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North East Ambulance Service

I have been trying to secure this debate for several months, and am very happy that I have now been able to do so. I would like to put on the record my thanks to Mr. Speaker for giving me the opportunity to raise this very important issue. I am also very pleased to see the Minister in her place. It will be the first time since she was appointed as a Minister that she will have responded to one of my debates. I praise her for all the good work that she is doing in the Department of Health. Right hon. and hon. Members representing constituencies in Tees valley, some of whom are present, support the cause that I want to articulate today. I also have the strong support of all local councils in the Tees valley area. I wish to speak about plans by the North East Ambulance Service NHS Trust to reconfigure its ambulance control rooms. The trust covers the whole of the north-east and, in Teesside, includes the whole of the former Cleveland county area. I make no criticism of any of the hard-working staff; my concern is about management proposals to alter the control arrangements. Currently, the NEAS structure has two command and control centres: one in Newcastle, operating out of Bernicia house—the NEAS headquarters in Newcastle business park—and one in Middlesbrough serving as a satellite centre to Newcastle and covering the old Cleveland county council area. The Middlesbrough centre, which employs 25 staff, is based at Cleveland police headquarters in Coulby Newham, in my constituency. Close links have been developed with the existing Newcastle centre, and the technology is such that the Newcastle centre can act as a back-up for the Middlesbrough centre in call handling and ambulance dispatching. In a sense, therefore, we have an arrangement that functions well, and which meets the current need. However, the demands of the ambulance service are evolving. In particular, over the past few years, there has been an increasing demand on ambulance services, partly as a result of changes to out-of-hours coverage by general practitioners. In that context, the demands by the Department for all ambulance trusts to install new digital radio communications systems had to be considered by the NEAS, as did the need to plan for heightened civil resilience in light of continuing terrorist threats. Those demands led the NEAS to set up a review of its own control and command facilities. However, I believe that it has come to a conclusion that is potentially damaging to the service provided in Teesside. It started by considering what form of configuration is needed to meet Department of Heath challenges. On the basis of operation effectiveness, risk and cost, it came to the following conclusions. The first was that a single centre could be operationally effective and cheaply built, but face a high risk of disruption, through a technical breakdown, natural disaster or terrorist attack. The second conclusion was that, although having three or more centres would reduce the risk in such circumstances, the configuration could be confusing in an emergency. It decided, therefore, that having two independent, but linked centres was the option to pursue. It argued that such a configuration would be robust when dealing with risk or attack at one location. The second location could easily increase its level of service through shared software infrastructure. If built correctly, it could physically accommodate staff from the affected centre, which would, I believe, provide an effective service for the benefit of local people and for local hospitals. Looking at those options in the same manner, I would have come to the same conclusion. That issue having been resolved, the next question was where best to locate the two centres, which is where our views diverge. The NEAS looked at possible locations across the whole region, including the current centres in Newcastle and Coulby Newham in Middlesbrough. It argues that a key factor that it had to consider was the need to conform with the requirements of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. One requirement is that when planning for control and command resilience, split sites able to assume back-up"““should ideally not share common utility services””," and"““be between 15 miles and one hour’s journey from the main, or affected, site””." On that basis, and on the ability to redeploy staff, the NEAS decided that its preferred option for two centres would be its control room in Newcastle and a second centre, 10 miles away, at Hebburn on south Tyneside. I do not disagree that the main Newcastle control room should be one such centre—that is operationally logical—but I question the possible location of the second centre, which, for the following reasons, should be on Teesside. First, we already have dedicated staff at Coulby Newham, and relocating to Tyneside would add up to two hours daily travelling for those living south of Coulby Newham or in areas such as Stokesley, Redcar or east Cleveland, which could reduce operational ability in facilitating staff shift handovers. Secondly, there has been an offer from Cleveland police for the centre to be operated from force premises, which would either be at the existing centre at Ladgate lane or at a newly built facility for any future move. There is little evidence, however, that that offer has been carefully considered. Thirdly, the close proximity of the two proposed centres poses risks. Both rely on the same utilities for electricity and telephone lines. I gather that most major telephone trunk lines on Tyneside radiate out on a hub and spoke basis from central Newcastle. If a major incident were to happen in Newcastle, therefore, the outlying exchanges serving the Newburn and Hebburn areas could be cut off from each other. Likewise, although I am not certain about the pattern of high voltage distribution in Tyneside, I suspect that the same pattern might be replicated in that utility area. That would not be the case for Teesside, which is in an entirely different trunk route and telephone route, and relies on differing national grid connections. My single biggest objection, however, is that Teesside has one special characteristic that demands an ambulance control room presence in this sub-region. Teesside is one of the global centres for chemical production with almost all the key global players having plants in the area. It deals with the processing and shipping in and out of millions of tonnes of volatile and highly flammable chemicals every year. It also has two major power stations—one gas fired and one nuclear, the latter of which is in the constituency of my hon. Friend the Member for Hartlepool (Mr. Wright). It is probably the one nuclear power station in the UK that lies close to a densely populated area. Teesside also has Europe’s deepest mine—the Boulby potash mine, which is in my own constituency. We have never had a major industrial incident on Teesside, but the raw materials for such an incident are there in quantity. Together with the rest of the UK, Teesside now faces the threat of terrorism. In that context, it is inconceivable that potential terrorists would overlook industrial targets of opportunity. Indeed, at one recent trial, evidence showed references to Teesside on a possible hit list. Given that heightened threat, it is clear to me that traditional joint working of all three emergency services on Teesside needs to be maintained. That must allow for a focused and localised response to all the dangers and challenges that Teesside could face. That approach has been overlooked by the NEAS. The Cleveland emergency planning officer, Mr. Dennis Hampson, in a report presented to an emergency planning joint committee earlier this month, said that the NEAS proposal"““has the potential to make the Cleveland area less resilient.””" He went on to say that it could cause"““a loss of local knowledge of control room staff.””"