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Partnership Working

• Our Vision
• Working Arrangements
• Community Safety
• Public sector partners
• Local Strategic Partnerships and Agreements
• In Partnership newsletter

Our Vision - "Achieving safer and more sustainable communities"

We are seeking to make everyone who lives or works in, or visits, East Sussex and the City of Brighton & Hove safer in everything they do. We will work with all our local partners to improve community safety in our local communities and we shall help our partners to achieve their agreed community aims whenever we can.

We shall play our part with other local authorities and public bodies to deliver quality services to our local communities at a price council taxpayers can afford to pay.

We shall ensure all our Plans take into consideration the needs of the future as well as the present so we can meet national sustainability aims for our local communities.

A Community Consultation and Engagement Strategy was agreed by the Policy and Resources Panel in September 2008. This carries an Equality Impact Assessment which is included in the Equality and Diversity section of our website.

• Community Consultation and Engagement Strategy [pdf, 489K, opens in new tab]
• Community Consultation and Engagement Strategy Equality Impact Assessment [pdf, 210K, opens in new tab]

Overview of Partnership Working Arrangements

In addition to procurement partnerships operating at national, regional and sub-regional level, the Service also runs shared services partnerships (such as the Sussex Improvement Partnership and the County Council through financial, legal and monitoring services) and various others devoted to service delivery.

Examples of these partnerships are given on this page.

A corporate Partnership Focus Team monitors the progress of, and identifies new opportunities for, partnership working. This not only ensures continued corporate direction and leadership but also secures the delivery of value for money through sustained improvements in community safety.

With our partnership working across the region on community profiling activities, we are aiming to provide a more risk-based service by targeting vulnerable groups who, research has shown, are more likely to suffer the consequences of fire and other emergencies.

Partnership working - Community Safety

Our key concern is to maximise community safety; East Sussex Fire Authority has a total of 94 registered Community Safety partnerships.

The work that has been completed over the past year provides clear and concise evidence, which shows that the Fire Authority is committed to delivering a wide range of services through partnership working.

Introduction to our public sector partners

East Sussex Fire Authority is involved in a range of partnerships, for instance:

• Spanning local authority services in Sussex (the Sussex Improvement Partnership - External Link)
• The agreed partnership activities of the Regional Management Board and SEFIP (South East Fire Improvement Partnership) - External Link which manages the consultancy work to undertake and report back on surveys of customers following incidents and the results of school visits;
• Procurement partnerships via Firebuy - External Link
• Local consortia and service delivery partnerships to meet our local communities' needs.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service operates over a wide area covering East Sussex County and the City of Brighton and Hove.

We work directly with a number of local authorities serving our area.

In the County, working alongside the County Council are five district councils:

• Wealden
• Eastbourne
• Rother
• Hastings
• Lewes

Brighton and Hove City Council provides all the local government services for the City.

Each of these Authorities operates a Crime and Disorder Reduction or Community Safety Partnership in which we are a major player.

Providers of other emergency services throughout East Sussex and Brighton and Hove are:

• Sussex Police (who have responsibility for the whole of West and West Sussex as well as the City of Brighton and Hove)
• The Maritime and Coastguard Agency (which administers coastguard services on our coasts)
• South East Coast Ambulance Service NHS Trust

In addition, health services in East Sussex are co-ordinated by the East Sussex Downs and Weald Primary Care Trust ( covering Eastbourne, Lewes and Wealden Districts) and Hastings and Rother PCT. NHS Brighton and Hove is the Primary Care Trust for the City.

Local Strategic Partnerships and the Local Area Agreements

A Local Strategic Partnership of public, private and voluntary sector organisations operates in each of the districts in our area in addition to the East Sussex County East Sussex Strategic Partnership - External Link and the City of Brighton and Hove (2020 Community Partnership - External Link).

Each of these partnerships co-ordinates a single overarching framework within which the different parts of the public sector as well as the private, business, community and voluntary sectors can support each other and work together.

They are responsible for producing overarching Sustainable Community Strategies which identify local priorities for action in Local Area Agreements.

East Sussex Fire and Rescue Service is a party to such LAAs both in East Sussex and Brighton and Hove and we ensure their priorities feature prominently in our target-setting and performance monitoring processes.

Each of the LAA targets to which we directly contribute are included in quarterly reports to Corporate Management Team and Scrutiny and Audit Panel.

For East Sussex, the relevant indicators are:

• Number of people killed or seriously injured in road traffic accidents
• Young people's participation in positive activities
• Per capita reduction in carbon dioxide emissions in the local authority area
• Planning to adapt to climate change

For Brighton and Hove, they are:

• Number of deliberate primary fires per 10,000 population
• Number of deliberate secondary fires per 10,000 population
• Number of people killed or seriously injured (KSI) in road traffic accidents
• Number of home safety visits carried out

In Partnership newsletter

• October 2009 [pdf, 1.4M, opens in new tab]