There’s lots of talk about meeting the public sector’s challenges through integrating police, fire and ambulance services. The Police and Crime Commissioner for Hertfordshire looks at the options
We have all read a great many words from a great many public sector leaders about the financial challenges that public services face. In earnest speeches, articles and strategy documents we all opine about the need for joined-up working to meet these challenges. But are we really being radical enough when we look at what we are doing, and how we are doing it? Or are we just slicing each individual agency’s salami ever thinner?
I said in my police and crime plan for Hertfordshire that I wanted to see more ‘business sense’ in matters of crime and community safety – a sharp focus on extracting value from our operations and greater flexibility in working together with other areas, with other services. One of the big ideas for doing this is the vogue-ish matter of closer working and collaboration, even integration, between ‘blue light’ services – police, ambulance, fire and rescue.
At its most radical this could mean running our emergency services as one – with shared management, shared tools and equipment, shared political leadership. While detractors will crack wise about putting a bucket of water and a first-aid box in the back of the panda car, we need to recognise the weight of the reactionary forces at work here.
A single service is certainly at the radical end of the spectrum but is far from ridiculous. It is an increasingly realistic proposition that is being actively explored by my fellow police and crime commissioner, Adam Simmonds, in Northamptonshire.
He is putting a joint programme team together as well as looking at more efficient management structures in readiness; Simmonds and other commissioners, including Tim Passmore in Suffolk, have secured substantial transition funds from government to realise their plans.
Beyond the radical ideas, I am clear that there is a broad spectrum of possible work on blue light collaboration. In my own county much has already been done to find synergy and savings between services. In the main, this has been work to integrate fire with wider county council services, rather than the police, particularly as fire is a county council department in Hertfordshire.
It has led principally to savings in the back office, as well as more efficient management with the fire chief also serving as a director in the county council. Since last April he has further expanded his portfolio to work for me as chief executive.
The programme here is one of incremental change rather than revolution, but the innovations seen in Hertfordshire form part of the proof of concept for these ideas of integration that have such currency with government ministers at the moment.
There is yet more that we can do at a practical level by looking at shared approaches to issues like estates, procurement and training. There are also opportunities to have a radical look at how we do business, as well as how we hit our financial targets.
Hertfordshire is making good headway here with initiatives such as the joint County Community Safety Unit where the constabulary and county council work together, combining police with fire, trading standards and the old drugs and alcohol team, as well as linking with probation services.
As I say, this is a broad spectrum. Police and crime commissioners across the country (as well as the service chiefs they work with) will be starting to look at where they sit and where they are headed.
Derbyshire is looking at a shared headquarters; Humberside is finding better, joined-up ways to procure and manage vehicles; Merseyside is developing a joint control room. Whether you’re looking at service re-engineering or running a more efficient fleet and estate it clearly makes business sense to consider the options.
The challenge is that this isn’t the only change programme on the block. Every piece of the public puzzle is shifting to meet the challenges of the times. All the moving parts are in motion at the same time and (as if life weren’t complicated enough) new things are springing up at the same time. Things like PCCs.
Though we might be novel (and some would say that we are contentious) we bring something else to policing that the other blue light services have not experienced in quite the same way to date – a direct democratic mandate for the service in question. And given our novelty, there are not tracks laid down that we must follow.
The nervous commissioner may end up hiding behind a strong constabulary lead. But if we want to, and as long as we can take our partners with us, we have an open field in front of us.
In electing commissioners, the public were given the opportunity to have a direct say in how their communities are policed and, beyond policing, we have introduced a radical new dynamic to the crime and justice landscape. If we are to be fully effective in the wider drive to cut crime, while balancing the books, we will need to maximise our collective leadership with other local leaders.
It is on issues like blue light integration that this local leadership team can really start to come together.
David Lloyd, the Police and Crime Commissioner for Hertfordshire, leads for the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners on blue light integration. He will be speaking on this topic at the CIPFA Police Conference in London on March 5
This opinion piece was first published in the March edition of Public Finance magazine
