Countering International Terrorism: Preparing for the consequences
96. The PREPARE strand of CONTEST is concerned with ensuring that the UK is as ready as it can be for the consequences of a terrorist attack.
97. Achieving this involves developing the resilience of the UK to withstand such attacks. This means improving the ability of the UK to respond effectively to the direct harm caused by a terrorist attack, and in particular to those individuals affected by it; to recover quickly those essential services which are disrupted by an attack; and to absorb and minimise wider indirect disruption. We will measure our success by whether we reduce the impact of terrorist attacks on British citizens and our way of life.
98. A very large number of stakeholders deliver resilience, across the public, private and voluntary sectors. It is important that all organisations pull in the same direction if contingency planning is not to be disjointed and inefficient, and if the response to an emergency is to be as effective as possible. The provision of leadership and direction to the resilience community, and processes which join-up work at the local, regional and national levels of government, and between the public, private and voluntary sectors, is thus of fundamental importance to the PREPARE strand.
99. The key elements of PREPARE are: identifying the potential risks the UK faces from terrorism and assessing their impact; building the capabilities to respond to them; and regularly and honestly evaluating and testing our preparedness, including through identifying lessons from exercises and real-life events.
Identifying and Assessing risks
The Civil Contingencies Secretariat (new window) in the Cabinet Office was created in July 2001 to work with a range of organisations to assess the consequences for the UK of potential emergencies, whether caused by terrorism or other factors. This risk assessment process, which looks over a five year period, forms the basis for decisions about emergency preparedness, including investment decisions.
The aim is for organisations at every level to follow this process. A wide range of organisations are involved and this work, for the first time, forms a systematic and all-inclusive approach to risk analysis which is reflected across the UK, at national, regional and local levels. In particular at the local level, the conduct and publication of local risk assessments are now formal duties under the Civil Contingencies Act (new window) (see summary below).
100. Given the vast range of potential terrorist attack scenarios, with a wide range of potential consequences, it is neither practicable nor prudent to plan for every scenario. Instead, planning seeks to build generic capabilities and plans, able to be drawn on flexibly in the response to a wide range of terrorist (and other) events.
Building capabilities
The cross-government Capabilities Programme (new window), managed by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, is the core framework through which the Government is seeking to build resilience across all parts of the United Kingdom.
The Programme consists of 17 capability 'workstreams' which fall into three groups:
- Three workstreams which are essentially structural, dealing respectively with national, regional and local response capabilities;
- Five which are concerned with the maintenance of essential services (i.e. food and water, health, utilities, transport, and financial services); and
- Nine functional workstreams, dealing respectively with the resilience of the response to chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) attacks; management of human infectious diseases; management of animal and plant infectious diseases; handling mass casualties; management of mass fatalities; evacuation and shelter capabilities; site clearance capability; warning and informing the public; and responding to flood emergencies.
Substantial investment has been made to ensure that the emergency services, local authorities and government departments and agencies are prepared to respond effectively to any emergency. For example:
- Over 7,000 police officers are already CBRN trained, and more are being trained. Over £200 million is being provided under the New Dimensions Programme for mass decontamination, urban search and rescue and high-volume pumping capability. 80 new Fire and Rescue Service Incident Response Units are now operationally available each containing equipment capable of decontaminating up to 400 people an hour.
- Following the attacks of 11 September 2001, the Department of Health established a national stockpile of medical countermeasures. Antibiotics, antidotes, respiratory support and specialist equipment are stored in 'pods' strategically placed around the UK. These pods are accessible by the NHS on a 24-hour basis for rapid deployment in the event of a mass casualty incident.
- Resources are held at national level to fill gaps and enhance the capability of local responders to manage mass fatality incidents including temporary demountable structures for body storage and stockpiles of general mortuary equipment. A National Disaster Victim Identification Team has been created to provide police and forensic personnel who have been trained in emergency management.
- Regional resilience teams are in place in each Regional Government Office. Multi-agency Regional Resilience Forums have been convened in each English region to co-ordinate wide-area planning and to act as a bridge between central Government and the local response.
The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (new window) has established a modern framework for civil protection capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century. The Act and supporting regulations and guidance have:
- created a common framework of duties for all organisations that are at the core of emergency planning and response work;
- given local responders a clear set of roles, responsibilities and standards to guide their work;
- mandated structures and processes for partnership working at the local and regional level, and advocated much greater multi-agency integration and collaboration;
- required emergency planning arrangements to be underpinned by systematic assessments of risk and exercised regularly;
- mandated business continuity planning to ensure that local responders can sustain the effectiveness of their functions even in the face of an emergency, and continue to deliver core functions with a minimum of disruption; and
- conferred a duty to raise awareness of emergency management issues in the communities they serve.
The bulk of the duties in the Act came fully into force in November 2005. The Act and significant new investment at a local level in the last spending review (including a doubling of local authority funding) are already giving new direction and impetus to emergency preparedness work at the local level.
Business Continuity Management
We aim to ensure that organisations at every level of the UK and in every sector who have a role in the response to or recovery from a major emergency, or whose actions will be important in absorbing and minimising its indirect impact, have effective business continuity arrangements.
The recently expanded Preparing for Emergencies (new window) website provides a 'single portal' for advice to business and the voluntary sector on emergencies, business continuity and other issues.
"Preparing for Emergencies - What you need to know"
In 2004 the Government published a booklet providing general advice for a range of emergencies. "Preparing for Emergencies - What you need to know (new window)" was delivered to over 25 million households throughout the UK. The booklet aimed to ensure that people across the UK had practical, common sense information about how to prepare for and what to do in the event of an emergency.
101. Finally, we need rigorously and honestly to assess our preparedness to ensure we keep pace with the developing risks and enhance where necessary our capabilities to match them.
Evaluating & testing resilience
The UK's ability to respond to a terrorist incident is practised regularly (as are our arrangements for responding to a wide range of other emergencies).
As part of this framework the Home Office (new window) has, for a number of years, sponsored a National Programme of Counter-Terrorist exercises in conjunction with UK police forces, which are designed to look specifically at the response to terrorist incidents at local, regional, and national levels, up to and including the Government central crisis management ("COBR") mechanisms. The CT exercise programme involves both live operational and table-top exercises.
Almost all elements of the response to the events of 7 July 2005 had been the subject of exercise activity in the previous two years in either live or table top format. Such activity included exercise OSIRIS II, which was held at Bank Underground Station in September 2003, the CAPITAL series of tabletop and command post exercises which focused on the co-ordination of the emergency response across London, and the international counter-terrorist exercise ATLANTIC BLUE held jointly with the USA and Canada, which took place in April 2005, with the UK elements focusing on London.
The importance of this programme of regular exercises, which test capability and drive improvements, was shown on 7 July 2005, when relevant components of emergency plans developed and tested in recent exercises were put into effect and worked well.
102. One of the terrorist's aims is to create suspicion and division between communities. We have therefore put in place measures to monitor the reaction of communities to incidents and assess the risks to vulnerable sections. This involves the police, other public agencies and community leaders working together. Interfaith networks, as well as wider civic society, demonstrated after the events of 7 July 2005 that they would not allow extremists to divide them.
