Highways Agency

Annexes

1. History and Guiding Principles
2. Information Requested and Meeting Plans
3. Glossary of Terms and Abbreviations

Annex A

A 1 Consultation with the Police Service

A 1.1 The TCC Project was conceived in 1995 and the concept was subject to widespread consultation in 1997.

A 1.2 It was clear from the beginning that the relationship with the Police Service in general, and individual forces in particular, would be key to the success of the project. One of the first activities was to establish arrangements to involve ACPO. Day-to-day liaison was delegated to the HA/ACPO Partnership Team.

A 1.3 A joint HA/ACPO workshop was held in Autumn 1997, attended by operational police officers, to identify the interfaces and issues that needed to be addressed. The results of this workshop were subject to national police consultation and reported to the ACPO Traffic Committee, who agreed a set of Guiding Principles and within which they supported the development of the Project.

A 1.4 Since then, ACPO has assisted the HA in the identification of issues of interest to the Police Service and the means through which those issues were addressed in the TCC Agreement. This was achieved through a number of workshops. In particular, input from workshops established that local variations in police operational practices would impact on the interface with TiS operations and require appropriate variations in communications, procedures and protocols. This was included in the TCC Agreement by a requirement for a DLOA with each local police force.

A 1.5 ACPO also carried out a national consultation on the feasibility of exporting limited data to the TCC from Police Command and Control Systems. This concept received widespread support. The results of the consultation enabled the TCC Project tenderers to evaluate command and control links within a system of communications between the TCC and Police Control Rooms that would meet the requirements set out in the Guiding Principles.

A 1.6 The TCC Agreement ensures that ACPO and individual police forces will continue to be involved in the detailed development of the project by the successful consortium through the agreement of this National Guidance Framework and subsequent Detailed Local Operating Agreements.

A 1.7 Towards the end of the tender negotiation period, seminars were sponsored by ACPO in each of its English regions to brief representatives of local forces. No new issues were raised at these seminars, demonstrating the effectiveness of the involvement of the Police Service in the development of the project.

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A 2 Guiding Principles Agreed Between ACPO and the Highways Agency

It is considered to be essential that the project should be progressed, implemented and operated in the spirit of partnership and teamwork with all parties committed to understanding each other's roles and responsibilities and the development of mutual trust and support. To that end it is proposed that the following Guiding Principles should be used to steer the next phases of the project in which specifications and procedures and/or protocols are drafted:

(i) The initiative to be customer orientated rather than technology or commercially driven with an evident service based approach.

(ii) The progress and development of the project to continue on a partnership basis with full exchange of information and appropriate police representation and involvement, throughout the development, to achieve smooth implementation and operation of the project.

(iii) That the implementation of the TCC should seek to avoid additional resource burdens on the police service except where they wish to take advantage of any opportunities to exploit the TCC facilities to benefit police operations.

(iv) Wherever possible opportunities for resource efficiencies for the police service should be identified.

(v) Operating procedures and criteria should be developed and documented through effective and detailed dialogue with all relevant organisations.

(vi) In order to ensure necessary levels of compatibility with current and developing police systems [e.g. National Strategy for Police Information Systems (NSPIS), interfaces will need to be discussed with the relevant ACPO Group (in relation to developing systems) and individual forces (in relation to existing systems).

(vii) Procedures, protocols and over-rides will be needed to ensure police (tactical) operational needs (for dealing with incidents and emergencies) have appropriate priority over wider (strategic) traffic management needs.

(viii) The police service to retain full control and (tactical) management of incidents and emergencies with the TCC providing supporting services and advice where required.

(ix) In order to ensure that any (eventual) transfer of call handling to the TCC meets required standards, call handling procedures, standards and activity timings for emergency and priority calls to be subject agreed monitoring. (Note: This is no longer relevant as call handling is not included in the TCC Agreement.)

(x) Steps to be taken to build mutual confidence and team-working between staff in PCOs and the TCC backed-up by conflict resolutions procedures and agreed levels of authority.

(xi) The PCOs to promptly provide the TCC with information by agreed means about all incidents, emergencies and other unusual conditions which are likely to have a significant effect on road conditions and/or journey times.

(xii) Agreements to be put in place to facilitate mutual access to appropriate databases.

(xiii) Alternative routing strategies to be used for strategic traffic management and in response to emergency closures to be developed in partnership with local police, local authorities and other emergency services.

(xiv) Real-time safeguards to be built-in to implementation procedures to ensure that the setting of strategic and /or tactical messages (or the tactical over-ride of strategic messages) do not result in confusing, conflicting or inappropriate messages to drivers whether those messages are set by the TCC, PCO, LA Control Rooms (e.g. ROMANSE) or Private Operators (e.g. Dartford Crossings).

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Annex B

As a guide to resources required for the police during these discussions, the type of information requested is set out below. This information will be used to prepare the technical infrastructure for the project and to inform the development of the DLOAs.

B 1 Institutional

B 1.1 Understanding the specific operation

B 1.2 Background: Confirmation of the network for which the police force takes operational responsibilities, particularly local arrangements and network boundaries.

B 1.3 Local area information: readily available information about incident cluster sites and local congestion patterns.

B 1.4 Liaison: Understanding the current arrangements for liaison with other relevant parties (e.g. contractors, adjoining police forces, emergency services, LHAs).

B 1.5 Information Flow: Understanding how traffic information is currently handled to develop sensible procedures for working with the local control rooms. TiS will investigate the use of automated methods of gathering the information to minimise impact on the police activities.

B 1.6 Incident Management: Understanding how incidents and other road restricting movements are currently handled to develop sensible procedures.

B 1.7 Dissemination: One of the major tools is informing the Media about the status of the network and any relevant incidents. To be effective TiS wishes to co-ordinate this with the current methods being used.

B 1.8 Signing: An understanding of the current use of signs and signals will help in the development of the procedures and strategic responses.

B 1.9 CCTV: TiS needs to understand how the CCTV system is used to assist in the implementation of the CCTV strategy.

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B 2. Equipment and Space

B 2.1 Computers: A thorough understanding of the existing computer and communications system is essential to make sure TiS suggests the most appropriate solution for both the police and TiS. The choice of system(s) will be made on the basis of a best value assessment based on the extent and importance of the information and the cost of providing the system, which will take account of, but not be limited to, the layout of control rooms and space availability, the residual life of the systems to which an interface is required, and any plans for Control Room re-location, re-equipping or restructuring.

B 2.2 Room Layout: Information on the layout of the control and equipment rooms will enable TiS make the optimum suggestions for the operational and technical solutions.

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B 3 Overview of the Objectives and Content of the Meetings

A series of meetings will be necessary to develop the DLOA. It is expected that appropriate and different personnel will be required for various elements of these discussions. There will be adequate time between each meeting to allow police forces to review each stage internally. Any opportunity to streamline this process of developing the DLOA will be adopted providing it achieves the mutual objectives of TiS and the local police force.

B 3.1 First Meeting Explanation of the background to project. Describe the elements of the DLOAs and how they will be developed. Agree the most efficient way to develop the DLOAS and meetings required. Discuss and issue proformas for standard data. Understand current procedures.

B 3.2 Second Meeting Discuss and develop the first set of procedures. Agree proformas for standard data.

B 3.3 Third Meeting Explain strategic responses, procedures and route sets. Finalise the first sets of procedures. Discuss and develop the second set of procedures.

B 3.4 Final Meeting Review strategic responses. Finalise and agree all procedures and information. Agree DLOA.

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B 4 Time Plan of Meetings

Annex C

ACPO The Association of Chief Police Officers.

ACPO exists to promote leadership excellence by the chief officers of the Police Service, to assist in setting the policing agenda by providing professional opinion on key issues identified to the Government, appropriate organisations and individuals and to be the corporate voice of the Service.

Its members are senior police officers in the forty four forces of England, Wales and Northern Ireland, national police agencies and certain other forces in the UK and Channel Islands, and senior civilians. There are presently 280 members of ACPO.

ACPO's day-to-day work on policing policy issues is carried out through a national and regional network of Business Areas - Crime, General Policing, Road Policing, Race and Community Relations, Finance, Performance Management, Information Management and Personnel Management.

Core Network

The HA's motorway and trunk road network to be operated under the TCC Project, as defined in the TCC Agreement. See Section 1.10 for an indicative plan of the Core Network.

DLOA Detailed Local Operating Agreement.

The over-arching principles as defined in the police and LHA NGFs are expected to remain the same nationally, but variations in traffic operations exist from one local area to another. To accommodate this, DLOAs will be drafted with each local organisation, which will outline procedures and practices for effective operations between TiS and an individual LHA or an individual police force.

HA Highways Agency.

The Highways Agency is part of the Department of Transport, Local Government and the Regions (DTLR). It maintains, operates and improves England's trunk road and motorway network (the strategic road network), which includes the TCC Core Network.

LHA Local Highway Authority,

otherwise referred to as "Local Transport Authority", this is a Local Authority in England responsible for local roads under relevant legislation. A "Local Authority" is defined as a county council, a district council, a London borough council, a joint authority established by Part IV of the Local Government Act 1985 or the Common Council of the City of London in its capacity as local authority or any authority that is a successor authority to any of them.

NGF National Guidance Framework.

The principles governing operation of the TCC will be defined by two separate National Guidance Framework (NGF) agreements, one with the Police Service and the other with the representatives of LHAs. These NGFs will provide guidelines and a starting point for the detailed local agreements needed to define operations between TiS and each respective local police force and LHA.

NSPIS National Strategy for Police Information Systems.

A long term programme set up by the Home Office and ACPO with the aim of providing common IT applications for police forces in England and Wales. One of the key application areas is NSPIS Command and Control, which aims to provide next generation software to support real time resource management, incident management, and special operations management. It will also provide links to other NSPIS applications.

PCO Police Control Office.

A Police Control Room which is equipped to operate the National Motorway Communications System and other relevant systems and which currently undertakes activities such as answering emergency roadside telephones, controlling routine patrols, setting matrix signals, setting VMS and operating as an integrated Control Room that also handles emergency '999' calls.

PITO Police Information Technology Organisation.

A public body set up to develop IT support with the police. It includes representatives from ACPO, the Home Office and local authorities. Responsibilities include the supply of information from the Police National Computer, managing the Police National Network and the introduction of the National Automated Fingerprint Identification System. PITO also oversees the business and policy aspects of NSPIS.

TCC Traffic Control Centre.

The traffic control centre to be established, operated and maintained by TiS under the TCC Agreement.

TCC Co Traffic Information Services (TiS) Limited.

A company owned by Serco which will operate the TCC utilising TiS personnel in partnership with the HA and under policies set by the HA.

TiS

The consortium comprising TCC Co, Serco Limited and Serco Limited's sub-contractors.

VMS Variable Message Sign

or signs.

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