Part 1: Emergency Services Collaboration Chapter 1: Collaboration Agreements Section 1: Collaboration agreements
Section 1 provides for collaboration agreements to be made between police bodies, fire and rescue bodies and ambulance trusts. This does not affect the status of existing collaborations between the emergency services, but provides a clear legislative framework within which collaborative agreements can take place going forwards.
	The effect of subsections (1) and (2) is that collaboration agreements do not need to include all three emergency services. However, they must include at least two different emergency services and can involve more than one of each emergency service. For example, the collaboration agreement could include two police forces and a fire and rescue service, but could not be made between just two police forces. (Where a service wishes to collaborate only with a different body of the same emergency service, it is expected that police forces would rely upon existing provisions for collaboration in section 22A of the 1996 Act; fire and rescue services would rely upon section 16 of the 2004 Act; and ambulance services, section 47 of, and paragraph 14 of Schedule 4 to, the National Health Service Act 2006.)
	Whilst the new duties in relation to collaboration (as set out in section 2) are specifically focused on the emergency services, it is not intended to be at the expense of other, positive collaboration between emergency services and other local partners such as local authorities, health bodies and the voluntary sector. Subsection (4) therefore ensures that bodies other than those listed in subsection (2) can also be part of a collaboration agreement under subsection (1). However, there will be no duty on these other partners to collaborate; the duties in relation to collaboration will only apply to the bodies listed in subsection (2).
	Subsection (3) requires a collaboration agreement to be in writing, setting out the details of the collaborative project. This might include information on accountability, governance, scope and finance or detail the process through which the parties will work together. However, the provisions are not prescriptive about the nature of the agreement to allow local services to determine how best to collaborate in the interests of local communities.
	Section 1 is subject to the restrictions set out in section 3.