Podcast Transcript

This is Anne McCubbin talking with Becki Lancaster and Justine Menzies about our report Improving civil contingencies planning (published August 2009) .

Becki, what’s the report about?

In 2004 the Civil Contingencies Act was introduced to help organisations ensure they have effective arrangements in place to prepare for, respond to and recover from all types of emergencies. These emergencies cover a wide range of events that can impact on people’s welfare, the environment or security – such as local floods, the current flu pandemic and terrorist attacks.

In recent years we have seen a number of these events taking place within Scotland. So our report looks at what progress has been made in Scotland since this legislation was introduced, particularly in relation to the duty on key organisations to work together.

The report also identifies some areas where improvements could be made.

So what have you found?

We found that overall key organisations are working well together to prepare for and respond to emergencies. 

There are eight Strategic Coordinating Groups, known as SCGs, that cover the whole of Scotland. These provide the focal point for local multi-agency planning. We found that they have added value to joint working.

However we also found a number of areas where more could be done to improve arrangements for dealing with emergencies. I’ll mention just a few key areas.

First, we found that most progress has been made in relation to the more traditional aspects of civil emergency planning, such as response arrangements, and less progress in arrangements for ensuring continued delivery of services to people and the recovery of communities affected by emergencies.

So for example the Category 1 responders in Scotland – that’s the main public organisations involved in responding to emergencies, such as the police, health boards, fire and rescue services and so on – most of them have got generic emergency plans in place. Whereas only around half of them have corporate business continuity plans.  

We also found that overall the arrangements for civil contingencies planning are complex and governance and accountability arrangements could be clearer. 

So for example, although the eight Strategic Coordinating Groups are the focal point for multi-agency planning and response, they’re not statutory bodies and they don’t have any binding decision-making powers. So it’s not clear who’s responsible for decisions made at a strategic level.

We also found that there’s no national protocol for information sharing. There could be a more standardised approach to this. For example some key organisations use different security markings on documents and some have different definitions of what constitutes an emergency. This can lead to differences in when and how information is communicated. We also found there could be wider and more systematic sharing of good practice and of the lessons learned from training exercises and from actual incidents. At present sharing of this kind of information tends to be limited to those organisations within the same SCG area or the participants of exercises.

Another key finding of our report is that there’s potential for more collaboration between organisations to increase capacity and to make more effective use of resources. Emergencies can place significant demands on individual organisations, whether through staffing or equipment or finances. Formal mutual aid agreements can really help organisations provide each other with additional resources and support. However, with the exception of the emergency services, these types of formal agreements are not commonplace amongst public sector bodies in Scotland.

So, Justine, what’s the importance to the public of all of this?

Well, as we’ve seen, disruptive events can happen at any time, such as the current pandemic flu outbreak. And this can have a direct impact on the public. Obviously, as well as the immediate health risks there are other effects, such as the need for childcare, that can cause disruption to people’s lives.

Other events, such as the fuel dispute at Grangemouth last year, also had the potential to impact on people’s lives. For example it could have led to fuel being prioritised to critical services such as police cars and ambulances, and this could have led to limited availability of fuel to the public. 

As these examples demonstrate, it is important that key organisations work well together to ensure an effective and timely response to emergencies and to ensure that key services can continue to be delivered. Such as ensuring doctors’ surgeries continue to open and medication continues to be delivered to the homes of people who need it. 

It’s also important that key organisations work well together to help communities to recover from incidents. 

So while we have identified areas for improvement in our report, we also provide the public with assurance that a lot of work is being done to improve civil contingencies planning in Scotland.

And finally, what do you want to see happening as a result of this report?

To help make improvements, we’ve made a number of recommendations aimed at the Scottish and UK Governments, and also the main organisations involved in dealing with emergencies in Scotland. 

We’ve also included a checklist for those that work in this area to look at how progress is being made towards meeting these recommendations. 

Some of the recommendations are around developing business continuity and recovery arrangements by ensuring that formal plans are in place and tested, and that staff are aware of their roles and responsibilities. Also there should be a more standardised approach to information sharing across Scotland, including the sharing of sensitive information. 

We also recommend having a better sharing of good practice and the lessons learned from previous exercises which would be of benefit to organisations. 

Organisations could also make better use of resources and develop more efficient ways of working, such as better sharing of services and expertise, recording of costs associated with planning for responding to and recovering from emergencies, as well as developing more formal mutual aid agreements. 

Finally at a national level there’s a need for roles and responsibilities to be clarified, and more cross-boundary and cross-border testing is recommended.

Justine, Becki – thanks very much.