Capita wins contract extension to support WAN for East Coast and Hertfordshire Control Room Consortium

UK-based business process outsourcing company Capita has been awarded a £700,000 three-year contract extension to manage a shared wide area network (WAN) for East Coast and Hertfordshire Control Room Consortium.

The shared network supports Hertfordshire, Lincolnshire, Humberside, and Norfolk fire and rescue services.

Through Capita’s WAN, all four fire services can share a common network infrastructure, which enables greater operational efficiency across the consortium. Due to the network connectivity, fire services are able to take emergency calls and deploy units to manage incidents thus supporting communities within the consortium’s service areas.

The outsourcing company said that the WAN is built according to the government’s public sector network (PSN) compliance standards.

Capita wins contract extension to support WAN for East Coast and Hertfordshire Control Room Consortium. Photo courtesy of Slinkierbus268/Wikipedia.org.

Mark Cook – executive officer of Capita Technology Solutions division said: “This renewal is secured on the strength of our longstanding partnership with the East Coast and Hertfordshire Control Room Consortium. It is also based on our ability to ensure that our technology continuously supports mission-critical services now and in the future.”

The network which connects all the four fire and rescue services sites, including HQ and their control rooms, also connects the shared data centres located on the Hertfordshire and Humberside sites, to support critical service management and delivery.

As per the contract, the consortium’s local area network (LAN) and routers will be upgraded by Capita. Furthermore, the contract includes digital ‘perimeter security’ services which include firewalls to protect and segregate the LAN at each control room and the WAN that connects them.

Other than network services, Capita has been providing control room software solutions to the East Coast and Hertfordshire Control Room Consortium.

Matt Canterford – head of digital services at Hertfordshire County Council said: “We have an important responsibility to provide the best services we can to our communities. Capita’s network technology provides the resilient platform we need to ensure that our operations across the consortium are running efficiently.”