TWO emergency services have celebrated the 10th anniversary of their shared communications headquarters.

North Wales Police and North Wales Fire and Rescue Service communications teams have shared the purpose-built control room, the Crud y Dderwen, in St Asaph Business Park since 2008.

The police moved to the open plan office in 2006 and were joined by the fire and rescue service two years later.

The bilingual communications centre is designed to support all critical incidents in the area as well as to providing key links to the strong network of police and fire officers across North Wales.

Speaking on the anniversary on Wednesday, October 10, chief fire officer Simon Smith said: “Adopting a joint communications centre represented an innovative approach to joint emergency service working, placing North Wales at the very forefront of 999 operations - an innovation which has since been followed by others.

"Working together collaboratively on one open plan operations floor has successfully provided us with greater resilience and enabled us to communicate more closely – and time and again over the last ten years has provided real time benefits for both organisations."

Chief constable Gareth Pritchard added: “This collaborative way of working with our fire service colleagues has proved invaluable in dealing with the wide range of incidents both organisations have to face together, such as road traffic collisions, arson, rescue operations and major incidents.

“There have been many technological developments and improvements in partnership working with other agencies since 2008, but the JCC remains at the hub of emergency service response in North Wales.”