Major Emergency Incident

Emergency Planning

It is the Council's responsibility to support the Emergency Services in the event of a major incident.

Major incidents can take many forms, for example:

• Severe weather conditions and flooding
• Disruptions to supplies and services
• Transport crashes
• Terrorist acts

Whatever shape the incident takes, people would look to the City Council for support.

The lead agency in the event of a major civil emergency will be one of the emergency services.

• The Hampshire Constabulary will be responsible for co-ordination at the scene and co-ordinating the overall response effort.
• The Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service will be responsible for fire fighting, rescue and associated activities.
• The Hampshire Ambulance Services NHS Trust will be responsible for casualties.
• In an emergency where public health issues may be a factor, particularly where there is significant pollution or where there are significant levels of causalities, the public health service will be alerted.

The City Council may sometimes be the lead agency in appropriate situations, for example, localised flooding and disaster recovery. The Council for example, established a Flood Emergency Response Group in December 2000 when many communities in the district were affected by flooding.

However, some incidents are beyond the normal capacity of the emergency services, and so Winchester City Council's Emergency Response Plan would be put into action.

The City Council has an Emergency Response Plan and a dedicated Emergency Operations Centre that can be utilised at any time to coordinate its response to an emergency. It also has plans to provide Prepared Rest Centres in the event of the need for large scale evacuation within the district. There are a number of Town and Parish Councils within the District that are also preparing their own Emergency Plans for their communities.

Hampshire County Council's Emergency Planning Unit provides expertise to support the emergency services and the City Council and arranges for external resources to be made available. It is also the contact for central government departments and public bodies which may be involved in an emergency.

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004:

This new legislation has been introduced to improve the UK's ability to deal with the consequences of major disruptive incidents.

The new legislation and its guidance deliver a single framework for civil protection in the UK.

One of the requirements of the Act is to produce a Community Risk register. This will be the result of a risk assessment of the likelihood of an event occurring in the City Council's area and will lead to a plan of how to respond to all hazards.

There is also a need to provide Business Continuity Management for the City Council itself and to provide advice for the general community. Business Continuity is the degree to which an organisation is able to carry on providing its services following a disruption. A guidance note on preparing Business Continuity Plans for business and voluntary organisations is set out below.

Document Links:

A list of external links can be viewed below.