Stress-Testing Contingencies

About a decade ago, I was pottering about as the duty inspector in south Birmingham when a full-scale police mobilisation of public order units was ordered. This involves having to get together a sergeant and seven constables on to van, all of them ‘level two trained’ in public order tactics – riot police, to you […]

A Collision of Coincidences

Do you remember where you were on 23rd December 2016? Were you one of the other nine people with me, somewhere around 9pm at a house in the West Midlands, present at or dealing with a healthcare incident that had been reported to 999? Chances are you weren’t – this probably means you don’t have […]

Strategic Problems

In a lot of the work I’ve done and still do, the subject frequently comes up public funding for services and, in the last eight years or so, of public sector cuts. We all understand how important money is and I don’t think there’s a public sector professional around who isn’t keenly attuned to these […]