Guest editorial: Engaging communities: the future of emergency services delivery

Engaging communities: the future of emergency services delivery IntroductionEmergency services are operating in a period of profound change shaped by fiscal pressures, shifting socioeconomic conditions, increasingly complex disasters, pandemics and emerging security threats.These growing pressures, together with increasing demand, can expose the limitations of traditional emergency services delivery models and highlight the need for more joined-up approaches involving various stakeholders, including communities, as well as service providers, technology experts, government agencies and academics, to successfully navigate the hybridisation of modern emergency services (Velotti and Murphy, 2020;Elkady et al., 2022).This special issue addresses these challenges by examining how multi-agency cooperation, including citizen involvement, can strengthen emergency services delivery.While increasing disaster complexity and fiscal pressures have undoubtedly encouraged closer collaboration with communities, community engagement should not be understood solely as a response to resource constraints.Rather, it reflects a broader transformation in the relationship between emergency services and the public.Consistent with the principles of New Public Service (Denhardt and Denhardt, 2015), communities are not merely beneficiaries of emergency services or reserve capacity to be mobilised during crises but legitimate partners in shaping preparedness, response, recovery and resilience.This perspective provides the conceptual lens through which the contributions in this special issue can be understood.It seeks to demonstrate how strengthening these social dynamics can lead to more transparent governance, better informed communities and more equitable service delivery.This special issue combines empirical research, theoretical insights and practical case studies to inform policy, advance practice and shape future research in emergency services.While emergency services have increasingly recognised the importance of working with communities through community engagement, co-production and co-creation (Velotti and Murphy, 2020), translating these principles into meaningful and sustained partnerships remains a significant challenge.Accordingly, the special issue focuses on the practical challenge of translating established principles of community partnership into routine emergency services practice across different organisational and governance contexts.The papers suggest that the future challenge is not whether emergency services should work with communities but how such partnerships can be implemented, institutionalised and sustained across different organisational and governance contexts.This requires recognising communities not only as beneficiaries of emergency services but also as legitimate partners whose knowledge, relationships and capacities contribute to disaster resilience.All four papers discussed in this editorial were presented at the Emergency Services panel at the International Research Society for Public Management (IRSPM) 2025 annual conference held in Bologna, Italy.In this editorial, we will first discuss changing governance models within emergency services delivery, before examining the role of social capital within the context of emergency services management.We then introduce the articles included in this special issue and consider how they contribute to these overarching themes.Finally, the editorial outlines directions for future research and theoretical development. Governance modelsEmergency services occupy a distinctive position among public services, which is grounded in long-standing traditions of civic duty and public service.Nonetheless, they have experienced