Control operators

The role of Firefighter, Control involves dealing with emergency and non emergency calls. They deal with a wide variety of incidents, including road traffic collisions, animal rescues and many other emergency situations. The entry requirements for this role are good keyboarding skills and the ability to communicate fluently in both English and Welsh.

The recruitment process for a Firefighter, Control is:

• - Application form (Papersift)
  - Practical Tests - These include, numerical and verbal reasoning, typing test and Welsh language translation
  - Interview - The interview is based on personal qualities and attributes, designed for the candidate to draw on their experiences. Part of the interview will be through the medium of Welsh
  - Offer of employment on all roles is subject to satisfactory references, medical and Criminal Records Bureau Checks.

Service Control is the essential link between members of the public needing assistance and our emergency teams.

When anyone in North Wales dials 999/112 and asks for the Fire and Rescue service they will be put through to Control Room Staff at our Joint Communications Centre in St Asaph.

Control staff are responsible for the immediate despatch of crews and appliances from all of the 44 stations across North Wales along with any specialist equipment that is required.

Staff deal with around 97,000 calls each year, approximately 19,000 of these are emergency calls, many of which are life threatening. Operators are trained to deal with callers who are trapped and offer fire survival assistance. Those which are less serious can still be upsetting and frightening to the people involved.

Emergency calls cover a variety of events such as fires, road traffic collisions, incidents involving hazardous materials, flooding and many others.

The Joint Communications Centre is staffed 24/7, 365 days a year. Staff work in teams and have a range of sophisticated information technology to assist them in sending the quickest and most appropriate resource from any of our fire stations to any location within North Wales.

Control staff are highly developed, with good bilingual communication skills and are able to think fast and relay instructions accurately. They are required to maintain comprehensive data relating to current incidents.

In addition to responding to 999 calls and sending fire appliances out to incidents they carry out a wide range of duties and must have a meticulous eye for detail and liaise with all members of the service, other agencies, the public and the media.