Celebrating our #UnsungHeroes – International Control Room Week

Today marks the start of International Control Room Week – a week which celebrates the extraordinary work of emergency services call handlers and dispatch teams from around the world.

This includes the Northamptonshire Police Force Control Room who take on average, 40,000 calls per month, equating to about 1350 calls per day.

Taking place from October 21 -27, International Control Room Week will raise awareness of the life-saving and life-changing work that the unseen frontline staff of the emergency services deal with on a daily basis.

Last year, the week was supported by almost 200 control room operations and more than 10,000 personnel from police, ambulance, fire and coastguard services across the UK, as well as control rooms from as far afield as USA, Australia and India.

For every mention of #UnsungHeroes across social media during the week, the company organising the initiative, APD Communications, will donate £1 to mental health charity, Mind, and the Scottish Association for Mental Health. APD reported that mental health calls into the control rooms are at an all-time high - volumes have grown by nearly a third since 2011-12. 

Follow the @NorthantsFCR Twitter and main Northamptonshire Police social media accounts throughout the week where they will be running a 24 hour tweetathon using the hashtag #NorthantsFCR24, answering recruitment questions with a live Facebook Q&A and sharing some of their latest campaigns.

Superintendent Ash Tuckley, Head of the Force Control Room at Northamptonshire Police, said: “Police officers and staff from all departments work exceptionally hard every day to keep the public safe. International Control Room week is an opportunity to highlight the hard work and dedication from our unsung heroes.

“The control room deal with a large number of emergency and non-emergency calls some of which on occasions are not a police matter. They have to balance all these calls and make time critical decisions every second to make sure the public receive the best possible service from the initial contact through to response.

“With demands on policing increasing , force control room officers and staff really are at the front end of where life-saving work happens every single day.”