Emergency Response and Preparedness for the UK - Case Study Example

EMERGENCY RESPONSE AND PREPAREDNESS FOR THE UK By Name Course Instructor Institution City/State Date Table of Contents EMERGENCY RESPONSE AND PREPAREDNESS FOR THE UK 1 Table of Contents 2 Emergency Response and Preparedness for the UK 3 1.0 Introduction 3 2.0 The Arrangements for Emergency Preparedness in the UK 3 2.1 Phases of Emergency Management 4 Fig 1: Phases of Emergency Management 5 2.2.0 Strategic Co-ordinating Groups 5 2.2.1 Operational Command (Bronze) 5 2.2.2 Tactical Command (Silver) 6 2.2.3 Strategic Command (Gold) 6 2.2.4 COBRA 6 2.3 Category 1 Responders and Category 2 Responders 7 2.4 Local Resilience Forums 8 2.5 Civil Contingencies Secretariat 9 2.6 Use of Emergency Powers 9 3.0 The Emergency Planning Process That Is In Place in the UK 10 4.0 Weakness in These Planning Arrangements 12 5.0 Areas for Improvement and Recommendations 13 6.0 Conclusion 15 7.0 References 16 Emergency Response and Preparedness for the UK 1.0 Introduction The Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) was established in 2004 with the objective of governing the emergency planning (Lumbroso et al., 2011, p.344). The country’s civil protection legislative framework has been embodied in the CCA together with its implementing guidance and regulations. Importantly, emergency powers and local arrangements for civil protection are governed by the CCA. In the case of a major event, the emergency services are expected to collaborate with the objective of minimising the impact of disasters. Given that no single agency has all the resources and skills required for emergency management, the CCA stipulates that all UK’s local authorities and emergency services are required not only to share information but also to work together with other responders. Still, the success of collaboration in the response activity depends on the preparation phase and not the response stage. Disaster exercises according to Kim (2014, p.846), are part and parcel of emergency preparedness; therefore, the success of emergency preparedness lies on the training exercises amongst the concerned agencies. The objective of this paper is to examine the UKs Emergency Planning arrangements as well as to identify the existing deficiencies and offer recommendations for improvements. 2.0 The Arrangements for Emergency Preparedness in the UK The UK’s CCA according to O’Brien (2008, p.232) is a legal framework that underpins the country’s Resilience. Importantly, the Act brought about new structures, a broader emergency definition as well as an emergency planning duty at the local level with the objective of providing a streamlined and all-inclusive response system. 2.1 Phases of Emergency Management The UK emergency management involves four Phases. The first phase is mitigation, which normally involves activities that help prevent a disaster, or lessen the probability of a disaster taking place. Basically, mitigation activities always seek to reduce the damaging effects brought about by unavoidable hazards. The second phase is preparation, which normally involves coming up with plans that would improve the emergency responders’ chances of successfully managing the emergency. The response phase involves impact management and crisis management whose objective is controlling as well as minimising the immediate challenges that arises from the incident. Crisis management involves efforts to avert or prevent a looming emergency, together with protective measures implemented so as to mitigate the impact and avert more disruption or damage as well as ensure the scene is secured. On the other hand, consequence management normally happens together with crisis management and normally involves steps taken in ensuring that the impact of an incident does not escalate. The last phase of emergency management is the recovery phase, which normally starts after the stabilising the incident. Still, the recovery phase preparation is always part of the emergency management process. In the UK, the recovery is normally carried out at the national, regional and local level, but this depends on the magnitude of the disaster. The process of recovery normally takes a lot of time since it involves supporting the affected communities in the restoration of the physical infrastructure and also giving economic, social and emotional support (Cabinet Office, 2013). Fig 1: Phases of Emergency Management 2.2.0 Strategic Co-ordinating Groups Strategic Co-ordinating Group involves three command levels at one agency level; Bronze (operational), Silver (tactical) as well as Gold (strategic). 2.2.1 Operational Command (Bronze) At this level, the immediate work management is carried out at the affected area or other emergency sites. The first responders on the scene are expected to take immediate steps to examine the extent as well as nature of problem. Then they will focus the resources and efforts on tasks that are in the line of their responsibility. For instance, police are expected to focus on creating barricades, managing traffic as well as maintaining security. 2.2.2 Tactical Command (Silver) Tactical level objective is ensuring that the actions that were taken at bronze are integrated, coherent as well as co-ordinated so as to realise maximum efficiency and effectiveness. The silver level normally involves senior officers of all the engaged agencies and normally take the situation’s tactical command. 2.2.3 Strategic Command (Gold) The goal of strategic level is establishing framework for supporting officers at silver level by offering the needed resources, ensuring that the demands from the tactical command officers are prioritised and establishing recovery plans. 2.2.4 COBRA Cabinet Office Briefing Room, which normally is known as COBRA, is UK government’s facility, wherein crises are managed. It is normally activated by emergency issue that have national significance such as disaster affecting many government departments and businesses ad that needs collective action. The objective of COBRA is to identify emergency issues and to find solution. Fig 2: UK Resilience Organization Chart (Sahin et al., 2008) 2.3 Category 1 Responders and Category 2 Responders With view to the local arrangements, the Act (section 2 to 4) outline the local responders’ duties, which involves developing Community risk registers, carrying out risk assessments, as well as promoting organisational continuity (O'Brien & Read, 2005, p.356). According to the Act, Category 1 responders are those agencies such as local authorities and emergency services that are integral to emergency response. Category 1 responders normally involve local authorities, emergencies services, government agencies and health bodies. As the core responders, the Category 1 responders are required to examine the ensuing emergencies’ risk, create emergency plan and arrangements for Business Continuity Management, and set up arrangements for sharing information to the nation concerning the issue of civil protection. Furthermore, they are required to improve co-ordination by cooperating and sharing information with other responders at the local level. As the co-operating responders, the category 2 responders’ duties are less, but their main duty is collaborating and sharing important information with the category 1 and 2 responders as well as strategic coordination groups (SCGs). The Category 2 responders are normally considered to be statutory undertakers or the ‘cooperating bodies. They are hardly take part in core planning work, but are involved heavily in incidents that have effect on their own sector. Some of the category 2 responders include telephone service providers, gas distributors, Highways Agency, Airport operators and many others. 2.4 Local Resilience Forums The responders according to the Act through the Local Resilience Forum should collectively prepare, plan as well as communicate effectively. This can be achieved when the Local Resilience Forum has been organised as a mechanism for collaboration, wherein mutual outcomes and aims decided by the partners are achieved and responders can monitor their strengths as well as progress. There are over 42 established Local Resilience Forums in the UK, and their objective is ensuring that the duties under the CCA, which must be developed individually as well as in a multi-agency environment are effectively achieved. Importantly, the process of Local Resilience Forums involves using the Community Risk Register to deliver a collection of the area’s agreed risk profiles; encouraging Category 1 responders through an organised, co-ordinated and planned approach based on their functions (Civil Contingencies Secretariat, 2013, p.13). Fig 3: Model of Central Government Engagement (Kapucu, 2010) 2.5 Civil Contingencies Secretariat Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) is also an important part of UK’s Emergency Preparedness. The CCS was created with the objective of supporting the Civil Contingencies Committee (CCC) in managing natural disasters and terrorism. According to Sahin et al. (2008, p.25), the CCS functions under the Minister of Interior and its key objective is improving the UK's preparedness and response as well as creating resilience to disasters and emergencies. This is normally achieved through challenges identification, assessment and management of contingencies, as well as strategizing for future risk. Importantly, CCS’s main role is offering a principal focus for the cross-agency and cross-departmental cooperation, coordination and commitment. 2.6 Use of Emergency Powers Currently, it is possible to utilise the emergency powers on a devolved and/or regional administration basis. However, this is applicable only in the part of the UK that is facing an issue of urgency. For the emergency powers to be utilised, a ‘Regional Nominated Co-ordinator’ has to be appointed in order to serve as the central point for coordinating the response efforts either at devolved or regional administration level. Still, the emergency regulations have to be approved by the parliament (Civil Contingencies Secretariat, 2004). 3.0 The Emergency Planning Process That Is In Place in the UK Emergency planning according to Cabinet Office (2012) is central to the duty of civil protection on Category 1 responders. Therefore, Category 1 responders are required by the Act to have plans that can be utilised for emergencies prevention and mitigation of emergencies effects in the response as well as recovery stages. In the UK, emergency plans take different forms; generic, specific and multi-agency plans. The core plans in the UK are the generic plans that allow the Category 1 responder to carry out their functions effectively with regard to different possible scenarios. Generic plans are naturally single-agency plans, but numerous local areas have developed multi-agency generic plans to facilitate a combined response. Generic plans are associated with numerous benefits; for instance, they have key supporting elements that could be utilised or integrated, but this depends on the nature of the emergency. Furthermore, generic plans are considered as corporate management framework creating awareness and developing exercising as well as training. For this reason, scores of Most Category 1 responders normally perform their role of emergency planning under the Act through the preparation of the generic plan (Cabinet Office, 2012). On the other hand, specific plans as pointed out by Cabinet Office (2012) are a comprehensive set of arrangements that normally depends on the generic plan. Therefore, the core responders normally utilise the risk assessments to decide whether to utilise the specific plans or not. When the risk has been assessed and the need to address a specific risk is established, the core responders are expected to decide whether to utilise the specific plan, but this depends on the level of suitability. Scores specific plans like those for stadium incident, oil spilling or flooding are inclined to be multi-agency plans. Therefore, multi-agency plans are normally used by many core responders acting in cooperation. According to Cabinet Office (2012), multi-agency plans are normally appropriate where partners have agreed for combined response. Multi-agency plans akin to specific plans could be generic since they describe the procedures for coordinating and controlling combined emergency response, which, for instance, include the procedures for putting into place a joint tactical co-ordination or strategic centres. Still, the multi-agency plans could be specific. A multi-agency plan can be created by one or more Category 1 responders of the Local Resilience Forum for other members across the entire area. Table 1: Characteristics of UK Emergency Management (O’Brien, 2008) 4.0 Weakness in These Planning Arrangements As mentioned by Kapucu (2010, p.13), the emergency management is currently facing a lot of threats from new types of disasters and hazards. Without a doubt, the increasing terrorist threats are increasing the impact and size of disasters; as a result, the need for a central response that is more proactive has increased. The first weakness is attributed to organisations writing their plans. Given that the Act requires all the local areas to come up with their emergency response plans, it can create a response conflict between the Category 1 responders from two areas in the event of a disaster at the boundary of the two areas. Clearly, the emergency situations are changing and this makes it hard for the response team to maintain an updated overview with regard to the situation. As mentioned by Berlin and Carlström (2008, p.177), the emergencies agencies have different procedures, knowledge bases, technologies, and resources; therefore, in the event of an emergency, the agencies will act in line with their procedures. This can affect coordination and interaction with other responders considering that coordination needs consistent re-familiarisation as well as updating amongst the response organisations at various levels (Davis, 2016, p.13). The second weakness is associated with multi-agency collaboration. In the event of a large-scale disaster or emergency, the emergency management normally has task demands that constantly changes; therefore, collaboration between and within the responding agency become more challenging. The collaboration difficulty is brought about by the diverse composition of agencies as well as people cooperating, and they all have different competencies, procedures skills and knowledge. Evidently, the post-emergency reflections and reports always express the inabilities of the emergency agencies to collaborate. Apparently, no common platform can facilitate multi-agency information sharing; as a result, it creates a hindrance to situation awareness. Multi-agency collaboration issue is exacerbated by information overload and inability to get the right information promptly. The third weakness is poor organisational understanding. According to Lee et al. (2012) there are numerous deficiencies in the UK’s emergency planning; for instance, evidence-base for supporting the planning incidents like outbreaks of infectious disease, covert nuclear, biological or chemical events, as well as threats to business continuity and infrastructure. Processes and systems that would work best in such incidents have not been clearly outlined. Although the integrated response is evident in the UK, the involved agencies normally operate self-reliantly in silos and the health system response has not been integrated sufficiently. Besides that, it appears that the civil society organisations have also been side-lined. 5.0 Areas for Improvement and Recommendations In view of the aforementioned weaknesses, there is a need for some improvements. Aside from adapting the manuals, skills and plans set forth by the Act, the response organisations should improve their flexibility. This can be achieved by gradually proceeding from the simplest disaster exercise to those that are more complicated using both large-scale live exercises and discussion-based exercises. The current UK Guidance should underline the need for improved collaboration and effective feedback between the response agencies. Given that the emergency situations are always changing, the current emergency plan should be treated as a continuously evolving document that must be maintained in a systematic manner so as to ensure it is fit for purpose and always updated. In this regard, the existing plans should be screened regularly through utilisation of the developed metrics for Category 1 responders and other responders preparing and using such plans. Developing metrics to evaluate the existing emergency plans should be a continuous process. More importantly, the success of the emergency planning can be achieved by ensuring inter-organisational coordination. This can be achieved by developing mechanisms to elicit commitment, participation as well as agreement from every agency involved in the response processes. Coordination is important because the emergency response organisations have different capabilities, and by working together they can successfully carry out civil protection, hazard operations, emergency assessment and incident management. Furthermore, the bodies concerned with emergency preparedness such as the Civil Contingencies Secretariat should make sure the UK’s emergency planning can accurately establish a potential threat by setting up a common platform wherein all agencies can effectively share information. The platform with the help of hazard-vulnerability analyses can make it easy to discern threats. In view of that, Category 1 responders should identify risks and hazards that their communities face and should also determine the population segments and facilities situated in those vulnerable areas. Having knowledge about the threat will enable them to understand the main attributes of these hazards. 6.0 Conclusion In conclusion, this paper has examined the UKs Emergency Planning arrangements and has also identified the existing deficiencies and offered recommendations for improvements. As mentioned in the paper, Civil Contingencies Act was introduced in 2004 with the objective of improving UK’s emergency preparedness. The Act is divided into two parts: the first part defines responsibilities, guidance and regulations for all emergency response agencies at the local level while the second part focuses on future risk profile as well as most serious emergencies. As mentioned in the paper, the emergency situation in the UK is changing especially with the increasing terrorism threats; therefore, the Act should be an ever-evolving document. Without a doubt, the establishment of the Act brought about core changes; for instance, the term emergency was defined; clear roles, responsibilities and boundaries were identified for every organisation involved in the emergency response; governmental and local agencies were offered new duties; and the old system of emergency powers was replaced. Generally, the Act gave the government of United Kingdom different powers with regard to the issue of emergency. 7.0 References Berlin, J.M. & Carlström, E.D., 2008. The 90-Second Collaboration: A Critical Study of Collaboration Exercises at Extensive Accident Sites. Journal of Contingencies and Crisis Management, vol. 16, no. 4, pp.177-85. Cabinet Office, 2012. Guidance: Emergency preparedness. [Online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/emergency-preparedness [Accessed 12 August 2016]. Cabinet Office, 2013. Responding to Emergencies: The UK Central Government Response: Concept of Operations. [Online] Available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/192425/CONOPs_incl_revised_chapter_24_Apr-13.pdf [Accessed 18 August 2016]. Civil Contingencies Secretariat, 2004. Civil Contingencies Act 2004: a short guide (revised). [Online] Available at: https://www.essex.gov.uk/Your-Council/Local-Government-Essex/Documents/15mayshortguide.pdf [Accessed 15 August 2016]. Civil Contingencies Secretariat, 2013. The role of Local Resilience Forums: A reference document. Guidance. London: Cabinet Office. Davis, H., 2016. Organisational challenges in the United Kingdom’s post-disaster ‘crisis support’ work. Disasters, vol. 1, pp.1-22. Kapucu, N., 2010. Emergency and crisis management in the United Kingdom: Disasters experienced, lessons learned, and recommendations for the future. In Comparative Emergency Management. Washington DC: FEMA: FEMA. pp.1-15. Kim, H., 2014. Learning from UK disaster exercises: policy implications for effective emergency preparedness. Disasters, vol. 38, no. 4, p.846−857. Lee, A.C., Phillips, W., Challen, K. & Goodacre, S., 2012. Emergency management in health: key issues and challenges in the UK. [Online] Available at: https://bmcpublichealth.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-2458-12-884 [Accessed 16 August 2016]. Lumbroso, D., Stone, K. & Vinet, F., 2011. An assessment of flood emergency plans in England and Wales, France and the Netherlands. Natural Hazards, vol. 58, no. 1, pp. 341–363. O’Brien, G., 2008. UK emergency preparedness: a holistic response? Disaster Prevention and Management, vol. 17, no. 2, pp.232-43. O'Brien, G. & Read, P., 2005. Disaster Prevention and Management Emerald Article: Future UK emergency management: new wine, old skin? Disaster Prevention and Management, vol. 14, no. 3, pp.353-61. Sahin, B., Kapucu, N. & Unlu, A., 2008. Perspectives on Crisis Management in European Union Countries: United Kingdom, Spain and Germany. European Journal of Economic and Political Studies , vol. 1, no. 1, pp.19-45. Read More