David Lloyd, Police and Crime Commissioner for Hertfordshire and current chairperson of the Association of Police and Crime Commissioners Emergency Services Collaboration Working Group, has advocated and championed the establishment of a practitioners group to provide a truly collaborative forum for innovation and best practice.
The establishment of the Cross-Emergency Services Collaboration Working Group has now received ministerial support from the Home Office, Department of Communities and Local Government and the Department of Health. This includes a commitment of joint funding. The funding will be used to gather evidence, commission research and provide a source of information for use by local collaboration projects across the country.
The Cross-Emergency Services Collaboration Working Group consists of representatives from the Association of Chief Police Officers, Chief Fire Officers Association, Association of Ambulance Chief Executives, Association of Police and Crime Commissioners, the College of Policing and the Local Government Association.
Taking a truly collaborative approach, the group will provide a regular forum for joint discussion and communication on the opportunities and challenges; facilitate and encourage greater collaboration between emergency services; oversee the overall programme of work to establish a network and commission research and provide ministers, PCCs and interested parties with progress updates.
The newly established group is looking to organise a national Emergency Services Collaboration Summit early next year in order to showcase progress, address challenges and encourage further innovation.
The group is determined to build an evidence base to enable both opportunities and barriers to be identified and gain a much better understanding of successful projects and how these can be replicated and adopted across the country.
The establishment of the Cross-Emergency Services Collaboration Group represents an exciting development in emergency service provision. Collaboration between the emergency services is about improving resilience, efficiency and service delivery. Looking at the picture nationally will provide an oversight of all the collaboration projects which are currently underway and will seek to build on ‘what works’.
To support the work of the group, a 1 year secondment opportunity now exists for a Lead Officer from one of the emergency services to act as a project lead. Details of how to apply can be found below:
http://aace.org.uk/news-resources/vacancies/
http://www.college.police.uk/en/19999.htm
