Coastguard move was an experiment that has failed

Now, if it really was just seven minutes, surely the crew who made it to the station would have seen the green flashing lights of other volunteers coming towards the harbour and waited for them? The fact that they had the initiative to go to sea in a harbour dory, when it was quite choppy, is to be commended but it was never going to be as good or as safe as a fully crewed and equipped lifeboat.

Now, I believe one of the instigators of Jescc, Mark Lempriere at Home Department, has now retired so he can no longer be called to account for its dismal failures. Police Chief Patrick Rice, another Jescc supporter, is finishing at the end of the year so now the buck stops at chief executive officer or whatever he is called Paul Whitfield. It seems when very senior civil servants are involved, they cannot be allowed to be seen to fail and money will be found to make it work whatever the financial or human cost to life.

This whole Jescc thing was supposed to save us £300,000 per annum, according to all the hype, but has proven to be an absolute money pit which is costing us, the taxpayers, massive amounts of overspends. The staff turnover is so great that Jescc actually has a UK trainer here on a permanent basis. How much is that costing us all? The previous system required virtually no staff training as the operators had in-house training by skilled and experienced staff, but despite the people in charge being clearly told that people would leave if changed from eight- to 12-hour shifts, they chose to ignore it and so many highly skilled staff did leave. There has been a complete cover up over some staff who were unsuitable for the job and were quietly asked to leave, no doubt with some kind of financial inducement.

Of course, the whole issue of moving Coastguard to a glorified call centre in itself was an experiment which is a complete failure and it has not resulted in a staffing decrease down the harbour. Surely someone who has a knowledge of the harbour and visuals over the Little Russel is going to a be better option? It is high time that Home Affairs’ civil servants came clean, admitted it was a mistake and reverted to the old system, where people who knew what they were doing without having to resort to drop-down menus where you have to answer a series of questions before you can despatch an emergency vehicle, could exercise their training and judgement accordingly.

TREVOR HOCKEY,

Trev’s Motorcycles.

Editor’s footnote: Chelsea Martel, head of operations for the Office of the Committee for Home Affairs, replies: Details in the front page article referred to were accurate, as confirmed by the internal review by the Coastguard also referenced in the article. As has been stated repeatedly, saving money was never the driver in the development of Jescc, it was about developing a resilient model that helped the emergency services work closer together. While not without significant challenges, the benefits of Jescc are recognised by the heads of the emergency services. Your correspondent seems certain that the former system, where each emergency service operated their own call centre in isolation, was better. While we understand that change is difficult for some, all I can do is confirm that many benefits have been realised as a result of Jescc. The emergency services have never worked with more collaboration, which can only be of benefit to those we serve. We have seen bystander resuscitations as a result of the systems within Jescc enabling operators to provide CPR advice. This did not happen under the old model.

Far from being secretive, as your correspondent implies, the service has been very open about issues around staff recruitment and retention, and the impact this has had particularly on budget performance in the first couple of years since Jescc was created. Indeed, we have issued many media statements and responded to letters similar to this one. In one such response, in May last year, we explained that a lack of staff stability and recruitment had caused difficulties and clarified what plans were in place to resolve. Financial performance against budget continues to stabilise as a result of changes made last year to staff terms and conditions, and ongoing review of appropriate charging – changes that were again explained publicly at the time.