Overview of Roles and Responsibilities
The Head of Department is a Superintendent. Day to day operational responsibility for the communications function will be devolved to the Communications centre duty Inspector.
The Head of Department
The Departmental Head will ultimately be held accountable for the department's performance with emphasis being placed upon those qualitative aspects of service provision.
Operation's Manager
This role is fulfilled by a Chief Inspector. Responsibilities will include the establishment and regular review of Standard Operating Procedures in order to provide clear guidelines for staff but will still allow initiative wherever circumstances dictate.
The Chief Inspector has the overall responsibilities for the operational elements of the department. Day to day operational responsibility for the communication's function will be devolved to the Communications Department Duty Inspector.
Duty Inspector
The Duty Inspector will provide overall operational leadership within the Communications Centres. He/she will perform the initial command function in the event of serious incidents. The Communications Department Inspectors will be given responsibility for ensuring that the business of the Communications Centres is managed in such a way as to achieve Departmental and Force plans. Each Inspector will have line management responsibility for one relief and will, in addition, be responsible to the Operation's Manager for a defined area of the department's business.
To supplement these officers, the department has two other inspectors who act as Liaison Officers with the Areas and Operations Division. They also provide discretional cover for their colleagues.
Supervision
Each of the 8 reliefs (i.e. 4 north and 4 south) will be lead by a support staff supervisor and a police sergeant. They will be responsible for maintaining levels of performance and the appropriate development of their staff. They will ensure that resource allocations within the Communications Centres are appropriate and will monitor and, where necessary, assist in the handling of unfolding incidents. The supervisory team will be responsible for ensuring the incident log is completed to a high standard and will liaise with divisional supervision to ensure that divisional input is appropriate and accords with the established service level agreement.
Switchboard operators
All non-999 calls are routed through the switchboard where they are filtered. Those requiring police action are routed to the call handling area of the respective communications centre whilst others are transferred to the appropriate extension. Callers that require advice and reassurance that do not require the police attendance will be forwarded to the Help Desk which is currently being piloted.
The role of switchboard is pivotal in managing the volume of calls and routing them to the appropriate secondary call handling facility, e.g. Call Handler, Help Desk, Telephone Investigation of Crime Unit, etc. To this end their operating hours will be extended during the week and over the weekend to provide the department with valuable support.
Call Handlers
Receive 999 calls directly, and non-emergency calls routed from the switchboard as well as calls via direct lines from alarm companies, other emergency services etc. Call handlers are encouraged to resolve the call wherever appropriate making full use of the Durham Constabulary 'Knowledge Base" database. However where the attendance of an officer would add value the call handler must record the incident on the Command & Control System, grade it in line with the Force Graded Response policy, and send to the relevant dispatcher. Where a crime is being committed at the time a call is made the handler may deem it expedient to keep the caller on the line whilst they pass initial details to the dispatcher.
Call handlers should transfer advice-related calls to the help desk, unless where doing so would be impracticable by the fact that the finalisation of the enquiry could be expeditiously concluded.
Dispatchers
Each dispatcher has an area of geographic responsibility within which he or she is responsible for dispatching resources and updating the Command and Control System. The dispatcher will confirm the need to allocate a resource and will proceed accordingly, informing the relevant officer of the grading for that incident. Following initial allocation the dispatcher has a key role to play in the monitoring and control of incidents and will make key decisions as the incident unfolds including the allocation of additional resources and the need to inform supervisory officers.
Recent evaluation of the roles within the Communications Department resulted in the abolishment of the role of the Senior Operator. Now all dispatchers will be expected to fulfill the same role and responsibilities.
Departmental Training Officer
The Departmental Training Officer will be responsible for ensuring that individual training needs identified by individual operators, supervisors and through the PDR process are accommodated either by individual tuition within the workplace or through attendance on a course within the Training Department.
Help Desk
This was established after basic research indicated that approximately 25% of the calls received within the Communications Department were solely for advice. The time to process such calls was much more.
Handling these calls was preventing call handlers from dealing with the more urgent. It was also a cause of frustration amongst callers and staff alike, as call handlers wanted more time to give appropriate advice and reassurance. However they were always conscious that the next incoming call may have been extremely urgent.
