something out nationally to mirror this to gauge the topics of genuine interest to our members on a wider scale. For instance looking at these results a day seminar on Business Continuity would be a good subject.

Future 999 Services – No real progress has been made. However BT wrote to The Fire Minister for a meeting which has now taken place at which they were asked if they would take on the project under Cabinet Office Resilience – no definite answer has been received. At ACPO , CFOA, Ambulance & Coastguard they have agreed to form a group to oversee the future of 999.

5. National Report:
Tracey Mott reported that at the last executive meeting Hayden Newton took over as Chair and President due to Olaf Baars resigning. Ian Readhead was voted to stay on another year as past president. Two names were put forward for office Sue Lampard and Alan House and these will be announced at the AGM.
The roadshow dates have been confirmed as 6th October at Hamilton Racecourse, 20th October at Doncaster Racecourse and 3rd November at Windsor Racecourse.
The Marketing Advisory group are looking for a representative to join the group from each region and names for this are to be put to Ray Trotter.
Stand space is selling well for the main conference and delegate numbers are about where they were expected to be at this time.

6. Regional Events.
Ian Lund reported that the last event was at the EPC and feedback was very good with those attending preferring the smaller groups this time. The next suggested dates for a course are 24th-26th November these dates are yet to be confirmed. SERCO has taken over the EPC all apart from 3 Cabinet Office staff.

7. Regional Members Monitoring
Tracey Mott reported that the region currently has 115 members, a few members (8 in total) were gained nationally from the recent EPC course with 5 of those being from the NE region.

8. Action Plan Update
Terry Johnson is to be asked to submit an article for the website and Journal as a Chairs update for the region. – Action GR
Meeting minutes will be posted on the website once they have been passed by the committee and emailed to NE region members.
EPC events will be counted as our regional events as we have input into the course content.
NE day visitors to the conference will be targeted for membership once we have the data available.

The membership information of breakdown of members/ prospects will be updated prior to the next meeting and circulated to the committee – Action TM

9. AOB
At the next meeting staffing of the event at EPC in November will be discussed.

10. Next Regional Meeting Date:
The next meeting will take place at Viking Communications, YO41 4DF on 6th August. At this meeting members will be invited to attend as the AGM will take place.

At this most recent event, “Visual Communications – from Concept to Conviction” members were able to gain intelligence about a number of new ways of working. The event started with the Highways Agency providing an overview of the CCTV services they are able to deliver to a wide variety of interest groups via the Video Information Highway. This provides still image and video image services and its applicability is evidenced through the comments of one user who said “HANET has helped – in being able to pinpoint the incident if we have received a vague address, and to pass this information on to the resources mobile to the incident.” Further information about these services can be found at:
• For still images – http://www.hanet.org.uk/
• For video images – http://www.highways.gov.uk/traffic/15891.aspx

Our event was kindly sponsored by Northrop Grumman, and they provided a comprehensive overview of their work in Lewes with Sussex Police and the NPIA. Building on the success of their work in New York Northrop Grumman deployed a high bandwidth mobile solution in Lewes and concluded a range of work that included the backhaul of live video from vehicles and body worn cameras to aid in the prevention and detection of crime.

After a little light refreshment, we were fortunate in having 3 demonstrations for members to visit. These included a practical demonstration of the Highways Agency HANET, described above; a look at a SIS Live satellite truck; and, a guided tour of the Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service mobile command vehicle.

Over lunch our members were able to meet with and discuss business with a number of exhibitors who took table top displays. We had a wide variety of exhibitors and members reported that this was a particularly useful aspect of the day.

Following lunch we continued the Visual Communications theme with an inspiring paper delivered by Graham Libby of Hampshire Fire & Rescue Service about its 2 year old aerial observation system – a rotary winged unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It is clear that this modestly priced resource is able to deliver real operational and safety benefits and it was good to hear that this resource is being used in support of collaborative working too. The power of live pictures for Fire Service command and control was developed by Nick Oxborough of Royal Berkshire Fire & Rescue Service who saw the key benefits as being:
• More effective & efficient command & control
• Improved public and Firefighter safety
• Minimised disruption to society
• Reduced ambiguity
• Sharing of information
Moving to policing matters members were entertained and informed by DCI Neil McGuiness-Smith of the NPIA. He provided an overview of the NPIA’s Information Systems Improvement Strategy (ISIS) before relating the critical part that the effective collation of digital evidence plays in fighting crime and how, through his project, this will be developed and refined in the days ahead.

It was really pleasing to see how many of our members stayed with us right to the end of the day and those that did received the final presentation of the day delivered by Neil Cohen of the Home Office Scientific Development Branch (HOSDB). Neil encapsulated the general thrust of the day by relating to members the problems brought about by the proliferation of CCTV systems over the years and outlined the scope and ambitions of the Home Office CCTV Strategy, which aims to do something about this.

Our thanks are extended to our speakers and delegates and to our 15 exhibitors.

Finally, for now, please don’t forget to get the annual BAPCO show in your dairy. Once again, this will be held at the Business Design Centre, Islington, this time on 20-22 April. See www.bapco.co.uk.