EMERGENCY workers have welcomed today’s launch of a new tool to identify locations by nicknames, which aims to help 999 services attend calls more quickly.

The Vernacular Names Tool already contains the nicknames of more than 9,000 locations and the Ordnance Survey (OS) has asked more blue-light workers to input nicknames from where they live.

It is a replacement for Fintan, a mapping tool created more than 10 years ago for HM Coastguard.

The original tool allowed users to upload the local name or nickname for a coastal feature to the database, along with the location or its existing geographic name.

At the Welsh Ambulance Service, which is a new user, emergency medical service administrator Chris Jones said: “The real value will be ensuring that our ambulances will be able to get to the scene of an incident effectively with an accurate location provided by OS, no matter how it’s identified by a caller.”