The Guardian view on integrating the emergency services: not so fast

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/sep/03/guardian-view-integrating-emergency-services

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The Inspectorate of Constabulary's report into the way the 43 police services in England and Wales carry out their core business of preventing and investigating crime, bringing offenders to justice and managing resources efficiently should be making a lot of chief constables blush. Half of the forces could not provide details of the reported crimes they had attended. About the same proportion did not know the number of named suspects on their books yet to be arrested. A third of forces had no record of vulnerable or repeat victims. Some forces were observed by inspectors advising people who telephoned to report a crime on how to conduct their own investigation. HMIC's chief inspector, Tom Winsor, was scathing about the failure to use technology to manage information so that it could be effectively retrieved or used to improve performance. Most damagingly of all, he criticised the lack of inter-operability which meant neighbouring forces could not communicate. It was, he warned, putting lives at risk.

It is also a poor use of public money and in a period of austerity which is likely to deepen in the next parliament, that could prove very costly indeed. Today, the home secretary Theresa May warned that she thought all the emergency services would need at least to merge back-office functions if they were to get through further cuts while protecting front-line services. This integration is a stealth project. It is being driven forward in some areas, like Northamptonshire, by activist police and crime commissioners, in others by the need to make savings, and in Whitehall by ministers in the Department for Communities and the Home Office, who want a dividend from a remarkable drop in emergency call-outs for both the police and fire services.

Although there are many successful examples of local collaboration – fire officers giving emergency first aid, or police travelling in the same vehicle as firemen – the prospect of real integration sheds a cold light on existing management structures. The ambulance service has been (painfully) consolidated into 10 regional trusts – which would not lightly be levered out of the NHS in the name of integration. But there are still 43 resolutely unconsolidated police services and 46 fire and rescue services, with 46 different governance, organisational and operational structures. While deaths from fire in the home are, happily, at a record low, the number of firefighters and the cost of running the fire service stays the same.

It is hard to see how integration could happen without complete rationalisation of the individual services first. It would take time to do safely. Mrs May would long since have left the Home Office. But if she could claim to have set it in motion, it would certainly look good on the CV of an aspiring party leader.