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Herts PCC addresses national blue light conferencePublished 28/09/2015
The Police and Crime Commissioner for Hertfordshire, David Lloyd, addressed delegates at a national conference for ‘blue light’ professionals on Wednesday (23rd September).
Speaking at The Emergency Services Show 2015, held at the NEC in Birmingham, he said that services must find better ways to work together in the drive for greater efficiency while also improving services.
Commissioner Lloyd, who set up and sits on the national Emergency Services Collaboration Working Group, also told the audience that PCCs can play key a role in bringing organisations such as fire, ambulance and police closer together in order to realise these benefits.
He said: “The public realise that there are different speciality roles, but frankly in an emergency, they don’t care who turns up, just as long as they can do the job and are properly trained.
“We need to move to a system that is geared to deal with real public needs rather than out-dated working practices so that we put the public at the centre of our thoughts, our plans and our services when looking at how best to coordinate and respond to issues.”
PCCs with their democratic mandate, he argued, can bring a new impetus to reforming emergency service governance.
“We [PCCs] have given the public the opportunity to have a direct say in how their communities are policed,” he said, “and beyond policing, we have introduced a radical new dynamic to the crime and justice landscape. The public are already benefiting from having clear accountability at the local level through PCCs being directly visible to the electorate.
“The prospect of PCCs taking on the duties and responsibilities of fire and rescue authorities, where a local case is made, could help bring directly accountable leadership into the fire service, and the delivery of better commissioning and delivery of emergency services at a local level.”
In attendance were frontline professionals and strategic leads representing emergency services up and down the country.
The Commissioner told them that collaboration need not be limited to just the emergency services though, and in fact, some of the biggest gains could be through closer working with other public and private sector organisations.
“For me, collaboration is not just about working more with other blue light services, although it is a major part of it, it goes much further,” he said. “It’s about further upstream in the public sector – with the county council, districts, housing associations, health and private sector.
“Bluntly it is about bringing the public sector back together because it is more efficient and is really the only true way that the end user or customer is put at the heart of what we do.”
Speaking at The Emergency Services Show 2015, held at the NEC in Birmingham, he said that services must find better ways to work together in the drive for greater efficiency while also improving services.
Commissioner Lloyd, who set up and sits on the national Emergency Services Collaboration Working Group, also told the audience that PCCs can play key a role in bringing organisations such as fire, ambulance and police closer together in order to realise these benefits.
He said: “The public realise that there are different speciality roles, but frankly in an emergency, they don’t care who turns up, just as long as they can do the job and are properly trained.
“We need to move to a system that is geared to deal with real public needs rather than out-dated working practices so that we put the public at the centre of our thoughts, our plans and our services when looking at how best to coordinate and respond to issues.”
PCCs with their democratic mandate, he argued, can bring a new impetus to reforming emergency service governance.
“We [PCCs] have given the public the opportunity to have a direct say in how their communities are policed,” he said, “and beyond policing, we have introduced a radical new dynamic to the crime and justice landscape. The public are already benefiting from having clear accountability at the local level through PCCs being directly visible to the electorate.
“The prospect of PCCs taking on the duties and responsibilities of fire and rescue authorities, where a local case is made, could help bring directly accountable leadership into the fire service, and the delivery of better commissioning and delivery of emergency services at a local level.”
In attendance were frontline professionals and strategic leads representing emergency services up and down the country.
The Commissioner told them that collaboration need not be limited to just the emergency services though, and in fact, some of the biggest gains could be through closer working with other public and private sector organisations.
“For me, collaboration is not just about working more with other blue light services, although it is a major part of it, it goes much further,” he said. “It’s about further upstream in the public sector – with the county council, districts, housing associations, health and private sector.
“Bluntly it is about bringing the public sector back together because it is more efficient and is really the only true way that the end user or customer is put at the heart of what we do.”
