Civil Contingencies Act
Progress on Implementation of the Civil Contingencies Act
The 2006 National Capability Survey suggests that local responders have
made good progress in implementing their obligations under the Civil
Contingencies Act:
-
Cooperation and information sharing: The vast majority
of Local Resilience Forums and supporting task groups are up and running
and functioning effectively. Almost all local responders are happy that
Local Resilience Forums are providing the right level of engagement to
enable members to perform the tasks mandated by the Act.
-
Emergency planning: This is a well established duty. The
majority of responders have in place a suite of generic and specific
plans in place. The vast majority of respondents said that they had in
place systematic mechanisms for ensuring plans are informed by risk
assessments, exercised appropriately and that key staff identified in
plans are given appropriate training.
-
Risk assessment: The vast majority of community risk
registers are now in place and have been published.
-
Communicating with the public: The vast majority of
responders have in place arrangements for fulfilling their statutory duty
to raise public awareness about emergencies. For the most part this was
done via websites or written leaflets or advertising. There are also
significant patterns of multi-agency engagement on warning and informing
issues. A high proportion of responders have multi-agency plans and task
groups in place. But the survey also identified room for improvement in
exercising and reviewing of plans and integration with emergency planning
arrangements.
-
Business Continuity Management: Significant progress has
been made on local responders' business continuity arrangements, but
more remains to be done to improve the take up and the quality of
business continuity management arrangements.
-
Advice and assistance to businesses and the voluntary
sector: A very high proportion of local authorities already have
in place mechanisms to make available advice to businesses and voluntary
organisations. Some organisations were actively engaged with the business
community in a two-way dialogue. But for many this is still a passive,
one-way process.
On the basis of the findings of the NCS Civil Contingencies Secretariat has
launched a programme of work to identify
and disseminate good practice on each of the newer duties in the Act
(i.e. risk assessment, communicating with the public, Business Continuity
Management and advice and assistance to businesses and the voluntary
sector).
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