This report has been prepared by the Emergency Planning Section of the Central Services Department, City of Wakefield Metropolitan District Council, County Hall, Wakefield, WF1 2QW

Introduction

At its meeting on 29 February 2000, Cabinet considered a report on the Standards for Civil Protection in England and Wales issued by the Home Office. It was agreed that an annual report on emergency planning would be prepared, the first of which was issued on 2 March, 2001. This second annual report aims to set out the work undertaken in the past year, building on the issues raised last year.                                              

The Standards for Civil Protection in England and Wales

The 2000/1 Annual Report set out the progress made in reaching the necessary standards as set out in the Home Office guidance. Many of the standards were already fully met, but others required additional work.

The progress made towards those other standards can be viewed in one of the tables listed at the bottom of this page.

Training

Training of staff has continued to be a major part of the work in Emergency Planning. With a number of courses having to be cancelled during 2000/1 because of the fuel crisis and dealing with other emergencies, 2001/2 has concentrated on consolidating the basic and refresher training.

Details of training courses and usefulness can be seen in one of the tables listed at the bottom of this page.

Staff have also had the opportunity to attend courses at the Emergency Planning College, Easingwold York. The current prospectus running to December, 2002 has recently been issued to Departments.

One member of the Emergency Planning Section is currently undertaking, in his own time, the JEB Teaching Diploma course at Wakefield College, which is aimed at increasing awareness of training techniques.

Two Elected Member training courses have been organised which aim to give an insight into current emergency planning practice and summarise the Council's emergency procedures. Those who attended indicated that they found the course extremely useful and interesting. It is hoped to run one further course in the next few months.

On 27 November, 2001 a business continuity workshop was organised on behalf of all Departments. This event, presented by AON Risk Management Consultants, highlighted areas which need to be considered in the event of a major incident having an impact on the Council's ability to provide essential services.

Exercises

The 2001/2 Annual Report included in the proposed work programme the organisation of a major inter-agency exercise. We were fortunate in being able to organise two exercises, one table-top and one practical.

On 16 November, 2001 exercise "Westgate" was held in the Town Hall, Wakefield with representatives from all Departments, the emergency services, the hospitals, Wakefield Health, Yorkshire Water, the Environment Agency, Regional Government Office and the voluntary organisations. The aim of the exercise was to explore the emergency arrangements of organisations and identify any areas in need of improvement. Rather than the usual type of "real time" exercise, the delegates were divided into discussion groups with a facilitator to enable them to focus on the more important issues. This format, which had never been tried before, turned out to be extremely popular. Evaluations were returned by 32 of the 40 delegates with an overall "score" of 80% satisfaction covering matters such as usefulness, content and format. 31 of the 32 delegates considered that the aims of the exercise had been met fully.

On Sunday, 24 February, WMDC officers took part in exercise "Wren", which was a practical exercise held at Wrenthorpe railway sidings, promoted by Railtrack. The exercise was also attended by the emergency services, Arriva Trains, Railtrack and the WRVS. The opportunity was taken to test and evaluate the Council's on-site, emergency centre and rest centre arrangements. Evaluations are still being received and the inter-agency debrief is still to be held.

Officers from a number of Departments took part in a flooding exercise organised by JBA Consulting Engineers on behalf of the Environment Agency on 25 May, 2001. This was designed to highlight any problems there might be in inter-agency working.

Emergencies Handbook

Progress has continued on the computerisation of the Emergencies Handbook. Most recipients of the Handbook now receive updates by email/Public Folders with just a few having updates in hard copy form. Since 1999 there has been a considerable financial saving with associated increase in efficiency as updates can be issued immediately changes are made to the Handbook. Additionally, the computerisation has reduced the number of recipients considerably.

One of the tables at the bottom of this page shows the significant progress made in reducing the number of printed copies issued since 1999. The aim is to eliminate the need to produce any paper copies of the Emergencies Handbook by the end of 2002.

Geographic Information System (GIS)

Work continued throughout 2001 to make more use of the GIS system in emergency planning and response. Included in the system are all vulnerable premises and potential flood and flood warning areas. Work is continuing to introduce onto the system hazardous pipelines and COMAH site consultation zones. Once the overall hazard assessment is completed, areas which can be included in GIS will be investigated.

Intranet and Internet

Work has been completed on production of the first ever Emergency Planning internet/intranet site. The areas covered include:-

• Information about ongoing emergencies affecting the Wakefield District
• History of emergency planning in Wakefield
• Responsibilities of the Emergency Planning Section
• Objectives/strategy
• Annual Report 2000/1
• Joint working arrangements
• Links to other sites
• Emergency planning for schools
• The Council's emergency plans
• The future of emergency planning in England and Wales
• The Standards for Civil protection in England and Wales
• How to contact us

Incidents

Since April, 2001 there have been very few incidents which have affected the Wakefield District. There have been the usual utility failures and weather related incidents, most of which have been dealt with under Departmental procedures.

However, the foot and mouth outbreak last year involved a great deal of preparatory work in Environmental Health and Emergency Planning in the event of the disease spreading to Wakefield. Fortunately, the District had no outbreaks, but the preparatory work undertaken gave rise to the opportunity for all animal health related procedures to be carefully reviewed.

The effects of 11th September in New York have had world-wide repercussions. The Government has kept in close contact with Local Authorities since September. Even though the threat of a subsequent chemical or biological incident in the UK is extremely low, the Cabinet Office has issued guidance and organised a number of training/advice workshops for emergency response organisations to outline the Government's arrangements.

The anthrax incidents in the United States last year caused a few "white powder" emergencies in the District, all of which were found to be false alarms.

Although flooding again proved to be a problem in many parks of the UK in 2001, the Wakefield District escaped any serious threat with staff being on formal standby for potential flooding on just one occasion.

Joint Working

West Yorkshire has a strong tradition of joint working in emergency planning and the West Yorkshire Emergency Planning Officers' Forum, for which Wakefield provides the secretarial services, continued to meet on a regular basis throughout 2001/2. The Strategic Level Group also met on three occasions, two of which were specifically to consider actions following the events of 11 September. The Forum has also set up a Sub Group to evaluate exercise reports submitted by Members and disseminate best practice.

The Emergency Planning Manager is an active member of the Emergency Planning Society's Local Authority Issues Group. The Group considers a variety matters affecting local authority emergency planning and represents EPS members' interests to Central Government. The Group recently submitted a comprehensive response to the Cabinet Office on the Future of Emergency Planning in England and Wales discussion document.

Work Programme

Although work programmes have been produced for the past few years, there have inevitably been areas which have not been completed. The main reasons have been that protracted incidents have taken a significant amount of staff time (e.g. Kosovo refugees and the Millennium in 1999, fuel crisis in 2000, foot and mouth and post 11th September arrangements) and that more urgent areas of work have been identified.

The work programme for the remainder of 2002 is given in one of the tables at the bottom of this page.

Review of Emergency Planning

In 2001 the Cabinet Office issued a consultation document on the future of emergency planning. A comprehensive response was submitted on the numerous proposed changes to emergency arrangements including:-

• Specific funding to be replaced by SSA (Standard Spending Assessment)
• A statutory duty to be imposed on local authorities to undertake emergency planning (to replace the outdated Civil Defence Act, 1948)
• Local authorities to be asked to undertake a community leadership role in emergency planning.
• Issues relating to public awareness and information
• National guidance on good practice including and monitoring and inspection regime
• Arrangements between Central Government and local response agencies
• Responsibilities of local authorities for response, recovery and, for the first time, prevention.

A full copy of the response can be found on the Council's internet and intranet sites under Emergency Planning

Further Information

For further information please contact us - details are given on the main Emergency Planning page.

(April, 2002)