New proposed operations structure

Last Tuesday (February 25) I met with around 150 of our operations and clinical managers to share our outline plans for the proposed management structure.

In previous proposals there were too many layers of management between myself as CEO and frontline staff. For this reason, the principles of the structure are as follows:

Our largest stations will be staffed by a 24/7 Duty Locality Officer (DLO) team, made up of six DLOs. Their primary role is to run this large station, and support their locality at Bronze command. Some of these smaller stations will also have their own Locality officer (LO) who is responsible for it. The very smallest stations will have a supervisor who will act as a ‘team leader’ and point of contact, but this person will be part of the rota and will report to a DLO in a nearby bigger station.

I know many of you will have a lot of questions, so I will try and pre-empt some of these here:

• It’s not yet been decided what stations will be grouped together in terms of large and small etc.
• The HEOC structure is expected to largely stay as it is now, but there will be one person responsible for all three HEOCs
• Areas of work like community first responders, HEOCs, resilience and special operations will sit under the operations structure. Each area of work will fall under an allocated Locality Director
• This proposal will save the Trust money which will be reinvested in recruiting more paramedics
• Managers will be supported and given training to allow them to fulfill their role
• We’ve not yet had discussions about bandings for each role
• The three Locality Directors will sit on the Trust Board to ensure we have operational representation from each area. They will each be based in their patch (Essex, Beds & Herts, and Norfolk, Suffolk & Cambridgeshire) so they are closer to the community and public they serve.

We've not yet had discussions with staffside around this structure or any of the other directorates.

As soon as more information is confirmed this will of course be shared with you, as will structure information for our non-operational areas. In the meantime, please do make sure to share your feedback via myself or the changesupport@eastamb.nhs.uk email.

Dr Anthony Marsh Chief Executive Officer