Formed July 2001; 15 years ago (2001-07) Agency executive Katharine Hammond, Director Website www.gov.uk/government/policies/emergency-planning | ||
The Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS), created in July 2001, is the department of the British Cabinet Office responsible for emergency planning in the UK. The role of the secretariat is to ensure the United Kingdom’s resilience against disruptive challenge, and to do this by working with others to anticipate, assess, prevent, prepare, respond and recover. Until its creation in 2001, emergency planning in Britain was the responsibility of the Home Office. The CCS also supports the COBRA committee.
Contents
Formation
When compared to other countries, the UK is not particularly prone to disasters, but in the aftermath of the Y2K bug scare, the fuel protests of 2000, flooding in autumn 2000, and the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001 the UK government felt that the existing emergency management policies and structures were inadequate to deal with natural or man-made disasters, and formed the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in July 2001, located in the Cabinet Office. Soon after the 9/11 attacks the remit of the CCS was expanded to include mitigating the consequences of a large scale terrorist attack.
Remit and reporting
In 2002 David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, stated, in a written reply to a parliamentary question:
The remit of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat is to make the United Kingdom more effective in planning for, dealing with, and learning lessons from emergencies and disasters.
He went on to state:
The Secretariat services the Civil Contingencies Committee, which I chair and in addition as part of the Cabinet Office reports to my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister (Mr. Blair) through the Cabinet Secretary (Sir Richard Wilson).
The Civil Contingencies Committee, often informally referred to as COBRA from the name of the room used, is a forum for ministers and senior officials to discuss and manage serious (level 2) and catastrophic (level 3) emergencies.
Structure
The secretariat is led by a director and initially comprised five divisions dealing with:
In 2012 the CCS still had five sections, with a slightly different emphasis:
Director of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat
Until 2001 the Home Office carried out emergency preparedness planning through its Emergency Planning Division, which in turn replaced the Home Defence and Emergency Services Division. From 1935 to 1971 a separate department, called the Civil Defence Department (in the early years the Air Raids Precautions Department, Ministry of Home Security), existed.
Documents issued
The CCS has produced the following documents: