Force Control Room Operator

Would you like to join our New Year 2024 intakes as a Force Control Room Operator and help us make a difference together.

Total salary £33,297 - £40,022 

£25,713 - £29,874  plus 20% Shift Allowance and 14.21% Weekend Working (This may differ subject to role responsibilities within the Centre)

An exciting opportunity has arisen in the heart of the Force Control Room located at Staffordshire Police Headquarters in Stafford. 

Working across the Force Control Room your role will include ensuring that all 999/101 emergency/non-emergency calls are answered promptly and professionally and deploying officers to incidents in radio dispatch.

Our Force Control Room Operators are there to help.  Whether it is triaging calls and contacts for service at first contact, taking a 999 report of a missing person, reassuring a victim of burglary or supporting someone in crisis; our Control Room Operators play a vital role in helping keep our communities safe and are passionate about serving the public.

For many people, you will be the first point of contact with the police. You will be a calm, reassuring voice in someone’s hour of need.  Asking the right questions, listening for vital details and recording information.

Being a Control Room Operator is certainly not your typical nine-to-five.  You will deal with emergency 999 calls, non-emergency 101 calls and digital 101 which includes on-line crime reporting and social media.   In return, we promise you a good starting salary, great training experiences and the pride that comes from helping others.

With the training we give you’ll be empowered to risk assess and prioritise each call or contact, ensuring an appropriate response.   The calls are highly varied and often challenging in nature, at times you will be talking to people in crisis, in potentially dangerous or vulnerable situations.

It will be your role to ensure adequate resources are deployed so your ability to stay calm and determine the most appropriate response will be vital.

• Initial investigation – when a crime is reported you will be trained to ask initial questions to establish the threat/risk and severity and whether there are lines of investigation, including forensic opportunities. With each contact we manage the expectations of the reporting person, providing crime prevention advice and re-assurance.

• Liaison with other emergency services and partner agencies, supporting the work they do and arranging for police involvement where needed.

• Advice – many of the calls we receive are resolved within the Contact Centre, this could be through offering advice or signposting members of the public to more appropriate agencies when it is not a matter dealt with by the police.

• Recording intelligence – from information given to us by our communities you will be identifying and recording information to share with other parts of the organisation to inform our future policing operations.

Shift patterns

Shift patterns cover 24-hour, 7 days a week operation; if successful you will be offered a rotating shift pattern which includes evenings, nights and weekend shifts.. 

 As well as an attractive salary, you will receive additional enhancements to reflect the shift and weekend working, including a shift allowance and weekend hours payment where applicable.   This could equate to an additional £7,431 per annum.

Force Control Room Operator Training

The initial training course is 4 weeks classroom-based training.  During this time our new recruits undertake a number of IT courses, receive a range of inputs including risk assessment and investigative standards training.  You will then have the opportunity to take calls with support and guidance from an experienced tutor and will be assigned to a rota and will begin working a shift pattern between 2 and 4 months. 

Our Control Room Operators are assigned to one of three main areas, initial triage, contact handling and radio dispatch.  Following your basic training, you will be allocated to one element initially, however you will receive ongoing training to become multi-skilled in both areas as your career progresses.

Starting your career in our Force Control Centre will provide you with a wide range of skills and experiences.  There are also opportunities for development, such as becoming a Tutor or Mentor, or additional training on certain topics enabling you to act as a point of contact to other team members.

Additional Information

We would advise all applicants to tailor their CV to meet the criteria on the role profile, make sure you are evidencing you skills that are required.

The deadline for submission of applications is Midnight on 3rd January 2024.

Assessments and interviews will be held on Sunday 21st January 2024.

Benefits of working for Staffordshire Police:

Flexi time – flexible working as part of trust driven policing

Pension Scheme - one of the best pension schemes in the country with guaranteed pension payable - for more information please visit Staffordshire Pension Fund - Home (staffspf.org.uk)

Annual Leave Entitlement - starting at 26 days plus bank holidays

Sick pay scheme

Fostering friendly policy

Family friendly policies – maternity, paternity, parental leave, adoption

Occupational Health

On site Gyms

Staff associations

Reward and Recognition

Blue light Card – not solely for Staffs police

Lottery

Staff restaurant at HQ

Free parking

“Staffordshire have a strong commitment to equality and diversity in our people, within the organisation and in the services we provide to our communities.

We want to reflect the communities we serve and one way we can try to achieve this is through a 'positive action' approach.

Positive action is activity which helps employers identify and remove barriers and issues to the recruitment, retention and progression of people who identify with underrepresented groups of the Equalities Act 2010 (i.e. LGBT+, ethnicity, disability), whilst still employing people on merit.

Click here to register your interest in being involved in positive action opportunities and support; Positive.action@staffordshire.pnn.police.uk “