Part 1: Emergency Services Collaboration Chapter 1: Collaboration Agreements
To support collaboration to become more widespread at a local level, the Government set out in "Enabling Closer Working between the Emergency Services: Consultation response and next steps", its intention to introduce a new statutory duty on the three emergency services to consider opportunities to collaborate and to give effect to collaboration proposals where it would be in the interests of their efficiency or effectiveness. Chapter 1 introduces these new statutory duties. It does not specify how the services should collaborate except for high level provisions and restrictions; neither does it affect the scope of any existing powers of the emergency services to exercise their functions jointly or on behalf of one another or otherwise cooperate.