This is vitally important section of the organisation which deals with the Trust’s planning and response to significant and major incidents within the region as well as providing support for large gatherings such as football matches and festivals.
Command Control
All our commanders have received the appropriate level of training required to fulfil roles and Operational, Tactical and Strategic levels. Annual internal commander updates provide opportunity to update and assure our command team of lessons identified, changes in practise and refresh underpinning knowledge. All commanders are Joint Emergency Services Interoperable Principles (JESIP) trained which supports collaborative working with blue light partners at all incidents we attend.
Hazardous Area Response Team (HART)
Our Hazardous Area Response Team (HART) comprises of specialist paramedics who are able to operate in challenging and often dangerous situations such as collapsed buildings, in fast moving water, working at height or in confined spaces, and also deal with patients who have been exposed to chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear incidents. HART are based in each of England’s ten NHS Ambulance Trusts, which means they can cover the whole of the country, in some cases working together on specific, large scale or high-profile incidents, either accidental or deliberately caused. HART work alongside the police and fire & rescue services within what is known as the ‘inner cordon’ (or ‘hot zone’) of a major incident. The job of the HART teams is to triage and treat casualties and to help save lives in very difficult circumstances. They are also there to look after other emergency personnel who may become injured whilst attending these difficult and challenging incidents. Find out more about HART.
Enhanced Care
WMAS is extremely fortunate to have a wealth of enhanced care teams (ECTs) that respond to cases across the region. We work in partnership with two independently CQC registered air ambulance charities (Midlands Air Ambulance Charity (MAAC) and The Air Ambulance Service (TAAS)) who operate both helicopters and rapid response vehicles from four locations across the region on a 24/7 basis.
In addition to this the Trust is supported by a number of BASICS charities who respond on a voluntary basis to provide enhanced care to patients across the WMAS operational footprint.
These assets are tasked by dedicated and specialist dispatchers in our Emergency Operations Centre in Brierly Hill.
Medical Emergency Response Intervention Team (MERIT)
The Trust is commissioned to provide the regions operational prehospital response to major trauma, this is delivered by MERIT, a 24/7 regional asset comprising of a prehospital Consultant Doctor and Critical Care Paramedic.
The team will typically respond to serious trauma cases such as stabbings, shootings and serious RTCs, supporting the most critically ill and injured patients that present through the 999 system and also to support operational ambulance staff.
Resilience and Business Continuity
The Trust’s Resilience and Business Continuity team ensures we are able to operate 24/7, no matter what the challenges we may face, such as IT failure, denial of premises access through weather, fire and flood etc… The Trust has a renowned commitment to training our staff at all levels in incident response and business continuity which the Resilience Managers design and deliver.
Community Risk Register
Across the West Midlands, there are four Local Resilience Forums (LRFs): Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Mercia and West Midlands Conurbation. LRFs are multi-agency partnerships made up of representatives from local public services, including the emergency services, local authorities, the NHS, UKHSA, the Environment Agency and others. These agencies are known as Category 1 Responders, as defined by the Civil Contingencies Act. LRFs are supported by organisations, known as Category 2 responders, such as the Highways Agency and public utility companies.
Each LRF has representation from WMAS embedded along with Community Risk Register (CRR) which enables the community to be better prepared to cope during an emergency and to recover more quickly. The CRR provides information on emergencies that could happen within the each area, together with an assessment of how likely they are to happen and the impacts if they do. These are regularly reviewed ensuring information and data remains current for the everchanging world we live in.
You can find links to the Registers for each LRF here:
West Mercia: Community Risk Register (westmercia.police.uk)
West Midlands: West Midlands Community Risk Register March 2024
Warwickshire: WCCC-929-5 (warwickshire.gov.uk)
Staffordshire: Staffordshire Community Risk Register Jun 2021 Public (staffordshireprepared.gov.uk)
Assurance
Annually WMAS is required to undertake NHSE Core Standards which is reviewed and scored against the NHSE Emergency Preparedness Resilience and Response (EPRR) Framework. This allows us to provide clear assurance both internally and externally of the ability to respond to emergencies and that all of the planning is current, in date and fit for purpose.