RICHARD BURT JOINS WITH STAFF TO "SAVE OUR EOC"

4.18.00pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 3rd Aug 2007

Liberal Democrat Parliamentary Candidate for West Worcestershire, Richard Burt, today joined with staff at the Ambulance Service's threatened Emergency Operations Centre at Bransford, to co-sponsor the "save your EOC" campaign.

Richard and call centre staff believe the quality of emergency ambulance cover in Worcestershire and Herefordshire will suffer and local jobs will be lost if West Midlands Ambulance Services NHS Trust goes ahead with its proposals to shut the county's Emergency Operations Centre and transfer operations to Brierley Hill.

Speaking after a meeting with managers and staff at Bransford OEC, Richard said:

"We have nine weeks to save our local Ambulance call centre and prevent what would amount to a real and detrimental cut to the emergency care of local people.

"As someone who worked in an emergency services cover, I can appreciate the importance of keeping a dedicated local team with local knowledge for Worcestershire and Herefordshire.

"Bransford dealt with nearly 700 calls over the first three days of the recent flooding and staff performed out of their skins to maintain first class cover throughout.

"The relocation of staff under the current proposals would inevitably lead to people who are not prepared, or who are unable, to transfer because of the distance they would have to travel to work. Eventually this will mean that there will be very few if any staff from Hereford and Worcester working in Brierley Hill."

The LibDem candidate reinforced the view that the 5 ambulance call centres in the West Midlands do need to be able to communicate with each other more effectively, but sees no reason why that could not happen by simply introducing the new technology available.

"I fully understand the need for a more integrated service in the West Midlands for tackling emergencies and would support the right initiatives to achieve this.

"However, greater coherence is quite different from centralisation, which would merely ride roughshod over local knowledge and experience."

Trust Managers admitted that it would be possible to re-scale the proposed expansion of the call centres at Brierley Hill and Stafford if the other centres remained open. The money saved could be used to improve communication between all the existing centres.

"I see no reason why Stafford could not be upgraded to mirror the centre in Brierley Hill so that if needed they could provide appropriate high volume call cover for each other whilst keeping the other call centres too.

"I will be campaigning with staff throughout the public consultation period to save Bransford EOC and to provide a real and viable alternative to the current plans," added Richard Burt