PCC meets with Essex Fire Authority over potential collaboration

THE Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex Nick Alston has spoken at a meeting of the Essex Fire Authority about potential collaboration between the county’s police and fire service.

” I am excited by the debate which inevitably will not conclude before the end of my term as PCC. But the government has laid out a clear direction of travel and I think it is important that the public debate starts immediately.

“My view is that the case for change begins and ends with the local populations who fund and receive the services of these respected and professional organisations. We are lucky in our region that Essex Police and the Essex County Fire and Rescue Service serve exactly the same area; the twelve districts of Essex County Council and the unitary areas of Southend and Thurrock. What should those of us who live in this wider Essex want? I would suggest effective and where necessary joined-up policing, fire and other emergency services, able to deal with for instance road collisions, floods or other emergencies; and for these services to be delivered as cost effectively as possible. I believe they should also be responsive to local needs and that the governance should be locally and democratically accountable.

“I am continually impressed by how well the police and fire services work together on many issues. They recognise that each has complementary skills and are good at bringing these together when needed. The ECFRS has also been willing to help with demanding tasks, which are traditionally the responsibility of the police, such as searching for missing people. It is curious to me that the fire service has well trained search teams – which certainly don’t need powers of arrest – but we use police officers routinely to search for high risk missing persons all around the county. Or if a report is received of an elderly person who may have fallen in their house, it might be the police who respond. Why shouldn’t our professional fire officers respond and help, especially if they could be further trained in emergency medicine?

“These questions are important to ask in particular because of the disparity between the demand on the Police, which has done nothing but increase, compared with calls on the fire service which thankfully have reduced significantly in recent years. ECFRS has used that capacity to deliver some outstanding community safety work particularly with vulnerable groups such as the elderly, making homes safe from the risk of fire, and helping with other areas of personal safety. Effective coordination of this work could lead to even greater benefits, especially with close working with other partner agencies such as Health and with the voluntary sector. In short, is the public content that one service it funds is over-pressed while another has both skills and spare capacity? Both services share an overwhelming desire to help protect the public from harm at all times.

“Road traffic collisions highlight the curious situation that we may currently send three different emergency services to a collision when a small mixed team in one vehicle might well be able to deal with most situations.

“The public rightly expect the blue light agencies to be there to help in an emergency. This is their primary mission, their fundamental purpose. However it is also important that the infrastructure of the emergency services – the buildings, the support staff, the transport, the Information Technology and the communications – help deliver the best possible response to people in danger in the most effective and efficient fashion.

“Fire appliances have to be dispersed around the county so ECFRS requires a good geographical spread of buildings close to communities. But the operating model of the police is to have relatively few fixed bases while officers are mobile on patrol able to deal with enquiries without the need to return to a police station. And the public of course have a clearly expressed desire to see emergency services located in their own area.

“As I have travelled across the county holding public meetings, and read and responded to my extensive postbag, the people of Essex have made clear that they value having an identifiable police ‘presence’ close to their communities. Were the police and fire services to operate from a truly shared and integrated estate, with shared buildings, the opportunity to have all the resources we need in the right place to serve the needs of the community and to meet the desire for a more visible presence could become a reality rather than an aspiration.

“The time is right to look creatively not only at whether our police and fire services can operate in a more coordinated and collaborative way, but also whether through a fundamental reorganisation of the infrastructure and governance we can make the services more efficient and democratically accountable to all of us who live and work in Essex.”

Nick Alston, Police and Crime Commissioner for Essex