Introduction and Background
Management understanding of the emergency services and their role in dealing with the safety and preventative agenda in the society is on the rise (Wankhade et al. 2019). While the operation of the main blue light services, notably the ambulance, police and fire and rescue service, is quite global, there are huge variations and differences in the organisation, management and funding of these organisations including their service delivery models. Three challenges particularly merit some mention. For instance, in the UK, a large part of the blue light delivery resides in the public sector, funded by the government, with the three main services operating quite independently with different organisational and governance mechanism under respective ministerial insight. In Europe, the provision is much more fragmented, with a variety of public-private partnership models in vogue. In North America, the fire and rescue services (FRSs) are often the first responders to the emergency 911 calls, with the paramedic crews (and sometimes police) often part of the same team. This makes a systematic understanding of these organisations much more difficult. The second challenge stems from a dominance of professional/practitioner literature, with pockets of academic knowledge developing in some aspects of the emergency work such as the police and paramedics, but a clear divide persists between the academic endeavours and professional knowledge, resulting in little co-production (Wankhade et al. 2019; Wankhade and Murphy 2012). The third challenge points to a climate of fiscal and budgetary pressures within which most of the provision of blue light service delivery happen, especially in Europe, North America and Australia. This book aims to address this gap and attempts to analyse the evidence from operation of, and governance framework for, the emergency services in the UK, often cited as the âbest practiceâ models around the world.
The global security climate and the recent tragic events in London and Manchester in the UK have highlighted the challenging role played by the emergency services in crisis situations. Their swift and professional response has drawn universal praise but has also raised issues around reduced funding levels and job-cuts to match heightened security threat. The horrific fire in the Grenfell Tower, a West London residential tower block in June 2017, resulting in a tragic loss of life is a defining moment for the fire and rescue services in the UK. The Grenfell Tower Inquiry led by Sir Martin Moore-Bick will be publishing its finding later this year about the response of the fire services which has drawn criticism. However it has also been reported that the âfirefighters fear they are being âstitched upâ in the Grenfell Tower inquiry because their role has already been heavily scrutinised yet conclusions about the fireâs causes are not likely to be drawn until at least three years after the disaster that claimed 72 livesâ (Booth 2019).
Structural and cultural barriers hamper better collaboration and coordination of work between the emergency services (Parry et al. 2015). The call for âtransformationalâ reforms in the emergency services in the UK, particularly in this period of austerity that emphasises âdoing more with lessâ, has been made elsewhere (Wankhade 2017). The âtransformational reformsâ, in essence, underpin the fundamental shift in the nature of the work and staff deployment across the three main blue light servicesâthe ambulance, police and fire and rescue services. Significant shifts in the demand patterns for blue light services have been observed over the last decade. The ambulance services are witnessing an annual increase of 10% in the demand for 999 emergency calls (National Audit Office NAO 2017, 2011). Consequently, the service is struggling to meet its performance targets with available resources which is further affecting the health and well-being of the workforce (Wankhade and Mackway-Jones 2015; Granter et al. 2019; Wankhade et al. 2018).
The police services are also confronted with a different crime profile such as cybercrime, child and sexual exploitation, mental illness, in addition to tackling knife-, gun- and drug- related cases and community policing (Wankhade and Weir 2015). The College of Policing (2015) did some analysis of estimating demand on the police services and came up with interesting findings:
- Incidents involving people with mental health issues appear to be increasing;
- Demand on the police associated with protective statutory requirements, such as Multi-Agency Public Protection Panels, appears to be increasing; and
- Crime complexity has changedâcases of sexual abuse and cybercrime have been on increase too.
We see two indications of emerging pressure on police resilience. The first is the decreased levels of police visibility (community policing) and the second one is the increasing requests for mutual aid (NAO 2015a).
The fire and rescue services, over the past ten years, have witnessed a massive reduction in incidence of fire and are now required to look for creative options to utilise their workforce in building closer ties with the local ambulance and police services (Murphy and Greenhalgh 2018; National Audit Office (NAO) 2015a, b; Bain 2002). The House of Commons Public Accounts Committee HC PAC (HC 582) published its report (2016) on the financial sustainability of fire and rescue services. It commended the fire and rescue authorities to absorb funding reductions since 2010, but highlighted that risks to their financial and service sustainability could increase given the governmentâs decision to implement further funding reductions from 2016 to 2017. Clearly, fire and rescue services need to make a strategic choice of either confining itself to putting off fires and lose paid staff or use its brand and engage in more boarder consultation and preventive work in collaboration with other public services (Mansfield 2015).
The collaboration agenda is further impacted by a lack of clear direction of travel, financial and budgetary challenges, differences in training and curriculum of staff across the services. The agenda is further impacted by the rise in issues such as mental health, stress and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) in emergency services staff (MIND 2016; Donnelly 2017; Drury 2016; Gerber et al. 2010; Brough 2005).
The chapter is organised as follows. We first discuss the meaning and understanding of interoperability. We then analyse the current governance and oversight mechanism for the emergency services, using the UK as an example. The plan of this book is discussed next, followed by some concluding comments.
Defining Interoperability
The dictionary meaning of interoperability is âthe ability of a system or component to function effectively with other systems or componentsâ (Collins Dictionary 2018). Within the context of the emergency services, interoperability is generally understood as a multi-agency cooperation between them on issues around people, technology and resources. The need for such interoperability stems not only from the changing nature of the threats to national security but also on account of acute public service budget pressures for delivering safe and high-quality levels of services.
In official documents, interoperability is defined as âthe capabilities of organisations or discrete parts of the same organisation to exchange operational information and to use it to inform their decision makingâ (National Police Innovation Agency 2009). In the UK, the interoperability framework functions through the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme (JESIP) which has been established to address the recommendations and findings from many major incident reports (www.âjesip.âorg). It offers the joint interoperability training to the operational and tactical commanders from the three services (ambu...