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Ambulance Department of the Joint Committee of the British Red Cross Society and the
Order of St. John of Jerusalem—Towards the end of the year the Joint Committee, who
for some fifteen years have provided an ambulance service for the conveyance of certain
patients on an agency basis on behalf of the Council, invited the Council to purchase the
buildings, vehicles and equipment of the Ambulance Department and to take over the
members of their staff. The Health Committee directed the officers concerned to investigate
the proposal.
Operational control system—Changes designed to improve the efficiency of the Control
Room were initiated during the year. A new accident allocation section, including two
new switchboard positions and two new radio telephony positions, is being installed. This
will provide a relatively self-contained unit isolated as much as possible from the day-today
traffic of the Control Room.
The Supervisor's office has been moved to a new position with an improved view of the
switchboard and additional office accommodation has been provided, containing Telex
apparatus linking Headquarters Control and the six general ambulance stations.
Telex is a public teleprinter system linked by an automatic dialling system which combines
the speed of the telephone with the accuracy of the printed word. Ambulance orders are
transmitted from Headquarters to general stations, where the message slips taken from the
machines are used by ambulance crews as journey orders. One of the Headquarters Telex
machines has a perforated tape recording attachment whereby messages are punched on
to tape and transmitted laterat a high speed, thus savingtransmission time.The taped message
appears at the receiving station as a normal typed message. The prime advantages of Telex
are accuracy and saving of time, as the checking of details by repeating messages received
by telephone is eliminated. The time may not be far off when the more important hospitals
will themselves use Telex as the normal means of ordering ambulances.
Premises—Work commenced on the building of a new accident station at the Oval to
replace the existing station. The new station will accommodate thirteen ambulances; these
will all be fully equipped for accident work but will be used largely to relieve pressure on
the general section. The new station has been designed for use as the training station in
place of the smaller Battersea station which at present serves this purpose. Work began
on substantial improvements to the staff accommodation at the Russell Square accident
station and on the improvement of the garage accommodation at the South Eastern
general station.
A scheme has been approved to enlarge and improve the garage accommodation at the
South Western general station and schemes have been prepared to improve the administrative
and operative staff accommodation at the Brook, South Eastern and South Western
general stations.
Staff—The service is under the supervision of an Officer-in-Charge and is staffed by
33 administrative and clerical staff, 78 ambulance control clerks and 880 uniformed supervisory
and operative staff. The supervisory staff establishment was reviewed in the early
part of the year. As a result two new positions of Assistant Chief Superintendent were
provided and the Duty Officers at Headquarters, who held the rank of Assistant Superintendent
with an allowance for special duties, were raised to the grade of Senior Assistant
Superintendent and their numbers increased.
Training—The service training scheme, which was reorganised in 1962 to provide for
each new entrant a four-weeks theoretical and practical training course, including first aid,
and a minimum of four weeks' operational training at an accident station, continued to
function well. Plans for the expansion of the training scheme were agreed, to come into
operation with the rebuilding of the Oval ambulance station, so that training in both
accident and general ambulance work could be undertaken from the training station.
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