Collaborative working and building partnership: Bringing the two worlds together

Abstract

This paper shares lessons learnt through a partnership project, the Blue Light Programme, by presenting a discussion of key themes inherent in building collaborations between academia and policing. With a focus on sharing experiences with the partnership project, where the academics took the role of a critical friend as part of the project team, the paper explores the balances with meeting both academic and practical considerations. The article explores connecting cultures within the research project and provides insights into partnership approaches with policing and other emergency services. The article purposely does not present results of the partnership project but explores the balance and relationships built between organisations. Presenting wider contextual references on policing culture, the reality of insider and outsider perspectives, the benefits and challenges arising through the role of critical friends in collaboration projects are explored. As critical friends, there was an acknowledgement of the dynamism between the services in the project, its collectiveness in practice, where the project team were able to use the critical friends as a supporting role, one which placed integrity and good methodological practice as the forefront in project evaluation between academia and policing. The paper concludes with observations on moving forward with partnership roles, and the ways to achieve shared goals, where paths enhancing collaborative working can align despite often coming from two different directions.

Introduction

Collaborative working between policing and academia is challenging, with both operating differently, organisationally and culturally. This paper presents a dialogue on collaboration between policing and academia, through the evaluation of the Blue Light Programme and in doing so it will address some of the lessons learnt during a partnership project. The purpose of the paper is to provide an understanding of the structure of collaboration between emergency services and the benefits and challenges of such an approach. The paper also seeks to add to the emerging discussions on the impact of critical friends in research and the development of the ‘pracademic’, which balances academic research with practitioner experience, which may notably open a previously hidden backstage policing world. The paper aims to show what is achievable through emergency services collaboration but present an honest analysis of the process of working in partnership and in producing an evaluation between practitioners and academics.

The Blue Light Programme (2016–2019) paved the way for a developmental project, created in 2019, which focused upon longer term collaboration between emergency services. For the detailed evaluation of the collaborative project, which was requested by the Home Office, input was provided by critical friends from a University. This partnership brought together academia and policing (Lincolnshire Blue Light Programme 2020a, 2020b). In doing so, the final evaluation report analyses some of the key reflections of working together with critical friends and contemplates some of the challenges between cultures. By considering themes of building relationships, finding the balance between organisations, a contextual reference on culture and workplace norms are discussed. These present the reality of researcher perspectives, and the benefits and challenges of such collaborative work. In sum, this paper further draws upon the wider role of critical friends in such collaboration projects and explores ‘Bringing two worlds together’ (Murji 2010).

The evaluation conducted for the Blue Light Programme demonstrated knowledge and an overview on how collaboration can be developed between emergency services. The inclusion of the critical friend’s report, as part of the submitted final evaluation of the programme, ensured an academic focus, and further met the requirements and needs of the emergency services, and the Home Office as funders of the programme.

This programme focused upon the main three emergency services, ambulance, fire and police, and was the first of its kind, an exemplar of effective partnership working. The principle aim of the collaboration team was to align roles within the three services for the sole purpose of working together, in sharing buildings, whilst also impacting upon opportunities for developing wider interoperability. Members of the project team were tasked with finding creative solutions, and developing new models of working, that extended the traditional views of each service and respective working structures. The team was committed to having an output of effective collaboration, as shown with all services adopting a strength-based approach to meeting aims.

The collaboration programme in context

The collaboration programme commencing in 2015 received significant government funding from the Police Innovation Fund, which was matched and supplemented by each emergency services and local council. The funding bid ensured sufficient resources to create a tri-service station, which at the time of completion, would be the first of its kind amongst emergency services in England and Wales.

The tri-service station included the ambulance service, fire and rescue service and the police working in collaboration alongside third-party partners. Whilst other counties and emergency services had undertaken smaller collaborations, such as sharing existing buildings, this programme exceeded this, creating a shared central headquarters, a tri-service station with a working custody suite, alongside smaller projects, split into five strands. The main output of the Blue Light Programme was a new station which supported the aims of the three services, enabling them to modernise their estate. It further focused upon service to the public and collaborative opportunities, following the Government announcement of the duty on emergency services to collaborate (Home Office, 2015).

Being the first programme to conduct a full evaluation of the collaborative process, there was no established research template or existing practical evidence-base. This unique position did present a challenge with shaping the research and agreeing structures, but also created opportunities with freedom for innovation when creating a blueprint for future evaluations. Such challenges and opportunities were significant and emphasised the innovativeness of the Blue Light Programme evaluation, with it being built on the research backgrounds of two contributors. It is important to note that the two main police researchers had academic backgrounds and wanted to carry out a full-scale evaluation, whereas the desire from partners was for a smaller study, which met the basic requirements for funding from the Home Office. During the evaluation process, a guidance document from the National Emergency Services Collaboration Working Group, which centred on joint principles for collaboration and evaluation of collaborative initiatives, was made available and this document shaped the final structure for the evaluation report.

The objectives of the Blue Light Programme were to deliver shared buildings and two collaborative projects, creating opportunities for closer operational working between the three emergency services. The projects were carefully coordinated, ensuring timescales were met for the organisation of relocation of services. These enabled a staged choreographed approach to moving services. Throughout the building phase, the programme focused on planning project delivery, but identified the need to gather baseline data on lessons learned during each stage. This planning identified the need for independent scrutiny, leading to the ‘critical friend’ recruited following the submission of bids, a budget overview and a research proposal.

After the awarding of the critical friend contract, services requested a period of familiarisation with each service for the critical friend researchers. Visits took place with the emergency services prior to the research, enabling a greater understanding of the roles and responsibilities of the three services. These visits included patrols and incident attendance and discussions with service leads and proved invaluable when it came to discussing why operational activity was performed, or structured in a certain way, and how that might impact on future interactions between partners. The benefit of this early exposure to operational activity further enabled greater opportunity to build trust between the programme team and critical friends.

Methodology

Due to the impact of the pandemic, coupled with timescales in the delivery of both the project and final reports, there was limited opportunity to conduct active field research and analysis on the outcomes of the collaboration programme. Consequently, these limitations curtailed the initial aims and ambitions of the report. The initial approach of the project team was planned to be a staged mixed-methodological study, with focus groups and qualitative interviews as the methods underpinning the analysis. The external context of a national lockdown, however, meant that the research was pared back and there was a revised commitment to an independent analysis using a quantitative methodology.

Initial designs of the process of data collections focused on qualitative interviewing, which would have aimed to explore the impact of the collaboration on end users and test the aims of the project team in terms of outcomes of stakeholders. It would have delivered a direct, lived experience of the social world of shared buildings and allow people to reflect on their experiences in a new environment and see the meaning attached by people to their new working relationships (Jupp, 1989; Kvale, 1996). For both the focus groups and qualitative interviews, the sample would have covered all stakeholders involved in the build from across different departments to allow for a representative sample. The inability to conduct qualitative interviews meant that the project team were not directly asked about their experiences, which would have been merged into lessons learned.

The project team remained focused on the final evaluation containing the practitioner’s voice and by having access to a wider partner network enabled creative solutions to be developed. Through using policing interns, quantitative staff surveys were sent to all staff for completion and the interns were also used to contribute to the independent analysis and final report. The surveys were sent to end users across all three main projects where emergency services were now sharing buildings. The surveys focused on several areas including a comparison between old and new working spaces, cultural change, communications and updates during the build and move, as well as any future focuses. The surveys were sent to all staff for completion. Whilst the project team could not control who replied, the responses received contained representation from all services. Moreover, the survey methodology has been further used since the completion of the building to ask for ideas about future spend in the development of the tri-service station and in engaging feedback from stakeholders involved in the build.

Having attracted significant government funding for the Blue Light programme, with a focus from both internal departments and external organisations, there was a need to balance the focus of the evaluation report on lessons learned but presenting an analysis of collaboration between emergency services. The focus was on value for money for services, but also service improvement to the public and non-cashable benefits, such as response times, staff wellbeing and cultural integration. Whilst it was legitimate to demonstrate ‘value for money’, this was challenging with several factors, such as over-running costs or unexpected operational changes, which diminished the expected efficiency gains and cashable savings. The approach to the results reported these challenges, ensuring they were captured as business ‘disbenefits’ and ‘lessons learned’, and not just the ‘what worked well and what would we do the same’. More importantly, for other public or emergency service providers, they were equally valuable as lessons of ‘how not to do things’ or do them in a different way. Instances of ‘opportunities for loss’ (Payne 2007: 94), or why a particular initiative was not progressed, were also captured and explained in the evaluation. Such critical reflection offered an insight for those emergency services considering collaboration and lessons for the necessary due diligence before committing public money. For future research, the focus required needs to be both on the observable cashable benefits, but also on the non-cashable and softer benefits, which are just as critical to any partnership working as savings made.

The role of the critical friend in the programme evaluation

The research evaluation product for the Blue Light Programme was created with academic input. The critical friend ensured that the research produced was without bias and provided valid conclusions that could be generalised to other emergency services. Essentially, the critical friend provided credibility to the research, offering feedback on the methodologies used and the analysis of the gathered data to the project team. The key role of the critical friend was to highlight if the lead researchers were over-stating benefits, underplaying opportunities for loss or being overly critical of the collaborative process. Support was provided across all stages of the research, giving scrutiny to the findings, challenging the evaluation and identifying opportunities for further work (Lincolnshire Blue Light Programme, 2020b).

According to Waddington (2010) a critical friend in policing occupies a ‘marginal position’ (2010: 119), bringing together an interest in the structure of policing alongside issues of relevance to academia. Whilst the focus is on the academic critical friend, it is important to note that a broader critical friend approach is not limited solely to academia. Police forces have often used the critical friend approach when reviewing findings from internal research, including the development of new national policies. Therefore, such external input plays a complementary role with critical friends, allowing critical questioning and the stimulation of debate (2010: 125).

In essence, the critical friend role provided an independent confidante role, advising and consulting with partners, whilst adopting an objective stance. Murji (2011) discusses the role with reference to the work of Swaffield (2005: 5), whereby critical friends are seen as dual-focused, showing externality whilst being politically neutral. It is in this role that critical friends can provide practical guidance, support whilst importantly being ‘on the margins in organisational terms but still have some impact’ (2011: 266).

The critical friend role in this project had the remit to provide support and guidance to the project team, providing methodological oversight across all stages in the research, initially with the design and preparation stages, evaluation of the processes of implementation, evaluation and reporting of data. It was therefore integral that there was a separation, with the critical friends adopting a supervisory function, whilst not being involved in the logistics of conducting the research. The responsibilities included taking an external oversight of the evaluation, chiefly conducted by the programme team. Taking an observational focus, the critical friends identified risks and opportunities, and through dialogue became key to the development of collaboration and building trust in the working relationship around the evaluation. The role of the critical friends in this project shared similarities with the characteristics observed by Swaffield (2004: 45), being a combination of facilitator, supporter, critic and challenger. This was shown in the Blue Light programme through behaviours which questioned, reflected, listened, fed back and summarised. Murji (2011) refers to such dynamism within the critical friend role and observes it is about balance, between critical distance versus ‘going native’ (2011: 269). By providing the critical friend perspective was key to ensuring an objective balance to the evaluation and any conclusions reached. For lead authors, who had been immersed within the programme of works, the opportunity for fair and critical reflection on their analysis allowed for the required objective academic oversight.

The successes of this project were outlined in the Critical Friend report for the project evaluation (Lincolnshire Blue Light Programme, 2020b). As critical friends the focus was on gaining insights on the processes and reflecting upon lessons learnt throughout the collaboration. Such attention addressed the scope of data collected, the benefits and successes shown in practice and identified the shifting cultural perspectives from all three services developed through the partnership.

The critical friend observations highlighted how such services worked together in a holistic and logistical manner. By expanding the level of knowledge about the ‘make up’ of the different services, their role and function as emergency services, enabled the critical friends from academia, to fully appreciate the potential benefits arising from the project. The broad focus of the critical friend role in this project, is where it fits between worlds and takes a research position as an insider or outsider, being internal yet external, as Murji (2011) argues ‘the key issues is not the duality per se but the way it plays out in practice’ (2011: 260).

Some key observations were highlighted throughout the evaluation and reflected and assessed in the final report (see Lincolnshire Blue Light Programme, 2020b). One was the acknowledgement of achievements shown in the overall success in practice, with the development of a new tri-service station and estate for the three main emergency services. The completion of this project subsequently allowed for a focus on interoperability and a shared cultural understanding.

Additionally, there was a clear development of common aims and values across the emergency services, with data analysis showing services were able to meet the competing demands together, including a better use of facilities and building space through the co-location of services. The collaborative relationships developed were also a clear success of the project, demonstrated in the developments of the buildings and programmes for regional and national awards, as well as the Blue Light Programme being held as a potential blueprint model for future partnership working in other areas. During the Blue Light programme, the team were approached by other police forces and emergency services on the process of collaboration and design. There were further benefits, including effective partnership approaches in practice, a sharing of common rest areas, and positive results provided on the delivery from services which impacted favourably upon efficiency savings.

This paper, however, is not focused upon the results of the project, but seeks to address the lessons learnt from effective collaboration and identifying the role of the critical friend with evaluating and assessing such developments. As critical friends the role was of an independent, objective ‘watchdogs’ which had positive benefits for the evaluation project.

Balancing roles as a critical friend: Relationships between policing and academia

As critical friends a wider, more long-term aim, was to be the starting point for dialogue and conversation with the project team, focusing upon how challenges could be met through research and evaluation and the development of reciprocal collaborative relationships. By providing a balanced and objective viewpoint on the development of the research, an impartial and independent role to analysis and evaluation built a platform for future research for the emergency services and academic institutions. Research meetings were held on the research process and methodology, with the aim to demonstrate an openness to collaboration through the sharing of key documents, raw data and analytical products. By casting an overall view on the validity of evaluation within all stages of the project, the development of collaborative relationships was advanced considering the values of openness and teamwork (Fyfe and Wilson, 2012: 306). The working relationship between the programme team and critical friends was further assisted by a staged approach taken by the critical friends, built upon trust, reflection and clarification of the need for appropriate methods and approaches to be cultivated during the evaluation process.

In practice, the role of critical friend was supplemented with a focus on developing and sustaining a broader collaborative relationship between policing and academia. An established acknowledgement of such relationships has been shown through the special editions of journals Payne (2007 and 2012) and Payne (2007) with the spotlight on relationships between the police and academic collaborations and partnerships. These writings (See Fleming 2010: 2012; Foster and Bailey 2010; Fyfe and Wilson 2012; Innes 2010; Marks et al., 2010; Murji 2010; Scott 2010) all bring together an appreciation of shared understandings, a key theme shown in this paper. Consistency was shown in the Blue Light programme with creating a shared vision and reflective practice through collaboration, one based on lessons learned and partnership approaches between policing and academia. As argued by Strudwick (2019: 5), all the discussions in special editions, show considerations of such values and their place within engagement and collaboration, with Fleming (2012) noting that ‘lessons can be learned’ (2012: 376).

Part of developing an independent oversight role was to ensure that all three services understood the remit and focus of the critical friend, and the wider strengths in collaboration, not just with academia but with each other. By recognising that each service has different expectations and perceptions of their role as an emergency service, the role provided by the critical friends reiterated the positives of forming a collective approach to meeting such demands. Indeed, highlighting such efforts enabled all to see the benefits of multi-agency partnerships. It is by developing an appreciation of shared aims and values, and bringing cultures together, that there can be successes with establishing commonality for shared aims and values. This is challenging in itself but doing this with multi-agency partnerships between services with such high demand and prominent cultures is even more ambitious.

It was essential as critical friends, that there was an acknowledgement of the dynamics between the three services. What the Blue Light programme did show was how this balance was found, being collective in practice through different values and aims, whilst still being collaborative in their overall successes. Giving all services a voice further enabled the project team to use the critical friends as a supporting role, one which placed integrity and good methodological practice at the forefront. The evaluation and analysis therein were an opportunity to bring together practical and theoretical thinking on the challenges of closer partnership working, including reviewing processes from initial design to building completion and offering recommendations in these areas. One of the key areas reviewed were cultural challenges with bringing together partners from multiple organisations, for one common goal.

Cultural challenges

One area of policing relevant for this discussion is the literature provided on police culture, which addresses the aims of the programme to develop shared cultural understandings. By understanding cultural traits in policing, discussions can consider the impact of informal cultures between partners. There is considerable academic work focusing on occupational police cultures, defined by the way in which police officers operate according to a set of informal, common, observable traits (Bayley, 1995). Some of the seminal works in this area, include those of Jerome Skolnick (1966) Justice Without Trial and Robert Reiner (2000) The Politics of the Police, both of which highlight core characteristics of this culture including a desire for action, conservatism, internal solidarity and a desire to maintain the status quo. These traits usually apply to how the police interact with the public and make sense of their role. In the context of the Blue Light programme, however, the cultural traits were focused on how they assisted or resisted closer partnership working.

The ambulance service and the fire service have had less academic and media focus on their culture than the police. There has been recent work on cultural change on paramedic and management cultures (for example, see Wankhade and Mackway-Jones, 2015) but very little has been written directly on the culture of a fire and rescue service. Conversely, there have been several seminal works on the occupational police culture, including work by Tom Cockcroft (2020). The following section highlights some of the cultural benefits and challenges with collaboration, exploring the opportunity to question these assumptions, but also to highlight how they can cause issues for partnership working.

Seeking to understand cultural assumptions the Blue Light programme context, for each service, was to highlight what they believed about the other services and for each of these to be discussed or challenged. The use of discussion helped set the groundwork for closer working relationships between the partners involved in the build. What assisted further was also careful challenged and change to prevailing mindsets, allowing the project team to remove themselves from their individual ‘service’ and for the team to see themselves as part of a wider, holistic, partnership team. To this extent, more direct discussions around the necessity of requirements within the building, rather than focusing upon a direct and unmovable service position. Throughout the Blue Light programme, the combining and understanding of cultures was evident to see, and it was the role of the critical friend during the evaluation to ensure a fair and balanced reflection of cultures and cultural challenges, to remove any suggestion of bias from the presentation of services in the evaluation.

Project challenges were evident throughout the works, most notably around building designs and confirming requirements. There was a tendency in group discussions and meetings to infer a shared understanding of terminology, by attaching meaning to departments, roles and legislative requirements. For example, something that makes sense to someone working in the police around safety features in a custody suite or building security were not always clearly communicated. In doing so, there were moments of resentment between the services on the use of space and costs of requirements, where there was inadequate explanation of the wider context. Moreover, there were expensive late design changes associated with building aspects, where the full meaning of requirements had not been captured, leading to an under-provision or confused design. Working in partnership did highlight the challenges of secret languages or internal meanings attached to hidden worlds, and how they are understood by an external audience.

Such a view supports the challenge of an Outside Outsider researcher position with understanding the nuances of hidden worlds when conducting research (Brown, 1996). The positions outlined by Brown on researchers, connects closely with the positioning of the programme team, contractors and critical friends during this programme and evaluation. To overcome this challenge, regular meetings were held between the contractors and architects, to outline plans and requirements and through direct contact to explore the definitions of specific terminology. The use of informal discussions and weekly meetings surpassed any Memorandum of Understanding or Terms of Reference created at the beginning of the programme. Utilising these opportunities to collectively discuss concerns, designs or meanings informally often led to better decision making and understanding. In sum, cultural barriers were easier to challenge in informal settings, rather than in more formal meetings, where status and structured opinion often dominated.

The subsequent challenges, following agreed designs, was on translating the position back into the services and to those who would be using the building. Some of those affected were not necessarily involved in the design and did not have the direct experience of each service apart from experience at shared incidents. To this end, there remained ingrained cultural assumptions as to how each service worked or did not work in practice. Despite efforts to dismiss these cultural expectations, the beliefs and assumptions remained resilient in some cases, with views of ‘them and us’ and of one service being more important than another. This was not always helped by decisions taken, for example, the securing of police areas from unvetted personnel, or the failure to ensure the full integration of services following relocation. For some spaces, such as custody, security decisions were understood but for other offices, the securing of rooms can create a perception of a rejection of partnership cultural integration.

Feedback has suggested that issues with the building or its design, and with the sharing of resources, were being taken the project team, to resolve rather than directly discuss with services leads. Such reactions deflected the necessity to build positive working relationships. Closely connected to this, was the cultural impact of moving emergency services into existing buildings and space belonging to another service. Such moves created a feeling of another territory or losing service identity. To resolve such issues opening common areas allowed informal discussions whilst providing necessary time for the changes to be accepted through generational change, as new ways of working becoming accepted. The Blue Light programme team were also keen to ensure that the logos and symbolism of each service remained, as a clear indication that even though spaces were shared, each emergency service retained its individual identity.

There were difficulties within the Blue Light programme which were present throughout the duration of the work, but ultimately did not affect the end goal. The core issues were naming conventions and perceptions of the space including costs, payments and input into final decisions. At times there was a desire to enforce working conditions on other services, which was met with resistance at times. For example, the desire for protected spaces in the building and an increasing amount of space for one service over another. With the police being the largest service in the building, it was difficult at times to escape the feeling that the new station was a police station, with annexes for other services rather than a collaborative endeavour. Even with an external landlord and facilities team, the perception of a police station was maintained in some meetings, and subsequently when the building was presented in an external environment (for example, the media reporting of a new police station rather than a tri-service hub).

There was a sense, at times during the collaborative process, that rigid culture and structures would derail certain aspects of the build, or leave the design process in crisis, due to not being able to agree space requirements or floor plans. The use of the sentiment that ‘this is the way we have always done things around here’ was evident at times when placing requirements into the framework of the build. This was seen in discussions around how each service requires locker rooms to be designed and space required. The requirement for any successful partnership is for it to be flexible to change. Starting any collaborative process allows for time to review practice and policies, and challenge whether something is required, or is a hangover from times passed which is unquestioned. This was done successfully in some cases, for example, removing 1-2-1 desk working, but in others was more challenging. The difficulties often emerged when individual departmental leads changed, or the programme lead for a service was changed, leading to new requirement requests or a return to older designs. The success of any collaborative partnership seems predicated on continuity in teams and leads, so that ideas can be progressed from start to conclusion without sudden changes.

It is important to note that alongside culture, the challenge of partnership working falls on what may be viewed as a politico-cultural framework. Such a concept was evident, especially financial contexts. For example, a desire not to be seen to be reducing the level of service or taking resources away from either staff or the public, filtered into several core decisions which limited the impact of altering ways of thinking. The extent of the political impact was more keenly felt when considering the broadening of scope of the project brief to include shared spaces and interoperability, which may change the role or policies of individual services. Even with the fundamental aim that no one service would end up worse off, there were several outside political and cultural factors which limited the broader thinking with changing working practices. The impact of this factor was also witnessed in the presentation of data and information in the evaluation, where the focus was on the cashable benefits rather than softer benefits. There were also some challenges on information to be included which would not be detrimental to either services or to departments within services, even where decisions taken had an instrumental impact on the programme. When considering any partnership approaches, it is crucial to consider how public perceptions, or existing cultural or political practices, may impact on the ability to make wide and far-reaching changes.

The chance to share space has created a positive experience and environment. There are indications of a better understanding of how each service works during an incident, and this ensures a greater level of service to the public and a perception from the public of harmony in service delivery. It has also been recognised that there have been opportunities for the services to share lessons learned following incidents, reflect on demanding incidents, and breaking cultural formalities by opening up to other services in terms of wellbeing needs and emotional discussions around the realities of each role. People from one service may feel more comfortable in talking to someone outside of their organisation, as there may be no requirement to demonstrate bravado or machismo in demonstrating that they are unaffected by incidents. Speaking to someone aside from your own service could allow emergency service workers to speak honestly about their feelings, whilst maintaining a set persona within their own environment. There are deliberate shared spaces in the building aimed at fostering an informal working culture between the services. Ad hoc conversations when passing in an atrium or in a gym may be more effective in building relationships than formal discussions.

The full integration of cultures within the building were hampered by a global pandemic, which isolated the services within the building. The separation of services was never starker than during this period. The impact of this delayed the cultural balancing within a shared space, with three services and assorted others working in a space whilst maintaining distance, this delayed the informal construction of shared relationships. In emerging from the pandemic, it is hoped that known success of the Blue Light programme will provide a hook on which cultural collaboration can organically appear. Within policing, it has provided a wider understanding of how different emergency departments work and can assist each other. Between these services, whilst there has been an undeniable impact on emergency services workers, there is the opportunity for lessons to be learnt and options for moving forward based on shared experiences of such events, as one way of understanding the challenges that services faced.

When considering how the theme of culture connects the police and academic work, there are several crossovers when considering partnership approaches between emergency services. In developing research and policies both academia and policing are on a shared path, albeit often from two different directions. There are, however, shared goals, namely, to improve our understanding of policing and to suggest recommendations to improve services. Academia may approach the development of policing practice from a theoretical perspective, with the challenge that the work of Outsiders does not always understand policing realities. The work of the police may be much more practically focused but lack the rigour of scrutiny or being generalisable outside of a policing context. What needs to be identified is the shared ground between developing the pracademic approach to research. There is a need to ensure the policing world is more open to academic discussion, to unveil the hidden culture, this would enable the police to describe and demonstrate to the wider public how they function. This may also enable the breaking down of barriers around the ‘them and us’, thin blue line status of an occupational policing culture.

Overall, culture plays an important role in partnership building. Cultural traits and characteristics which often underpin behaviours and outcomes can be both a positive influence, and a hindrance on collaborations. Partnership working provides opportunities to think differently, challenge cultural assumptions and recognise the nuances and similarities in how partners work and approach similar situations. It is important that the beliefs and ways of working are discussed between partners at the initial outset, and then challenged and questioned throughout. Organic change may occur through informal meetings, but there is a need to reflect on how cultural adherences affect outcomes and resistance to change, or to be able to see things differently. To fully ensure positive working relationships, informal cultures between partners need to develop between those sharing the space and become separated from programme teams and senior leaders at the earliest opportunity.

In conclusion, the critical argument in this narrative is that no matter which route or working styles are taken, there is one shared goal that supports the partnership working. In terms of the Blue Light programme the shared goal may be a combined building or interoperability; for the emergency services this may be serving and protecting the public; and between academia and policing the shared aim may be to improve understanding of policing, opening the world to a wider audience and improving the policing world.

Recommendations: Moving forward with collaborative roles

Partnership working across emergency services, and between academia and policing, create several challenges and opportunities in terms of methodological approaches, analysis and the influence of outside factors on the validity of conclusions. The use of a critical friend can allow an objective outside observance to the analysis and discussion, ensuring that it is not biased in its approach. When commencing any partnership programme, it is critical to understand any hidden assumptions or biases based on cultural stereotypes and frameworks, which may hinder the development of working relationships. In doing so, this approach removes a core barrier in understanding the common goals of the partnership and allows a fresh direction in addressing complex issues.

From the Blue Light programme framework and completion, the evaluation and this reflective academic paper, there are several suggested recommendations for developing collaborative working between emergency services.

• Cultural traits should be utilised as a starting point in understanding the informal rules governing emergency services. By creating a shared understanding of language, behaviours and rules, opportunities are there to foster a positive starting point and working environment for partners.

• Recognising a shared end point helps to focus discussion when working through challenges.

• A consistent team approach from all partners can often be crucial to the smooth functioning of partnerships. To change leads can introduce doubt around agreements reached, or may introduce further challenges in terms of new requirements or ways of working.

• Whilst it is important to maintain an attachment to home services, in partnership working it is important to see the team as a separate entity working across organisations. This means that the team promotes the requirements of individual services but sees how these fit with the wider holistic picture to ensure effective collaboration and understanding between services.

• Culture can be a hindrance but can also be a blueprint for success in collaborative enterprises. In creating shared space, and working in a shared environment, there is the chance that informal discussions will take place, resulting in a shift in cultural practices towards shared thinking.

The collation of lessons learned and through taking a ‘what works’ approach to analysis, has enabled the project team to develop a blueprint for collaboration as well as best practice. This learning can then be used across other services when reviewing structures for collaborative programmes. The structure of the analysis and focus on lessons learned created the opportunities to share findings with other emergency services for collaboration programmes and enable them to avoid some of the issues faced throughout the projects.

There is still work to be done through future research on several key themes, highlighted in this paper and experienced during the collaboration programme and in compiling the final evaluation. These include researching the most effective structures and approaches to collaboration between emergency services and how a team focus can be generated. Furthermore, the lessons learned may also be used across other collaborations where two different cultures meet. Focusing on the culture of collaboration is another area of future research. Much has been written on an occupational police culture, but more may be done to see how these cultural traits interplay with the culture of other organisations both in terms of short-term agreements but also in the longer term when buildings have been finished and shared spaces exist as ‘business as usual’. Moreover, cultural research focus may be on the politics of collaboration between services but also in the management of such projects. Finally, the evaluations showed how carefully balanced work between practitioners and academics can add value to our understanding of policing and culture. Therefore, future research should consider the impact of pracademics on policing research.

As critical friends for the Blue Light programme evaluation, key recommendations were provided to the project team, identifying what lessons can be learnt from practice, supported by evidence from the partnerships project.

• To ensure coherence and clarity on the actions to be taken and appropriate timing, such as the plans to establish a framework of opportunity between services, enabling users of the three services the capability to take forward recommendations.

• To be realistic and flexible, as shown in the organic cultural changes through the sharing of knowledge.

• Prioritise action points, such as flexible structure of collaboration, starting with one vision.

• Finally, it is important that the number of recommendations are achievable.