The Sefton Metropolitan Borough Emergency Centre and was located in the basement of the Floral Hall, Southport from the early 1980’s. The Floral Hall is on ‘The Promenade’ and the Emergency Centre consisted of 8 rooms on either side of a wide corridor used as one of the exits from the hall above.
It is unclear when exactly it was first used but was moved in the late 1980’s to the basement of Southport Technical College where it was co-located with Merseyside County Standby. The conversion of the basement involved some internal wall changes and the fitting of new entrance doors.
The communications room with a PMBX switchboard and MSX was on the south side of the exit corridor with the control room on the north side. We were only able to see the control room which is now used for storage and left little evidence of its former use. There was a BT junction box with some wiring and soft wooden boards on the walls. The room was formed from two original basement rooms with a section of the dividing wall removed during the conversion.
Those taking part in the visit were Nick Catford , Keith Ward , Rod Siebert, John Fogg and Robin Ware.
