The Role
Control Room Officer
Application closing date: Friday 12 February 2021 at 16:00 GMT
It’s hours of calm followed by intense pressure.
It’s treating all 8.6 million Londoners as individuals.
It’s 80% routine and 20% action.
It’s talking someone through their most trying time whilst being calm and compassionate.
It’s breaking from overseeing resources to helping a caller escape a fire.
It’s helping the London Fire Brigade protect and serve London.
It’s knowing that every contact counts.
The London Fire Brigade are recruiting to the role of Control Room Officer based at the London Operations Centre in Merton.
Control Room Officers manage over 180,000 999 calls a year from Londoners in need. They mobilise fire engines and specialist equipment, provide support to firefighters and work with other emergency services to safely resolve incidents across the Capital.
A career as a Control Room Officer could see you providing advice and gathering important information to assist the Brigades response to a terrorist attack, serious fire, major incident or large-scale flooding event.
Luckily, these don’t occur every day.
You will routinely manage emergency calls to road traffic collisions, fire alarms sounding, rescues and other incidents requiring LFB’s assistance.
But, no matter what you are dealing with, to us, every contact counts.
All our communications from 999 calls to messages over the radio are important to us. We are seeking Control Room Officers who are great communicators and who can make every contact count.
If you think you have what it takes then we would love to hear from you.
We are a 24/7 365 service, you will need to be committed to work during school holidays, at weekends and overnight, following a set shift pattern of three working days (Day 1 - 08:00-20:00, Day 2 - 08:00-16:00 or 14:00-22:00, Day 3 - 20:00-08:00) followed by three days off.
Our new Control Room Officers will undertake an intensive eight-week training course which covers everything from emergency call management to radio procedure, fire survival guidance to appliance types. Upon successful completion, you will be posted to a watch to continue your development throughout your probation period of nine months.
To apply - complete the online application form and upload an up to date CV and a cover letter.
Please include in your cover letter evidence to address the following 4 headings:
1 - Why you would be the best candidate for this role?
2 - Your experience of dealing with high pressure situations while remaining calm and compassionate.
3 - The ability to always communicate professionally with colleagues and members of the public.
4 - Your commitment to personal development and maintenance of work related skills.
Your application will be sifted based on your CV and on your cover letter (responses to address the 4 headings).
As a Control Room Officer trainee, you will start on an annual salary of £30,642.66 (inclusive of a 20% shift allowance). Once trained, the salary rises to £31,391.56 (inclusive of a 20% shift allowance) per annum during the probation period. Then as a qualified Control Room Officer, you will be paid on the salary scale £32,141.81 - £39,932.35 (inclusive of a 20% shift allowance).
Please note any correspondence received from us will be via e-mail and sent to the address you provide on your application form.
We will be doing a live Q&A session for applicants on 5th February at 14:30. The link for this is https://youtu.be/L6mc7CIKB2s
Please watch the videos below:
Danielle - Control Room Officer
London Operations Centre
Assessment Overview
Stage 1 - February 2021
CV and cover letter (Sift). Shortlisted candidates will be invited to stage 2.
Stage 2 - February 2021
On-line Verbal Reasoning Test (sift). Successful candidates will be invited to stage 3.
Stage 3 - February/March 2021
Interview and Written Exercise.
Please be advised that if you are unable to make the scheduled assessment date, we may not be able to make alternative arrangements.
You will need to achieve a successful standard at each stage in order to progress to the next part of the process.
Please note: you will need to be able to conduct an interview over a video conferencing service such as Zoom or Microsoft Teams. You will be asked to provide relevant contact details for that to take place if invited to stage 3.
Additional Information
We value the diversity of our employees and aim to recruit a workforce which reflects our diverse communities across London. The London Fire Commissioner is an Equal Opportunities Employer and we positively welcome applications from all suitably qualified individuals, irrespective of people's age, disability, gender, race or ethnicity, religion or belief, sexual orientation, or other personal circumstances. We have guidance in place to ensure that all applicants are treated fairly and consistently at every stage of the recruitment process, including the consideration of reasonable adjustments for people who have a disability.
Offers of appointment will be subject to a successful medical, reference and other security checks, and if successful you will undertake an intensive, assessment based training course and will have to achieve competence before joining a watch.
In line with the Basic Personnel Security Standard (BPSS) employment checks will be completed by successful candidates, which will include a basic criminal records check. Successful candidate will be required to declare any convictions for offences which are not spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and any offer of employment is subject to the LFC receiving a criminal records disclosure which it considers satisfactory. Successful candidates should apply to the Disclosure and Barring Service (DBS) to get a copy of their criminal record and share the original disclosure certificate with the LFC. The check will only show convictions that are not ‘spent’. It will cost the successful candidates £23 (current charge) and usually takes up to 14 days.
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