Government Office for London Annual Review 2001-2002 | Download the Complete Review in PDF Format here
London Resilience Team
Since the attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001, GOL has made a major contribution to work in the Capital to ensure that London can respond effectively to the new, higher level of threat.
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(Sir Thomas Harris George, the British Consul-general to New York and Nick Raynsford, former Minister for London, at the Learning from September 11 Conference) |
In October, the Minister for London established an inter-agency London Resilience Team (LRT), as part of the Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat, to review preparedness in the Capital. The Team, based at GOL, was led by a senior civil servant seconded from GOL. It was made up of representatives of central and local government, the police and other emergency services, transport providers, health service, the utilities and the Greater London Authority, and was an excellent example of joined up working. The LRT's remit was to examine not only the preparedness of key individual organisations, but also their interdependencies and interaction, and command, control and communication for London as a whole. It did this by a series of questionnaires, visits, a high level seminar to highlight and pool lessons from New York and a multi-agency pan-London exercise to test the Capital's response planning and capabilities. The LRT review, completed in March 2002, acknowledged that after over thirty years of terrorism, London's key organisations have well tried and tested arrangements and a high level of preparedness against a "conventional" major incident. Unfortunately we now have to prepare for something that could be on a substantially greater scale - what we have come to call a "catastrophic incident". The step change in the level and nature of threat, must be matched by an equivalent step change in London's response capability, and the LRT provided detailed recommendations on the action necessary to bring this about. |
Following the LRT's review, a new structure has been set up to drive and oversee emergency planning in the Capital. At its head is a London Resilience Forum (LRF), chaired by the Minister for London (with the Mayor as deputy), with top-level representation of London's key organisations, as well as the Government's top emergency planners. This is supported by a number of sub-committees which take responsibility for driving emergency planning in the key sectors - the blue light services, transport, utilities, local authorities, health, and business community. The London Resilience Forum has also set up a number of working groups to urgently resolve several specific emergency planning issues.
This whole emergency planning structure is supported and co-ordinated by a new, permanent London Resilience Team within GOL, with secondees from key organisations as before. The fact that so many of London's key services have seconded senior staff to the LRT shows the high level of commitment that exists to joint working and a holistic pan-London approach.
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More than 11,000 people a year attend courses at
the Emergency Planning College. In 2001 the London Fire Brigade answered and attended
12,936 calls that turned out to be a hoax. London has 112 fire stations, which receive approximately
300,000 emergency calls each year.
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(Delegates at the Learning from September 11 Conference) |
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