Peter Murphy

Nottingham Trent University | NTU · Nottingham Business School

Governments and Local Authorities (LAs) have been continuously challenged by the increasing financial and service pressures posed by over a decade of austerity in England as they try to maintain their delivery of public services. This prompted the researcher to create a 15-year longitudinal dataset on the revenue income, revenue expenditure, reserv...

This paper examines the recent financial and corporate delivery history at Northamptonshire County Council. Drawing on institutional isomorphism, it demonstrates long-term inadequacies in the governance and management of the council and weaknesses in its collaborative working with key partners including the district councils in Northamptonshire. Th...

Less complex entities (LCEs) make a critical contribution to the public, private and voluntary sectors in England and internationally and account for the great majority of all local public audits. Recently, the role and objectives of financial reporting and external auditing in England have been subject to unprecedented criticism through a number o...

Due to the large number of unpaid carers in England, there is an extensive body of research which examines the determinants of carers' employment. Despite this, little is known about the relationship between the specific tasks that carers perform and their labour supply. Using data from the Survey of Adult Carers in England, we examine the relation...

Purpose Safe and Well visits are the primary preventative vehicle now used by all Fire and Rescue Services in England. The purpose of this paper is to examine their recent development to identify notable practice and potential improvements. Design/methodology/approach A literature review and archival document analysis have been supplemented by dat...

The forthcoming book is published as part of the Routledge State of the Art in Business Research Series, and is co-authored with Prof. Pete Murphy at Nottingham Trent University. We explore the application of public management theories to emergency services and the development of professionalism within the police, fire and rescue and ambulance serv...

IMPACT There has been a growing recognition that the arrangements for local public audit and public assurance are no longer fit for purpose in England. Audit provides an essential part of all accountability arrangements, as it certifies financial propriety. English local governance now features an incomplete and fragmented landscape. This means tha...

Purpose This paper explores how fire and rescue services in England responded to the challenges and opportunities presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. It examines the form and nature of fire and rescue services’ collaborations with the ambulance, police and other services and how effective their emergency planning arrangements prepared them for the...

This submission relates to the following key issues outlined in the terms of reference The Committee is inviting submissions on the scale and depth of financial sustainability issues within local authorities with the potential to lead to the issuing of S114 notices, including the effect of commercial investments and the impact of Covid-19, and the...

This paper investigates the problematic nature of ambulance paramedics’ wellbeing and applies the conceptualizations and theoretical perspective of public value (PV) to understand and potentially improve their experience. It synthesizes previous discourse from public accounting and public management and applies it to NHS ambulance services which ha...

This study calculated a return on investment of an early discharge from hospital scheme focussing on improved responses to patients’ housing needs. The study identified critical success factors of the scheme that will inform potential spread of the intervention to other localities. Financial return on investment based on service costs and benefits...

Using evidence from English and Scottish fire and rescue services from 2010 to 2016, this paper shows how divergent performance management regimes can affect public accountability. Performance management regimes enable agencies and the public to hold public sector organizations accountable by facilitating evaluation of their accomplishments. Howeve...

Purpose The organisational and service delivery landscape of the emergency services in the UK has been rapidly changing and is facing further change in the foreseeable future. The purpose of this paper is to examine recent and ongoing organisational changes in the policy development, service delivery and regulatory landscape of the emergency servic...

This is the first of four chapters that investigate each of the service areas that were the responsibility of the former Audit Commission. Local Government is the most obviously accountable public service because of the direct democratic interface between citizens and the governing mechanisms. It also has the most diverse and complex accountability...

The genesis of this book originally derives from a report for the National Audit Office. This examined the government’s ability to demonstrate the quality of service delivery in locally delivered public services in England, a responsibility, previously overseen by the former Audit Commission, between the 2010 and 2015 general elections. The Audit C...

The supposed ‘success’ of Theresa May’s police reform has justified the ‘model’ for recent reform of the Fire and Rescue Services. Fire and Rescue Services entered the period of the coalition government on an improving and accelerating service delivery trajectory, albeit still trailing the other services. The coalition government’s ‘austerity local...

This chapter provides a reflective examination across the four empirical chapters, and more generally across public services. It then goes on to generate ideas and avenues for future research. We argue that no single type or approach to accountability is ‘best’ and it is the multiple and contingent nature of accountability that requires considerati...

Theresa May consider her police reforms in the period that she was Home Secretary to be one of the outstanding successes of the post-recession public sector reforms. The introduction of Police and Crime Commissioners, reform of HMIC, and the diminution of the institutional power of the police were central to these reforms. These reforms changed the...

This is the second of the four chapters applying the two models to particular sectors. In England, Health and Social Care are two interrelated public services with both the largest budgets and projected rises in future service demand, mostly because of long-term factors outside of their short-term control, such as demographic changes. The Health an...

Critical Perspectives in Emergency Services Management makes an important contribution to the subject of emergency services management and to public administration and organization studies more generally. It critically assesses developments in emergency services management by examining the multi-dimensional nature of the provision of emergency serv...

In this chapter, we revisit the evaluative model used for the NAO report to try to develop and apply an enhanced evaluative model. In order to do this, we focus on four key questions: what governance mechanisms are in place; what must the system in England deliver; what external regulation and scrutiny currently contribute to the regime; and what a...

How we manage public services and hold them to account is critically important. Yet austerity, recent changes to accountability frameworks, and the loss of the Audit Commission have created a huge deficit in our understanding of how well services are delivered. The time is thus right to re-examine the state of our vital public services, as well as...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the form, content and reporting arrangements of “statements of assurance” required from Fire and Rescue Authorities in England since their introduction in 2012 and identify potential improvements for future implementation. Design/methodology/approach A multi-method approach was adopted which commen...

This chapter recounts one of the most interesting but surprisingly confusing stories of the labour governments’ period from 1997 to 2005. The governments’ initial ‘modernisation’ agenda was generally welcomed by other public services. However, much needed and acknowledged, modernisation of the fire services was slower to materialise and in this ear...

Following the recession in 2008 and the general election in 2010, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrat parties led the first coalition government of modern times. Radical change for public services was back on the agenda and the Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) was no exception. National economic policy resulted in ever-longer restrictions on...

In this chapter, the authors examine the experience and performance of the newly renamed ‘Fire and Rescue’ Services in the period 2005–2010. This period extended across the final ‘New Labour’ administration of Tony Blair and the period from 2007 when Gordon Brown was the prime minister. Unlike the previous turbulent years, this was a period of cons...

This final chapter describes and discusses some of the changes and proposals that have emerged in 2016 and looks briefly into the future. The change of a prime minister occasioned by the result of the referendum on membership of the European Union (EU) has accelerated the passage of the 2017 Crime and Policing Act with its proposals for Police and...

How and why has the Scottish Fire and Rescue Services (FRSs) evolved since 2010, when the purpose, legislation, structure, objectives and performance of fire services all started to diverge from their English equivalents. Although Scotland is still partially regulated by UK-wide legislation such as the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), the country en...

This unique text fills a major gap in the emergency services literature by surveying the research on fire and rescue service management in the UK. An extensive evidence base focuses on organizational culture, leadership skills, standards, and accountability, emphasizing the services’ dual roles as first responders and guardians of public safety and...

Austerity strained the financial sustainability of governments and ability of policy-makers to address policy challenges, and so having appropriate accountability and transparency arrangements to assure the public they were getting value for money took on renewed urgency. Comparing and contrasting findings from a critical review of policy developme...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the managerial and leadership challenges faced when managing personnel in the retained duty system (RDS) within English fire and rescue services. It examines the key areas of motivation, commitment, culture, relationships and practical management arrangements. Design/methodology/approach This explo...

Between 2010 and 2015, the UK’s Coalition Government introduced directly-elected Police and Crime Commissioners to oversee English and Welsh police forces, and also required every force to publish a range of performance and financial information online. Together with the fact that front-line policing services have not been outsourced or privatised,...

This paper examines the design and implementation of the two recent models or strategies adopted for the intervention and turnaround of poorly performing local authorities in England in the two distinct periods of 2002–2008 and 2011–2015. The first was integral to the Comprehensive Performance Management regimes, while the second was developed unde...

The Coalition government announced, in 2010, that between 2013 and the end of 2017 all existing claims to income-based welfare allowances, including housing benefit, would gradually move to the Universal Credit (DWP 2010). This article evaluates the performance of the Council Tax and Housing Benefits Administration Services under the current system...

This paper examines the emergence of Health and Wellbeing Boards in Nottinghamshire and the City of Nottingham and explores the implications for sport and physical activity. At the time of writing the transfer of responsibilities for public health and the establishment of Health and Wellbeing Boards in both the City of Nottingham and within Notting...

This article will describe the developing relationship between Nottinghamshire Fire and Rescue Services and the two higher education institutions in Nottingham. It will chronicle how a very traditional relationship has been transformed, initially by a simple consultancy project, into a much closer working relationship characterised by a much richer...

The 2012 Health and Social Care Act transfers responsibility for public health in England from primary care trusts to local authorities. This article traces the theoretical and policy antecedents of the proposals and highlights some key changes since their original conception in the 2010 public health white paper. It suggests that the development o...

This article contributes to the strategic review of the 46 fire and rescue services in England and Wales. It examines the previous performance management regime and presents the authors' proposals for a new, more efficient and effective regime. Although targeted at England and Wales, the article will have relevance to other services and to fire ser...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the practical implementation of the Integrated Risk Management Planning process through its application within the Fire Cover Review project in Nottinghamshire, in order to identify good practice and recommendations for improving the process and its implementation. Design/methodology/approach – Th...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to provide the rationale underpinning this new journal in addressing the apparent gap and fragmented nature of the emergency services research, to introduce the papers in this inaugural issue and encourage readers and potential contributors to support the International Journal of Emergency Services ( IJES ). De...

The purpose of this paper is to independently evaluate the impact of the Comprehensive Performance Assessment regime on one particular public service, namely the provision of council tax and housing benefits distributed by local authorities throughout the course of the regime. This service was assessed in every iteration of the CPA methodologies an...