Evaluating the national frameworks for fire and rescue services

In England following the 2004 Fire and Rescue Services Act and the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act, the various parts of the policy/delivery/assurance regime have been brought together by the government of the day in a series of ‘national frameworks’. This project is one of a programme of projects that is intended to identify systemic and individual inadequacies in the performance management regime for Fire and Rescue Services and propose solutions to improve the policy development, service delivery and public assurance arrangements in the UK. It also has strong resonances in other countries particularly those whose arrangements have been strongly influenced by the UK arrangements. The latest National Framework (the fifth in the series) was published in April 2018 by then conservative government of Theresa May, after the 2012 framework was rendered obsolete and demonstrably unfit for purpose by the legislative and other changes which occurred between 2012 and 2017. This particular paper provides a critical appraisal of the nature and content of the new national framework and its predecessors. It uses a generic illustrative model that has been developed to evaluate and improve performance management regimes in public services. This helps to identify omissions as well as inadequacies in the frameworks, in order to identify and recommend how they might be substantially amended and improved