Fail to prepare and prepare to failWith Europe facing an unprecedented level of threats – be it terrorism, floods, pandemics, natural disasters of unforeseen emergencies – civil contingency planning has rocketed up the agenda for governments, organisations and businesses alike. But is enough being done or is there serious room for improvement? For a UK perspective on this issue, HSE’s Julian Rogers met Bruce Mann, Director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in the Cabinet Office.
HSE. Firstly, can you outline how the whole issue of contingency planning and emergency preparedness has intensified in recent years, especially after the London 7/7 bombings?
BM. There has been a fundamental shift since 2001 in the purpose and organisation of contingency planning and emergency preparedness in the UK. The Cold War model of civil defence – focused on a single, monolithic threat, managed top-down by central government in secret and restricted to a small community – has gone. In its place has come a model better suited to a modern network society with its increased connections and interdependencies bringing with them greater vulnerability to external shock. The new model addresses a wide range of security risks, from terrorism through accidents to natural disasters. It involves a broad range of organisations, in the public sector and beyond. Work at local level is the building block of preparedness. And there is a premium on inclusiveness and transparency.
The Civil Contingencies Act (2004) creates a long term foundation for civil contingencies capable of meeting the challenges we are likely to face at national, regional and local levels, by: ensuring consistency of activity across and between tiers of Government, delivering improvements in performance and communication; setting out clear expectations and responsibilities for front line responders at the local level, to ensure that they can deal with the full range of emergencies; enhancing civil protection, at the regional level also, that provides a strong bridge between the centre and local areas; modernising the legislative tools available to Government to deal with the most serious emergencies.
HSE. Your website demonstrates that Integrated Emergency Management (IEM) comprises of six related activities – anticipation, assessment, prevention, preparation, response and recovery. Can you explain how these activities and how they provide a framework for guarding against threats to the UK?
BM. Integrated Emergency Management and the six activities are geared toward the idea that we build greater overall resilience in the face of a broad range of disruptive challenges. It defines what needs to be done in order that we achieve our aim of being as prepared and resilient as we can be.
In practice, the Civil Contingencies Secretariat undertakes this by: identifying risks by horizon scanning and systematic risk identification; weighing the risks by systematic risk assessment; building resilience by looking at generic capabilities, plans for specific contingencies, business continuity, and crisis management; evaluating resilience by performance management, auditing and exercises and events. This is an ongoing exercise.
HSE. What are some of the key challenges you face today in terms of civil contingency planning?
BM. The biggest challenge is to be prepared for the widest range of plausible contingencies, in a world becoming increasingly complex. Three of the biggest challenges we currently face are pandemic flu, which is something that we keep under constant surveillance, flooding is also something that can have a massive impact on peoples’ lives as we have recently seen and finally, terrorist threats. The capabilities needed to be ready for these are very different and wide-ranging but often involve differing combinations of the same sets of emergency responders: so there are challenges of organisation, both in anticipation of crises, and in the event they come to pass. A further challenge is that there are increasingly strong public expectations that crises will be managed seamlessly and faultlessly – which is a big ask in some of these cases, although the country is, I think, much better prepared than it was, and our emergency responders are excellent.
HSE. The UK and other European countries have carried out detailed emergency response planning, including mock attacks. What benefits and lessons learned can be gained from reconstructing these situations?
BM. Planning for emergencies cannot be considered reliable until it is tested and exercises have proved to be workable, especially since false confidence may be placed in the integrity of a written plan. An example of where exercising paid dividends is that, three months before the 7 July 2007 attacks, a major counter-terrorism exercise had been undertaken which meant all of those who had a role to play knew exactly what they had to do.
We have in place a co-ordinated cross-governmental exercise programme covering a comprehensive range of domestic disruptive challenges, including accidents, natural disasters and acts of terrorism. The programme is designed to test rigorously the concept of operations from the coordinated central response through the range of lead government department responsibilities and the involvement of the devolved administrations, to the regional tier and local responders.
In addition, local authorities and the emergency services develop their own programme of exercises to test capabilities at the local/regional level. This nationwide rolling programme of exercises is designed to ensure we have the best possible contingency plans in place to respond to a whole range of civil emergency scenarios. The UK also observes or participates with international partners in exercises, either through multilateral fora, such as the G8, NATO and the EU, or on a bilateral basis.
HSE. Today, a chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) attack is an ever-present deadly threat that the major cities face. What is being done to plan against an attack and to deal with the aftermath and evacuation and de-contamination of inhabitants?
BM. The Home Office is leading a major programme of work to develop the best possible response to a CBRN attack, involving responders and other government departments and agencies as necessary. We are already better able to deal with this kind of threat than we were and I believe we will go on getting better over the next two to three years.
HSE. In your opinion how well prepared to a terrorist attack is business, particularly in London? Is business continuity and disaster recovery high on the agenda or does apathy exist?
BM. The degree of preparedness is mixed, the recent Chartered Management Institute’s 2007 Business Continuity Management Survey which was co-sponsored by CCS reveals a situation across the UK as a whole which, while having a number of identifiable trends towards improved business continuity planning, is also one where there is still much work to be done. There are still too many organisations that have no business continuity plan, or have one that is unknown to staff or is not subjected to exercise and review. The report looks to address this side of the picture in a series of key recommendations, which make the case for robust, comprehensive and effectively communicated business continuity arrangements for organisations of all kinds.
In summary, 73 percent of managers report that Business Continuity Management is important in their organisation, and 94 percent of those who had invoked their plans agreed that they had reduced disruption. And despite the perceived importance and range of disruptions reported, eight years on since this survey began, over half of the 1257 managers surveyed in 2007 work in organisations where there is no specific Business Continuity Plan (BCP) in place. Around one in three organisations reported experiencing disruptions due to loss of IT (39 percent) and loss of people (32 percent) over the past year; and those affected by extreme weather conditions had risen over the past year from nine to 28 per cent. As well as this, the Government continues to play a major role in driving BCM through the public sector and beyond. The Civil Contingencies Act appears to already have had some impact, and this trend is likely to continue since its provisions came into full effect in May 2006.
HSE. London is a major business hub and financial centre, which makes it an attractive target for terror groups. Do you feel that the financial sector does enough in terms of continuity and counter-terrorism planning?
BM. During 2005, the Tripartite Authorities (FSA, Bank of England and HM Treasury) carried out the Resilience Benchmarking Project. The project was designed to assess the resilience and recovery capability of the UK financial services sector in the event of major operational disruption such as a terrorist attack or natural disaster.
The project provided a valuable insight into the overall business continuity preparedness of more than 60 firms that took part in the Benchmarking Project, answering more than 1,000 questions on their business continuity arrangements. With their agreement the Business Continuity Management Practice Guide has been produced in the spirit of sharing lessons learned from the project so that firms that did not participate can also benefit from it. The guide is based on real examples of standard and leading practices we observed in the firms that participated. It reflects the collective business continuity planning and crisis management expertise of the UK’s most significant firms and financial infrastructure providers. This is the product of voluntary cooperation between the Authorities and the private sector in pursuit of shared goals and shows that the financial sector is well progressed in Business Continuity planning.
HSE. You mentioned earlier about the lingering threat of a flu pandemic for the past few years – can you explain what UK and business has done to prepare for a possible outbreak?
BM. Because the impact of any flu pandemic outbreak is unpredictable, the Government is making sure it is:
Prepared – planning is well developed. We have a regularly updated national framework for responding to an influenza pandemic. The primary aim of this document is to guide and support integrated contingency planning and preparations for pandemic influenza in health and social care organisations and more widely across government and public and private sector organisations. We are stockpiling anti-virals and other equipment, and we are acquiring vaccines and the capacity to acquire new vaccines quickly.
Flexible – we have strong generic arrangements for emergency response. Organisations at the local, regional and central levels are preparing all options for dealing with an outbreak of human flu pandemic, and making sure plans are scalable.
Decisive – we have clear arrangements in place for directing planning and response. Lead government departments direct planning and response work, and we have tried and tested structures for managing emergencies.
International – both avian flu and pandemic flu have global impacts, and must be tackled globally. The UK is at the forefront of global work because of its scientific expertise and recent EU Presidency.
At the end of 2005 the Civil Contingencies Secretariat established a ‘Business Forum on Pandemic flu planning’. This forum aims to: widen engagement with the business community on pandemic issues; encourage a mutual exchange of views and best practice on flu pandemic planning; and address concerns of members relating to current planning and proposed Government strategies.
The group is formed by representatives of different business sectors, covering most areas of the Critical National Infrastructure. Membership includes: Association of Insurers, British Bank Association, British Chamber of Commerce, British Retail Consortium, CBI, Federation of Small Businesses, Institute of Directors, Sport England, Bank of England, Financial Standards Authority, TUC, Scottish and Southern Electricity and Visit Britain. We are planning to extend membership to cover the pharmaceutical and food supply companies plus others.
HSE. Some people would argue that an awful lot of effort and money was wasted because the threat of a pandemic was an over-reaction. What would be your argument to that statement?
BM. A worldwide influenza epidemic (a pandemic) presents a real and daunting risk to the very economic and social wellbeing of any country, as well as a serious risk to the health of its population. Such influenza pandemics have occurred from time to time over the centuries and, although they are by no means inevitable, history and science suggest that we are very likely to face others this century, though their timing is impossible to predict. Although the number of people infected by the A/H5N1 avian influenza virus remains small, the unprecedented increase in avian influenza amongst domestic and wild birds in Asia and Europe has rightly raised international concern. A ‘flu pandemic is not inevitable, but it would be remiss of the the UK to not focus on precautionary planning as a priority in its risk management strategy.
HSE. Finally, as preparedness becomes even more important for the UK authorities, especially with the threat of further terrorist attacks possibly around the corner, how do you see the area of civil contingencies expanding over the next few years?
BM. The country will always need to be prepared for emergencies: the risks are there, and every crisis brings its own lessons. In the next few years, I see scope for consolidating a lot of the very good work that has been done by our emergency services and government departments, to improve resilience, in the face of the risks that everyone faces. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat website (www.ukresilience.info) provides many useful wider links and is a good starting point for finding up to date information on developments in civil protection issues.
  All articles from "CBRN and Protective Equipment"
|
