The County Durham and Darlington Civil Contingencies Unit officially changed its name from ‘The Emergency Planning Unit’ on 14 July 2005 to be in line with the new Civil Contingencies Act that came into force in 2005.  The Unit has been lodged with the Fire and Rescue Service since 1994.  It has a team of very professional Officers experienced in Emergency Planning Preparedness and Incident Response as well as Business Continuity Management.

The Civil Contingencies Unit serves 2 Unitary Local Authorities; Durham County Council and Darlington Borough Council by providing 4 broad functions: 

• Planning – the outcomes of which are written documents and procedures usually in the form of Emergency Plans (either generic, site specific or consequence specific) or Business Continuity Plans (which cover service aspects or key locations).
• Liaison – the outcomes of which include local formal and informal meeting frameworks where relationships with partner agencies are defined in order to ensure more effective co-ordination of resources during the activation of plans and procedures. 
• Training and Exercising – the outcomes of which include training programmes aimed at ensuring personnel named in plans and procedures have a theoretical and practical knowledge of their operational roles and responsibilities.  In addition, the Unit has an advisory role in many exercises led by the police, fire service and other agencies and has some considerable experience in developing exercise scenarios.
• Operations – the outcomes include the Unit’s 24/365 Duty Officer Scheme. providing practical assistance to the community and practical assistance given to partner agencies.  Assistance in the past has included identifying stores of sandbags, calling out key personnel from within the local authority or the voluntary sector, attending multi-agency Emergency Centres and providing appropriate advice when requested.

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 has been a significant step forward by central government in improving the resilience of the UK in the face of new challenges and provides a framework for meeting these and future issues in the 21st century. 

Part 1 of the Act divides local responders into two categories (Category 1 Responders and Category 2 Responders), imposing a different set of duties on each.

Those in Category 1 (including emergency services, local authorities, NHS bodies) tend to be those that will be directly involved in the management of any sort of significant incident and have a duty to:

• Assess the risk of emergencies occurring and use this to inform contingency planning;
• Put in place emergency plans;
• Put in place Business Continuity Management arrangements;
• Put in place arrangements to make information available to the public about civil protection matters and maintain arrangements to warn, inform and advise the public in the event of an emergency;
• Share information with other local responders to enhance co-ordination;
• Co-operate with other local responders to enhance co-ordination and efficiency; and
• Provide advice and assistance to businesses and voluntary organisations about business continuity management (Local Authorities only).

 Category 2 responders (such as the Health and Safety Executive) are less likely to be involved in the heart of planning work but will be heavily involved in incidents that affect their sector. Category 2 responders have a lesser set of duties mostly relating to co-operating and sharing relevant information with other Category 1 and 2 responders.

Category 1 and 2 responders will come together to form Local Resilience Forums (based on police areas) which will help co-ordination and co-operation between responders at the local level.

The majority of Part 1 of the Act was brought into force in November 2005. The duty on local authorities to provide advice and assistance to business and voluntary organisations regarding Business Continuity Management commenced in May 2006). The Act, and its associated guidance, are currently being reviewed by central government, however, its fundamental ethos is unlikely to change, i.e.:

• Planning for emergencies is not just a moral responsibility, it is a legal duty.
• This is an area where the work never stops; we can and must invest in a process of continuous improvement.
• Nobody has all of the answers – at the heart of the process is Integrated Emergency Management with all of the key people working together.

Other examples of relevant Acts include the ‘Corporate Manslaughter and Corporate Homicide Act 2007’ and the ‘Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations (COMAH) 1999’.  In addition, there is a considerable amount of supporting legislation and guidance which cannot be met by other organizations without local authority involvement, e.g. Business Continuity Management BS25999.  Central government have identified that these demands will only increase, e.g. the Pitt Report into the 2007 major floods has resulted in significant new duties falling upon local authorities.