Collaboration and interconnectivity

Article
Teaching Public Administration
Collaboration and
31(2) 165–173
ª The Author(s) 2013
interconnectivity:
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DOI: 10.1177/0144739413490939
Nottinghamshire Fire
tpa.sagepub.com
and Rescue Services
and higher education
institutions in
Nottingham
Peter Murphy
Nottingham Trent University, UK
Kirsten Greenhalgh
University of Nottingham, UK
Craig Parkin
Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Service
Abstract
This article will describe the developing relationship between Nottinghamshire Fire and
Rescue Services and the two higher education institutions in Nottingham. It will
chronicle how a very traditional relationship has been transformed, initially by a simple
consultancy project, into a much closer working relationship characterised by a much
richer variety of collaborative projects. It demonstrates the potential mutual benefits
that greater trust and reciprocity between the institutions can bring to both academia
and to practice, and the impact they have already had on curriculum development,
teaching and learning in Nottingham.
Keywords
emergency response, fire and rescue services, integrated risk management planning
Corresponding author:
Peter Murphy, Nottingham Business School, Nottingham Trent University, 9th Floor Newton Building, Burton
Street, Nottingham, NG1 4BU, UK.
Email: peter.murphy@ntu.ac.uk

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Teaching Public Administration 31(2)
Since 2009, despite and at times because of the public sector financial restrictions,
Nottingham Business School (NBS) and more latterly Nottingham University Business
School (NUBS) have taken a dynamic and proactive role to their relationship with the
local, regional and national Fire and Rescue Services. Initially NBS diversified the
nature, extent and variety of its collaborative projects to include knowledge transfer
partnerships, consultancy, student placements, and independent and joint research
projects. More recently, NBS and NUBS have been jointly engaged in the direct pro-
vision of analytical and policy advice as part of the Integrated Risk Management
Planning (IRMP) process. The universities, with the Fire and Rescue Service, will be
providing strategic policy and advice to the Fire Authority, and the project has already
informed curriculum development, teaching and learning at undergraduate and post-
graduate levels within both business schools. It provides case study material but has also
helped curriculum development by focusing on future competencies and skill sets within
the Fire and Rescue Service and the wider public sector.
The latest initiative started as a short consultancy project to deliver and quality assure
the evidence base that the service intended to use for the authority’s Fire Cover Review
(NFRS, 2011a). This was a comprehensive review of the configuration and deployment
of all the authority’s human and physical resources as a result of the IRMP process
introduced by the Fire and Rescue Act 2004. The Fire Cover Review (FCR) scrutinised
the need for short term reconfiguration of the service on the basis of the radical new way
of assessing risk to individuals and communities introduced by the Act.
As well as assisting in implementing the first stage reconfiguration, NFRS have also
recently requested that NBS/NUBS contribute to the evidential base, risk assessment and
formulation of medium and long-term strategies for service reconfiguration and the
deployment of resources that will result from the IRMP process. In this capacity,
NBS/NUBS have become an integral part of the advice that the service provides to the
Fire Authority. NBS/NUBS are part of the creation of the evidence base and the devel-
opment of the strategy to be recommended to the Fire and Rescue Authority. Since it is
the Fire Authority that makes any decisions on the final form of the strategy, the aca-
demic independence and quality assurance of the research is maintained. All three parties
wish to ensure that any knowledge, good practice or public value (Moore, 1995) that is
created through the project is shared with both the local and national fire and rescue and
resilience communities, as recently advocated by Research Council’s UK policy (2012)
for projects that it funds. This has effectively created a new and innovative dimension to
the relationship between the Fire Service and the two universities.
Although the Fire Service and the Universities have been jointly and severally
involved in inter-agency partnerships, such as the Local Strategic Partnership, for some
time, this is the first time that NFRS has invited such direct integrated involvement in its
strategic advice to the Fire Authority. The two key changes that have facilitated this
initiative need to be acknowledged. The first was the change in the way that fire risk
is assessed through the IRMP as a result of the 2004 Fire and Rescue Services Act. The
second is the changing relationship between the Fire and Rescue Services and the
Fire and Rescue Authorities articulated in the 2012 Fire and Rescue National Framework
for England.
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Murphy et al.
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Integrated risk management planning
In Fire and Rescue Services prior to 2004, the services’ modus operandi was a reactive
approach to the fire risks to local communities as FRSs sought to identify individual
buildings or clusters of buildings with high levels of risk and/or potential impact (such as
chemical plants or nuclear power installations)...