The Isle of Man’s emergency services control room has said that staff have not had problems with the location app What3Words, despite reports of mountain rescue teams questioning its accuracy.

What3Words is a phone app which is free to download.

It divides the world into three-by-three metre squares, each with a three-word address.

Anyone having or assisting at an accident in a remote area can look up the location on the app and give its three word name to the emergency services when they call 999 so that responders can find them easily.

It is used by 85% of UK emergency services and by our own Emergency Services Joint Control Room (ESJCR) on the Isle of Man.

However, the BBC reported that Mark Lewis, the head of ICT at Mountain Rescue England and Wales (MREW), had kept a database which showed that, over the last 12 months, 45 locations across England and Wales that rescuers received from lost or injured walkers and climbers, which turned out to be incorrect.

It is believed that human error when reporting the location’s three words -possibly mispronunciation or misspelling - are the most likely reasons for the errors.

The three words the app assigns to each location square are completely random and should not bear any relation to adjacent squares.

For example,Tynwald Hill is puppies.empowers.latches.

Last year the ESJCR was alerted to a fire in a field said to be ’in the vicinity of Marine Drive’: they managed to pinpoint it using What3Words and send the fire crews to the correct location, thus saving valuable time.

The app is widely used on the island by mountain bikers and keen walkers and it can also be useful for visitors and holidaymakers who don’t know their way around the island at all and some local holiday accommodation owners use it to help their guests locate them.

And Howard Jones, operations manager at the ESJCR, told the Manx Independent: ’People are using the app here and we haven’t had any issues with it on the Isle of Man.’