Secretary's Corner
January 2009
Welcome to another New Year and as I seem to mention each and every year at this time, 2008 was one of the most challenging years we have probably ever faced and 2009 shows no signs of being any easier. The difficulties that we have had to deal with as a Trust and as a Branch have, on occasions, been insurmountable and for those members and reps that chose to support and assist in helping us through some of those challenges, I thank you most sincerely.
Again, as I seem to mention every year, the nomination papers are out for staff to elect Station and departmental reps, please ensure that nominations are made and forms returned as soon as possible. It would assist our communications as a Branch significantly if we have a contact on every station that we can communicate with and would benefit all of our members.
The staffside are currently actively involved on a weekly basis in meetings that looks at the data supplied by Lightfoot in NSC and Essex (Beds & Herts will be up and running soon). This is a huge and significant amount of data that looks at every aspect of the patient call cycle. It covers all areas such as, time to answer call, time to pass call, mobilisation, drive time, time spent on scene right up until a resource becomes “green” from a job. It also looks at every type of dispatched resource across hour of day, day of week by every area including urban, rural etc. This information is very useful because for the first time we can now access evidence based data that allows us to look at what is working and what isn’t and help us to negotiate on behalf of staff in a lot of areas (e.g. dynamic deployment). I will try and give further updates on this in future Newsletters.
In our attempts as a Branch to continually improve our communications with members and consult on contentious issues, we have spent some of our branch funds on upgrading our website so that we can carry out online consultations. Details of the first one we wish to trial can be found in this Newsletter. If successful, we intend to use this method again throughout the year to gather feedback from members as to the direction they would like us to take on their behalf. We appreciate that this is an electronic method of consultation, but it is by far the quickest and cheapest way for us to gain members views, we have tried to put a system in place which also allows for members to be involved that do not have IT access.
This Branch has again put a motion to this year’s health conference, this time on the subject of pensions, the full script can be found in this Newsletter and we will be sending a delegation from the Branch to conference later in the year.
I currently have a list of several items to begin the year with, all are marked urgent and of high priority. So although it can seem sometimes that as a Branch we are all sitting round supping tea with management and nodding agreement to everything they say, I can assure you all quite categorically that behind the scenes there is a small band of people working extremely hard and putting in long hours to try and achieve the best we can for our members, your support as always is much appreciated. 
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