C3I/Airwave programme update

Report: 9
Date: 25 January 2007
By: Director of Information on behalf of the Commissioner

Summary

This report provides a summary of progress on the C3i/Airwave Programme. The Programme is on track for continued Borough migration during 2007.

A. Recommendation

Members are asked to note the status update outlined in the sections below:

1. recognise the progress and achievements to date; and
2. endorse the plan to continue transition of C3i / Airwave Programme to its conclusion during 2007.

B. Supporting information

Overview of C3i/Airwave Programme

1. C3i and Airwave implementations are being managed together through the C3i / Airwave Programme. This is a key MPS modernisation programme, enabling the organisation to provide truly 21st Century, citizen-focused policing services to people in London.

2. The Programme has been developed in response to the need to ensure the MPS has the capacity and flexibility to respond to the growing number of calls for assistance from the people of London, which, in line with the projected growth in the population of the capital, is expected to grow to 23 million contacts by phone and e-mail by 2010.

3. The infrastructure being delivered through this programme will link and support other key programmes such as Safer Neighbourhoods and the new Effective Patrolling policy to create a more responsive and dynamic policing service for the nation’s capital.

4. Airwave is the new national radio system for police forces utilising the security and advanced features of TETRA radio technology. C3i / Airwave programme will replace existing radio systems with Airwave, for some 35,000 police officers and support staff and response vehicles.

5. By the end of 2007, all control rooms currently housed in MPS boroughs that receive and respond to emergency and non-emergency 999 calls to the MPS, will have migrated into three specially-constructed buildings located in Lambeth, Hendon and Bow, forming a new Operational Command Unit - Central Communications Command (CCC).

6. Each of these buildings will house specially-trained staff who will be supported by a range of technologies developed to enhance call handling performance allowing more information to be gathered and passed onto officers responding to incidents.

7. Equipping officers with more information prior to arriving at an incident can help in the effective management of a situation. Increased and enhanced information will also enable more effective decision-making on resource management on borough.

8. On borough, new Integrated Borough Operation functions are also being introduced. These IBOs are providing fast time intelligence support to officers on the streets and managing and co-ordinating the boroughs resources more effectively in terms of planning and allocation to crime prevention programmes.

Progress and status

9. C3i / Airwave Programme has been in existence since 2002. Buildings have been constructed, technologies developed, business processes re-engineered and the MPS operational business units have been fully engaged and prepared for the business change that will result. The programme has progressed out of the development phase and significant progress has been made through implementation (transition).

10. Transition is being managed in five defined tranches to ensure all migrations protect the resilience of the service provided to the public and maintains officer and public safety.

11. The transition timeline is summarised below:

12. With the migration of Kensington and Chelsea’s control room functions into the Hendon facility the borough was also the first to transfer onto the new national digital radio system, Airwave. All boroughs being supported by CCC are now also using Airwave radios.

13. Through careful planning and co-operation with borough colleagues, all migrations to date have been achieved without any impact on the service provided to the public.

14. All CCC staff are on the frontline of the policing service - they handle nearly 70% of all 999 calls to the MPS.

15. Over the next year control room staff in the remaining 12 boroughs and staff working in New Scotland Yard’s Information Room and the telephone operator centres will move into CCC.

Communications strategy

16. A great deal of communications activity in support of C3i / Airwave implementation has taken place across a range of channels and audiences. Practical, task or technology related communications have continued across a number of teams, including Airwave and Mobile Data Terminals (MDT) in vehicles.

17. Implementation-related communication begins 9 months before each borough transition, with visits, briefings and letters. This continues right through to post-transition with feedback of task-related information (MDT, MetDuties etc).

18. As the programme moves towards completion, the focus is changing and work is currently underway to support the rollout of the Best Practice project across the MPS as a whole. Styled ‘Responding Safely Together’ for internal audiences, the roll out will see all Boroughs and CCC sites targeted with a range of materials to encourage support for, and engagement with RST as a concept. Materials will include brochures, posters and presentations. Audiences will go beyond those immediately impacted to encourage awareness, engagement and support across the MPS as a whole.

19. Stakeholders external to the MPS, including PITO, Home Office, and surrounding county forces (including City of London Police) are kept informed of latest transition progress.

Benefit realisation

20. While the programme is in transition phase there has been an impact on performance levels. Since the C3i Business case, the Home Office has introduced more challenging call handling standards.

21. In the two years CCC has been operational, 1.5 million (16%) more members of the public have been able to get through and request police assistance than was previously possible.

22. At the same time, due to better information and enhanced training, CCC staff have been able to resolve more calls at the first point of contact.

23. Initial analysis of the new business processes being delivered in the borough of Islington and CCC Bow suggest this new model is reducing the amount of time it takes to respond to incidents: Initial figures show ’I’ calls response (Immediate response) time down by 35% while ‘S’ calls (soonest response) response time down by over 60%. However, it is apparent that more focus is required on delivering effective business change in both CCC and TP in order that optimal business performance can be consistently achieved.

Airwave – Health and safety issues

24. As is the case with mobile telephones, there is no conclusive evidence that there is any health risk to users. Full details on health and safety, including frequently asked questions (FAQs), can be found on the ‘Airwave’ section of the DOI intranet site.

25. The ‘Airwave’ service is built and operated to standards set by the appropriate expert body – the National Non-Ionising Radiation Protection Board (NRPB). Airwave hand-portable terminals are rated at 1 watt (the same as Metradio). Vehicle mobile radios are rated much lower than the current VHF main sets in use.

26. There has been no significant change in the reporting of ill health symptoms. The MPA are aware of the Home Office commissioned Airwave Health Monitoring Study being undertaken by Imperial College. The full study is in progress and expected to be completed by 2018.

27. Health risks due to radio masts in police buildings is an area currently being examined through the use of local risk assessments and support from Corporate Health and Safety staff.

28. Other risks and issues generally concern shortfalls in coverage (e.g. in buildings), failures (perceived and actual) in Emergency Activation, crossing and patching talk groups, hardware issues (e.g. battery life) and software capability and upgrade. These are closely monitored and causes are analysed and corrective actions agreed (including the development and discharge of interim arrangements and guidance).

Airwave – Use on London Underground Limited (LUL)

29. LUL have committed to a project to enable Airwave on London Underground, using the same technology as the new LUL radio service. Work is at an advanced stage within PITO, LUL, the MPS and emergency service partners to implement this solution. Contractual negotiations are currently at a sensitive stage although a January 2007 signing is anticipated.

30. The planned completion date for the project is August 2008. The first line to have a solution implemented is the East London line in quarter 1 2007, this will be a limited number of stations for testing purposes.

31. The aspiration thereafter is to fit out the Victoria line in quarter 2 to 3 of 2007 and incremental rollout of the other lines thereafter through to August 2008.

32. Airwave coverage will be substantially the same as the LUL radio service. There will therefore be gaps in coverage and capacity.

Airwave – future developments

33. Automatic Person Location System (APLS) project is underway utilising the Airwave service to enable precise, live location information for every Airwave radio handset (police officer on duty). This will increase officer safety and is expected to allow more directed deployments of officers to incidents. Trials are expected to begin by the end of 2007.

34. The Airwave National Fallback System (NFS) is live and operational, meaning that in the event of a catastrophic system failure, voice communications will be restored within 8 minutes.

35. The use of MPS legacy radio systems is greatly reduced, and will be at a minimum by the end of the year, allowing these systems to be decommissioned.

C3i – Delivery against business case

36. Currently CCC is responding to around 87 percent of emergency 999 calls within the prescribed 10-second limit. The national target is 90 percent.

37. The OCU is performing well with the management of non-emergency call exceeding the 90 percent target within 30 seconds, with 95 percent of calls being answered within this timeframe.

38. Over 1,500 response vehicles have been equipped with mobile data terminals providing police officers on route to an incident with more information at their fingertips.

39. In the first nine months of the year, officers conducted over three million PNC transactions using their MDT systems – averaging out at around 78,000 per week.

40. In support of Citizen Focus, CCC has extended the 999 Interpreting Service to non-emergency callers as well as 999 callers, and has helped more than 16,000 non-English speakers get the assistance they require from the police.

41. CCC has introduced a new SMS texting system, asking 999 callers about the quality of service they received. More that 600 members of the public have replied, with 71% of mobile phone users expressing satisfaction with the 999 call handling service.

C3i – Resourcing and tasking

42. CCC has made 83,500 (12%) fewer deployments than occurred on Borough, freeing up police officer time to patrol or deal with more urgent incidents.

43. Initial work in Islington and CCC Bow indicates that the service offers greater information to make better decisions on how resources can be deployed to respond to public requests for assistance. For example, the number of outstanding incidents requiring support has dropped by between 50 and 60 percent in this borough.

C3i – Training issues for CCC and IBOs

44. Staff relocating into a CCC Centre require training in new IT and business processes. In order to reduce skills and knowledge degradation between training and relocation the majority of staff are trained within six weeks prior to their move. In order to minimise abstraction levels within this period not all staff can be multi-skilled and also require further training and abstraction from operational duty in the future.

45. When staff are abstracted in this way they are back-filled by colleagues (often on overtime) to ensure day to day performance levels are maintained on Boroughs and in CCC.

46. As well as relocation training - new recruits require 12 weeks training/coaching. Whilst the training element does not count as an abstraction the subsequent coaching requires that experienced staff are made available for coaching new joiners over a 6 week period - again leading to a significant backfill requirement.

47. Whilst CCC has a dedicated training facility, at various points in transition it also requires the use of business continuity seating in order to train the requisite number of staff within transition timescales.

48. There is on-going concern about CCC ability to support the training abstractions in line with the transition plan. Work is ongoing between CCC and the C3i HR and Training team to determine feasibility and re-align priorities to accommodate any issues as they come up.

C3i – Use of police officers

49. Before C3i / Airwave programme began, 735 full time equivalent (FTE) police officers were working in the MPS communications environment. One of the stated aims of the programme was to civilianise these roles, to make the officers available for other policing duties. During 2003 and 2004, 435 of these police officer roles were civilianised.

50. Following recommendations made to MPA, a decision was taken to retain 300 police officer posts within the CCC operational area (call handling and deployment) to reduce potential risk and to maintain a level of operational knowledge and expertise during the period of transition.

51. This position will be reviewed at the end of transition, and the police officer posts will potentially be civilianised and released to other policing duties.

C. Legal implications

1. Procurement Services have ensured that all contracts let through C3i / Airwave Programme complies with MPA procurement regulations and all relevant EU and UK Government Directives outlined.

2. Procurement Services confirm that the programme and associated proposals and decisions are within the powers of the Authority.

D. Race and equality impact

There are no issues specific to this report. Compliance with the meaning and scope of the Disability Discrimination Act 1995, the Race Relations Act 1976, the Sex Discrimination Act 1975, the Equal Pay Act 1970 and any Act of Parliament or other legal provisions relating to discrimination in employment, has been considered and accepted in full during C3i / Airwave Programme.

E. Financial implications

1. Finances of C3i / Airwave Programme are reported to C3i Strategy Group on monthly basis, showing spend to date, forecast expenditure and available funding. The latest figures (November 2006) presented at the December C3i Strategy Group are attached at Appendix 1.

2. C3i/ Airwave Programme is fully funded based on the latest available information.

3. Funding has been made available from a number of sources including Home Office grants, Counter Terrorism, MPA and MPS.

4. There are currently no funding issues or concerns.

F. Background papers

• Background papers have been produced within C3i Programme covering all of the recommendations made

G. Contact details

Report author: Ailsa Beaton Director of Information, MPS.

For more information contact:

MPA general: 020 7202 0202
Media enquiries: 020 7202 0217/18

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