Engaging with emergency services to support their transition

Emergency services across the UK are under increasing pressure to decarbonise in line with government targets. To support stakeholders throughout this shift, we are developing a deeper understanding of emergency services’ decarbonisation plans and needs, including resilience and site-specific usage patterns.

We engaged with emergency services across fire, ambulance, and police to understand their decarbonisation challenges and priorities. This engagement revealed varying levels of understanding and readiness to decarbonise across different services. These organisations also face common barriers such as highly complex estates and fleets, limited operational capacity, competing priorities, legacy infrastructure and budget constraints which limit their resources and capacity to start their transition.

As such, the scale of decarbonisation in this area could lead to a significant increase in complex network reinforcement and support required to help emergency services through this process. Efficient planning and coordination will be required to reduce the risk of duplicated applications and ensure customers have the best possible experience throughout the process.

 

Through our Blue Light innovation project, we are developing a self-service tool to help emergency services plan more effectively. With an easy-to-use interface and built-in data, it will simplify complex decisions and reduce the need for multiple applications. The tool will also support collaboration across departments, improving demand forecasting and capacity planning.

Once fully developed, we expect the tool to:

• Reduce planning times and improve accuracy of demand forecasting
• Improve communication and coordination of decarbonisation plans and infrastructure
• Streamline processes to support emergency services in achieving their decarbonisation plan and coordinate work to minimise disruptions.