Multi Agency and Cross Border Interoperability and Collaboration Within the British Fire and Rescue Service

The intra-agency and cross border collaboration of the British Fire and Rescue Service has been an intensely debated topic since the Knight Report (2013), and recently exacerbated by the predilection by some of the Fire and... [ view full abstract ]

The intra-agency and cross border collaboration of the British Fire and Rescue Service has been an intensely debated topic since the Knight Report (2013), and recently exacerbated by the predilection by some of the Fire and Rescue Services, Police Forces and Ambulance Services to combine essential operational disciplines, and the concomitant contemporary concepts proposed by some Services and emboldened by current Government financial constraints and political assistance.
However, these deliberations have not adequately addressed the issues surrounding the conjoining to other emergency services of facets of the Fire and Rescue Service. Moreover, there is also a scarcity of objective and conciliatory literature regarding the issue.
My paper addresses the issue of the effects of emergency service interoperability on the Fire and Rescue Service, with special attention to the paradigm of quality of service to stakeholders, and also the barriers to implementation of any interoperability whether it is cross border with other Fire and Rescue Services, or interdisciplinary with other emergency services.
Specifically in my paper, I will be looking at current and proposed local and government initiatives of multi-agency collaboration together with the prima facie evidence available from recent significant collaborative schemes and how cogently these have been explained to, and accepted by the wider Fire and Rescue Service. I will then juxtapose these arguments against the traditional and long established view that any interoperability with other emergency services would dilute and therefore be to the detriment of the Fire and Rescue Service, a view that has the potential to be upheld by some regardless of any potentially contrary evidence.
In conclusion, I argue that the concept of interoperability has not been objectively explored within a Fire and Rescue Service framework, and that arguments submitted are often paradoxical due to a traditionally held view.