Accidents, emergencies and safety

 
 

Emergency Planning

The City Council have a legal duty under the terms of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to provide and maintain robust and resilient contingency plans.

The City Council’s contingency plans are designed to enable the mobilisation of resources, at short notice, in response to a major incident in addition to ensuring that core critical services are maintained in the event of major disruption.

A major incident is defined as:

“A major incident is any emergency that requires the implementation of special arrangements by one or all of the emergency services and will generally include the involvement, either directly or indirectly of large numbers of people ”

(LESLP Manual Seventh Edition) www.leslp.gov.uk

To this end, the City Council has developed the ‘City of Westminster Contingency Plan for Major Emergencies’ which sets out the procedures applied to emergency management and is designed as guidance for staff who are responsible for implementing and managing the Council’s response to a major incident.

It sets out what actions the Council will take and how – including the command, control and communications structures that will be used, the roles and responsibilities of Council services, and how the Council will work with others to respond to a Major Emergency.

If a major incident is declared by the emergency services, they will inform the Council. The role of the Council is then to:

  • support the emergency services
  • support those affected by the incident
  • provide mutual aid to others
  • carry on with normal services
  • plan for long term consequences

The type of assistance that can be offered is the provision of:

  • transportation
  • temporary evacuation shelters and rest centres
  • examination of building structures
  • highway closures and diversion routes
  • Specialist equipment
  • Welfare / support

Once the immediate life-threatening period has passed, the Council will play a major role in restoring normality to the area as quickly as possible.

The City of Westminster for Major Emergencies can be found here: Contingency Plan