Evaluation of police and fire reform year 4: international perspectives

9 Partnership working and the fire service

Key findings: Partnership working

• Partnership working was viewed as becoming more common in recent years, and particularly since the reforms of the last 5-10 years, across all the international case study areas.
• Each area worked with a wide range of partners to deliver services to the community including the police, health service, ambulance service, local authorities, social services and a wide range of third sector organisations.
• One of the main reasons why fire services work in partnership with other agencies is in response to large-scale incidents, such as wildfires, floods and other natural disasters, or incidents of terrorism.
• Fire services engaged with communities to identify fire and safety risks and develop solutions. The level of current engagement with the community to identify risks varied between the international case studies.
• Common challenges identified included funding cuts, sharing data with partners, and the impact of the widening role of the firefighter on working in partnership with other organisations. 

This chapter focuses on partnership working in the four case study areas, with a particular focus on the changes that have occurred for the fire services since reform, and includes: 

• how partnerships work in practice 
• the role of the community in partnership working 
• changes in partnership working and the impact of changes in other emergency services on the fire service
• the challenges and opportunities faced by fire services in developing effective partnership working. 

9.1 How do partnerships work in practice?

There were some similarities in the ways that the four services from the case study areas worked with their partners, particularly in terms of disaster management and home safety visits. However, the extent to which the fire services in each of the areas are required by law to collaborate differs.

9.1.1 Range of partnerships with the fire service

All four case study areas worked with a wide range of partners to deliver services to the community. Statutory agencies that were often in partnership with the fire service were the police, the health service, ambulance service, local authorities and social services. In addition, there was widespread partnership working with third sector organisations, including groups for older adults, smoking cessation groups and alcohol awareness organisations. 

In Alberta, as many Canadian provinces operate their own fire services, partnership working also takes place between fire services in different regions, particularly around training or responding to large scale incidents where crews and equipment are shared across provinces. In some areas there were also examples where services are co-located. For example, in New Zealand, in some districts a range of emergency services are co-located in a Justice and Emergency Sector Centre including the police, fire service, St John’s Ambulance and civil defence.

There is a view in the Netherlands that, as a result of reform, they are now able to better cooperate within the fire service. As the local stations now have the same training and policy, this has led to increased cooperation between areas.

“Well what we have learnt is that I think it’s a more effective organisation, it’s a better cooperating organisation, you see we have 26 local stations which have our own…everybody had their own policy, but what we now have is…they have the same education, they train together, they come to each other’s…come to each other’s…work with each other’s stations.” (Interviewee: Netherlands)

Case study 7

Mental health partnerships

In Alberta, the fire service is working in partnership with the Canadian Mental Health Commission and the Department of Defence to develop the “Road to Mental Readiness Programme”. This programme is aimed at increasing awareness of the mental health and wellbeing impact of serving as a firefighter and reducing the stigma associated with help seeking and accessing mental health services, alongside increasing resilience across the fire service and better equipping fire officers to cope with the demands of their role.

9.1.2 The role of partnership working in incident management

One of the main reasons why fire services work in partnership with other agencies is in response to large-scale incidents, such as wildfires, floods and other natural disasters, or incidents of terrorism. The fire services commonly work with police, ambulance services and the local authorities, with additional partners such as local forestry workers and farms in New Zealand or third sector organisations in the West Midlands. 

With the exception of the Netherlands, interviewees from all the case studies spoke about a strategic joint planning group for large-scale incidents which involved other key partners such as the police and ambulance services.

Interviewees from both New Zealand and the West Midlands spoke about how their disaster management plans operated at both the strategic and local level. In New Zealand, there is one plan for use within the fire service which identifies risk factors for large-scale incidents such as weather patterns and natural hazards, while the other, local plan, engages the community in identifying local plans to be implemented in the case of an incident occurring.

“The local plan is supposed to be a plan for that community on how they will respond to major incidents, so whether that's a wildfire or whether that’s a major other kind of incident, so that we know what the exit route the community want...where they have vulnerable people that we may need to go in to rescue.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

In Alberta, large-scale incidents such as wildfires and floods were cited as a driver for greater partnership to improve the coordinated approach to future incidents.

“In Alberta here we’ve had a lot of wildfires, large wildfires in the last few years…and that’s really prompted more work with the province around municipal affairs and emergency management to look at…training skills, to be able to deploy resources from multiple municipal departments to assist with some of that work.” (Interviewee: Alberta)

9.1.3 Home safety visits

Another way of working in partnership which was common across several of the case study areas was identifying and responding to safety risks in the home. In the Netherlands, the partnership with home care and social work organisations involved home care staff informing both the fire service and social service of any potential dangers.

In Alberta, the fire services take part in a project called ‘Seniors Connect’ which brings together services which regularly enter older adults’ houses in the course of their duties and educates them around indicators that an older adult may be at risk. If the firefighters identify that someone is at risk then they are able to share this with the health service, so that somebody can be sent out to do a welfare check on the individual. 

The West Midlands fire service operates a more formal partnership with the NHS to transport people home from hospital and carry out “Safe and Well” checks within their homes. This partnership was also spoken about in terms of providing funding for the fire service, as the NHS fund the fire service to provide this service.

“We have worked with the NHS and hospitals to take vulnerable people back home from hospital, back to their home and then when they get back to their home we do a Safe and Well Check within their home. That services multiple purposes, it enables us to identify a vulnerable person and we only do it for those who are in our ‘at risk’ groups, then we can take them home from hospital which clears the hospital beds quicker and then we go back to their home and make sure that when they are at home they are safe and well, and less likely to experience a house fire.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

9.2 What role do the community have in partnership working?

All four fire services acknowledged that communities themselves had a good understanding of the fire and safety risks in their community and therefore it was of strategic importance to engage with communities to identify these risks and develop solutions. The level of current engagement with the community to identify risks varied between the international case studies.

“The community know what their risks are probably and how to manage and deal with them more effectively than we do. So we need to engage more and more effectively with them…so yes it has to be a key objective…” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

In the West Midlands and the Netherlands, the fire services are involved in running public consultations. In the West Midlands they have a Community Membership Scheme where anyone in the community can sign up to be involved in public consultation about developments in the fire service. They also conduct a public consultation on their proposed Integrated Risk Management Plan. 

In the Netherlands, local fire brigades are given responsibility for implementing local plans to ensure they are appropriate for each community. This has had a positive impact on local relationships.

In two case study areas, Alberta and New Zealand, having a high proportion of volunteer firefighters was seen as helping them connect the fire service to the community. This partnership with the community was highly valued by an interviewee from the Alberta fire service.

However, another interviewee in Alberta raised concerns that the commitment to developing and maintaining community partnerships may not be consistent across the region. The view was that where there is a volunteer fire department in a small town, it must prioritise being able to provide response to any emergency calls rather than building or maintaining community partnerships, whereas in larger municipalities it is a key priority. 

9.3 What changes have occurred in partnership working?

Overall, the feeling amongst interviewees was that partnership working had become more common in recent years across all the case study areas. All the areas were either developing, or had developed, a more formalised approach to working with partners. Challenges to partnership working were also identified. For example, in the Netherlands reform of both the fire service and police service was seen to have impacted on the ability of the fire service to form and maintain partnerships.

9.3.1 Partnership working in law

For both the West Midlands Fire Service and the Netherlands Fire Service, a focus on partnership working is set out in law. In the West Midlands, the Policing and Crime Act sets out the requirement for the fire service to work together with other blue light services. In the Netherlands, the fire service is similarly required to work with the police service, ambulance service and the community.

“…in England we have the Duty to Collaborate which is within the Policing and Crime Act, which states that we have to collaborate, legally we have to with the Police and the Ambulance Service to try and improve public safety, proficiency, effectiveness and economy.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

9.3.2 Partnership working supporting strategic priorities 

In the Netherlands, Alberta and New Zealand, the fire service has either moved towards a more formalised approach to partnerships or is currently developing a more strategic approach to partnership working. In the West Midlands, they already see partnership working as embedded in the way they operate but feel that they are moving to a more targeted approach.

In the Netherlands, there was a feeling that partnership working had become more common in recent years and that partnerships had become more strategic and were involved in longer term planning. 

“The biggest change is that we've tried to formalise a little bit more than we did in the past. I think it's the...still the same partners, but what we're trying to do is to make more of a programme for a few years, rather than just a single activity based on a local contact. So just trying to get things more in a continuous system.” (Interviewee: Netherlands)

In Alberta, the fire service is also moving towards a more formal structure for partnership working with the introduction of an Inter-municipal Collaboration Framework regarding resource sharing across municipalities for the provision of infrastructure, leisure services and emergency services. This agreement must be in place between municipalities which share a common border by April 2020 and will detail the way in which emergency responses to incidents such as road traffic accidents and wildfires will be coordinated across municipalities.

In the West Midlands, there was a view that partnership working was embedded throughout the fire service, from the strategic to the local level. Another view from the West Midlands was that partnership working had become more targeted and evidence-informed and that the partnerships were supporting the fire service’s priorities and objectives and bringing them into line with a health and prevention agenda. 

In New Zealand, interviewees expressed the view that, while strong partnerships exist at the local level, these are variable across local regions and are not reflected at the strategic level. However, with the implementation of the Fire and Emergency Act, which brought together services across New Zealand, the fire service plans to develop a more structured approach to partnership working across agencies with consistency across regions, and a focus on leadership.

Interviewees spoke of this new approach to partnership working as setting out a clear framework for partnerships and how they can be supported at every level, from the strategic to the local.

“We will have far more structured national partnerships with other Government agencies and other national entities, and that will be clearly defined down through the regions and the areas as to what those relationships look like, what the intent of those relationships are, and how our local people need to foster them at the local level. At the moment, there is a variability in partnership arrangements.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

One interviewee further explained that local firefighters would retain the autonomy to develop their own local partnerships, but that these would exist within a more strategic overall framework of partnership working.

9.4 Have changes in other emergency services impacted on the fire service? 

In the Netherlands, changes in the structure of the police service were highlighted as having had an impact on the ability of both services to work in partnership together. The reform of the police service resulted in the formation of one national police force in 2014 from 25 police regions. At the same time, the fire service also undertook a reform to create 25 regional fire services. Interviewees from the Netherlands felt that the nationalisation of the police force had increased the distance between local fire services and the national police force, making it more difficult to build local relationships, and that a reduced police budget had reduced the time and capacity that the police have to spend on partnership activities.

“That had a big impact – a real big impact – on several levels. We don’t have the same geographical area of which we are talking, so it's difficult to find your right contact, but also because the national Police had a large budget cut, so there was a lot less Police available for exercises together with the Fire Service, or community services like communication.” (Interviewee – Netherlands)

9.5 What are the challenges and opportunities of partnership working?

When speaking about the challenges associated with partnership working, the only challenges identified which were common across at least two of the areas were:

• funding cuts, and 
• The impact of the widening role of the firefighter on working in partnership with other organisations. 

Other challenges associated with partnership working tended to be unique to the case study areas. These challenges and, where relevant, the opportunities they offer for greater collaboration, are explored in this section.

9.5.1 Financial challenges and opportunities

For the West Midlands and Alberta, funding cuts both directly to the fire service, and to the public sector more widely, were seen to have constituted both a challenge to the services and an opportunity for greater partnership working. In Alberta, one interviewee felt that restricted budgets across public services had been a driver for greater partnership working and that services were being encouraged to work together by the city council in the interest of reducing costs.

“Yeah its becoming more prevalent because of obviously the economic times and a lot of push from city council to work together more as one city, as opposed to separate departments doing things independently...They’re looking for…dramatically looking for efficiencies, across service lines, and looking who you can partner with to get work done as opposed to hiring your own people…” (Interviewee: Alberta)

In contrast, some joint services between the police and fire services in the West Midlands were cut due to budget constraints.

“So I think austerity did have a big impact with regards to things like working with Local Authorities for arson for instance. Just trying to think of the big ones really. So, you know, funding was withdrawn. We used to have an Arson Response Team which was jointly funded between the Police and ourselves. You know, austerity, you know, that kind of got pulled.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

However, another interview in the West Midlands felt that working in partnership with health services could bring cost saving by increasing efficiency and represented a new income stream for the fire service by carrying out ‘Safe and Well’ checks which are funded by the NHS (see Section 9.1.3 above for details).

And in the Netherlands, there was a view that the move to a more formalised approach to partnership working was an outcome of the reform to the fire service. The reduction from 450 fire departments to 25 regional fire services had released more resources for partnership working.

9.5.2 Widening role of the firefighter

As already discussed in previous chapters, in all the case study areas, there have been changes to the role of firefighters that have taken them into new areas of work, such as prevention. 

In both New Zealand and the West Midlands, interviewees described the challenges associated with working in partnership with other agencies and organisations since their fire officers have been required to carry out duties beyond their traditional firefighting role. In New Zealand, the reform of individual fire services into a national fire and emergency service was met with suspicion from some agencies who felt that the fire service was taking over some of the services that they provided, and this created a barrier to working in partnership with these agencies. Another view from interviewees in New Zealand was that strategies had been put in place to avoid other organisations feeling that the fire service is encroaching on their role.

“… with all of these additional activities that the Fire Service now finds itself engaged in, there's always a very close tension of, you know, scope creep and taking over other people’s roles and things, so doing it at their behest is very much a strategy for us to ensure we don’t do that.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

Concerns were also expressed about the impact on their response role of having to carry out additional duties. In the West Midlands, a partnership with the health service for fire officers to respond to falls in the home had not been met with universal approval from fire officers due to concerns that responding to these incidents may come at the expense of carrying out their normal duties. It was suggested, however, that there has been no evidence that it has impacted on their ability to respond in practice.

9.5.3 Data sharing

This research found different experiences of data sharing and partnership working in the case study areas. In New Zealand an example was given in the case of joint working between the police, youth services and the fire service to address arson in the community where data could not be shared across services. The interviewee felt that this was a significant challenge and that data sharing was not currently supported by legislation.

“…we’re not good in New Zealand with data sharing and I think it might take a legislative change to improve that. Our systems don’t speak to each other and we…in terms of confidentiality we have issues in sharing that data.” (Interviewee: New Zealand)

An example of where data sharing across partners can be facilitated was given by an interviewee in the West Midlands who described the data sharing partnerships which function across local authorities and the police service.

“So data sharing partnerships with local authorities and with police exist. We have West Midlands Combined Authority, and we are working collaboratively with them on public service reform, and also addressing multiple complex needs across the region.” (Interviewee: West Midlands)

9.5.4 Variability in partnership working across the service

Another challenge which was identified was the difference in attitudes to collaboration across the service. In New Zealand, while it is hoped that a new formalised approach to partnership working will increase consistency across regions, one interviewee felt that partnerships worked best in those areas where they were driven forward by individual staff members.

However, the same interviewee felt that the changing structural approach to partnership working across the fire service was having a positive impact on attitudes to and capacity for partnership working across the service.

“So it's thinking about the effects that the whole thing is having on people, so that’s quite a...you know, that's a cultural education shift that we've got to go on, but certainly from our middle managers, our area managers and such like, you know, there's much more engagement and much more thinking needs to occur, so there's some work being done at the moment around how we, you know, how we strengthen that relationship building capability of that within our organisation.” (Interviewee – New Zealand)