Resume of Recommendations and Responses

AGENDA ITEM 6

BOROUGH OF POOLE

EMERGENCY COMMITTEE

24TH JULY 2006

LONDON ASSEMBLY REPORT OF THE 7TH JULY REVIEW COMMITTEE – RESUME OF RECOMMENDATIONS AND RESPONSES

PART OF PUBLISHED FORWARD PLAN: No

1. PURPOSE AND POLICY CONTEXT

1.1. The purpose of this Report is to advise Members of the findings of a Review conducted by a Committee of the London Assembly into the July 7th bombings.

1.2. The primary purpose of the Review was to identify lessons learned from the response and to make recommendations to improve the response to any future major incident in London.

2. RECOMMENDATION

2.1. Members are asked to note the contents of the Report.

3. KEY FINDINGS AND RECOMMENDATIONS

3.1. The key findings of the Committee and the criticisms and/or recommendations it has made are summarised in the table at ANNEX A together with responses from the London Resilience Forum.

Graham Chaplin

Emergency Planning Officer

24 July 2006

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ANNEX A

CRITISISM AND/OR RECOMMENDATIONS /

RESPONSE FROM LONDON RESILIENCE

ESTABLISHING WHAT HAPPENED
A large proportion of Tube trains do not currently have a facility for passengers and train drivers to communicate with each other in an emergency
This represents a significant weakness in the safety of the Tube for passengers, and limits the ability of the emergency services to respond rapidly and effectively.
Recommend that a more rapid rollout of facilities for passengers and train drivers to communicate in emergencies / A large proportion of underground trains don’t have any means for passengers to contact the driver.
·  As new trains are introduced this will be dealt with – all new tube trains have driver to passenger communications systems (Northern, Jubilee, Piccadilly & Central already have it all others by 2014, except Bakerloo 2117/8).
·  This did not cause a problem on 7/7.
UNDERGROUND COMMUNICATIONS
Inability of the emergency services to communicate underground.
Recognised as a major weakness since 1988 (Kings Cross fire).
Failure of successive governments to take necessary action to install underground communications for transport and emergency services.
Recommendation that ‘CONNECT” project rollout be closely monitored (CONNECT is designed to enable all emergency services to communicate underground). / We are working as fast as we can to remedy this problem. Work on installing the ‘Connect’ system on the Underground began in 2000 and will be completed in August 2007, with the connection to Airwave being complete by Spring 2008. This will enable the police’s surface ‘Airwave’ radio to operate both above and below ground.
But since the King’s Cross Inquiry British Transport Police carry separate radios for above and below ground and London Fire Brigade hand held radios also operate on the deep Underground. Both BTP and LFB were able to maintain effective communication between the surface and below ground on 7/7.
DECLARATION OF MAJOR INCIDENT
On 7th July, each of the emergency services arriving at the scene separately declared major incidents within their own service.
Recommended that the London Resilience Forum review protocols for declaring a major incident to ensure that, as soon as one of the emergency services declares a major incident, the others also put major incident procedures in place. / Criticism that, for example, each emergency service needed to individually declare a major incident, before putting in place procedures for dealing with it, rather than a single declaration being sufficient to trigger all three emergency services.
·  Post 9/11 a vast amount of work was carried out in London to make sure major incident plans were jointly planned and tested, hugely increasing inter-agency understanding of what each would do.
·  The emergency services co-ordination on 7/7 was first class.
Will a single declaration in future be sufficient? This had no bearing on the effectiveness of the response. Only one of the emergency services need declare a major incident. After that the other services will attend with the appropriate response.

RELIANCE ON MOBILE PHONES

It is predicable that in the event of a major incident in London, mobile telephone networks would be come congested.
London’s emergency services nevertheless relied to varying extents on mobile phones to communicate internally among their senior officers. This led to some major communications problems on 7th July.
Recommendation that the London Resilience Forum, as a matter of priority, co-ordinate a review across London’s emergency services of communications between managers and the scenes of major incidents, their respective control rooms and the strategic co-ordination centre. / On 7/7 there were some difficulties with managers being over dependent on mobile phones.
The situation was reviewed and successfully addressed in London in the months following 7/7. There would not be the same problem in an incident now. In addition Cabinet Office has issued advice to responders and is also carrying out a national review of telecoms resilience.
Rollout of new digital based systems has already started to the Police, and will continue to the other emergency services.

INVOCATION OF ACCOLC

During the incident, the GOLD co-ordinating group made the strategic decision not to invoke ACCOLC. However the City of London Police attempted to invoke ACCOLC on the O2 network around Aldgate.
Recommendation that the protocols which require mobile operating companies to verify instructions to activate ACCOLC are amended so that instructions are verified by the Gold group only. / ACCOLC - ACCess OverLoad Class: the privilege mobile access system was triggered at Aldgate by the City Police. This allows only ACCOLC privileged mobiles to use a particular network. This was unhelpful - many key emergency responders did not have ACCOLC. The Assembly recommends this should not be triggered without approval of overall Gold commander (the co-ordinator for the response to the whole incident).
·  Resilience communications (including ACCOLC) are being urgently reviewed by the Cabinet Office.
·  Advice has been issued by Cabinet Office to all emergency responders asking them to review their telecommunications provision to ensure diverse, flexible and resilient arrangements.
·  Once emergency services have Airwave communications (switchover for police has started already and switchover for all emergency services will be complete by mid-2009) it will be unnecessary as emergency services will not need to use mobiles.
·  Already, alternative radio-based communication means have been increased following 7/7.
COMMUNICATION WITHIN THE LONDON AMBULANCE SERVICE
Even allowing for the difficult circumstances that prevailed on 7 July, those on the front line were let down by varying degrees by a significant breakdown of communications within the London Ambulance Service.
Recommendation that London Ambulance Service provide (the assembly) with an update on reviewing and improving its communications systems / Overdependence on mobile phones at command level. Specific criticism of London Ambulance Service’s (LAS) communications between HQ and incident sites.
Since 7/7 LAS has been very active in improving its response systems including issuing pagers to all managers, putting in place a major incident response that sends 20 ambulances and 6 managers immediately to scene, and reconfiguring incident rooms and accelerating national roll-out of digital radio system for ambulances. The Committee Chairman praised this

MEDICAL SUPPLIES

The experience of 7 July showed the London Ambulance Service’s lack of capacity to deliver equipment and supplies to the scenes of major incidents at multiple sites
Recommendation that London Ambulance Service provide details of its plans to increase its capacity to deliver supplies and equipment to the sites of major incidents / The LAS did have problems getting back up medical equipment to scenes because of the unprecedented nature of the incident.
·  All London underground stations have medical supplies and supplies in major transport hubs are being further built up.
·  There are now fully-stocked equipment support vehicles located permanently in central London, and additional supplies are also now being carried in 25 training officer vehicles across the capital.
NOTIFICATION OF HOSPITALS IN THE VICINITY OF INCIDENTS
On 7 July, Great Ormond Street Hospital was not notified of the incident in Russell Square, and only found out about it when paramedics arrived asking for equipment and assistance. The lesson to be learned from this is that hospitals in the vicinity of a major incident need to know about it as soon as possible.
Recommendation that emergency plans be amended to provide for the notification of all hospitals in the vicinity of a major incident, even if they are not designated hospitals with accident and emergency (A&E) departments. / Criticisms in the report relating to the way London hospitals were alerted and casualties allocated are misleading.
·  In fact the health senior official (Health ‘Gold’) leading the London NHS response initially put all London hospitals on alert and then confirmed that the seven nearest acute hospitals would take patients. None reported capacity difficulties to ‘Gold’.

SUPPORT FOR SURVIVORS

There seems to have been a complete absence of planning for the large numbers of people who were not seriously physically injured but were traumatised by their experiences.
Recommendation that the London Resilience Team, in consultation with all the members of the London Resilience Forum and the survivors of 7 July, produce a guidance document setting out how the needs of survivors of a major incident will be addressed during, immediately after, and in the months that follow. / “lack of planning for those survivors who were traumatised but uninjured”. Response/current situation:
·  Existing police practice is, wherever practicable, for uninjured survivors to be looked after at Survivor Reception Centres and for their details to be logged. Unfortunately on 7/7 events moved too quickly and this was not done. A Family Assistance Centre was set up on 9 July and provided a great deal of assistance for both survivors and bereaved but a number of improvements have been identified in subsequent multi-agency debriefing.
·  Police and emergency services are now urgently reviewing existing protocols and practice. They have taken on board feedback from voluntary organisations such as Disaster Action Network who have been in close contact with the survivors as well as from their own Family Liaison Officers.
In addition DCMS interviewed the survivors and this information has been fed into our detailed planning for Family Assistance Centres

COMMUNICATING WITH THE WIDER PUBLIC

The Police Service is the lead agency for communicating with the media and the public. As a result, its messages tend to focus on police related issues. The Police are, however, well placed to communicate authoritative messages to the public about non-policing issues, such as advice on the use of mobile phones and advice about schools.
Recommend that Police news statements include key pieces of advice and information relating to broader issues, including advice on the use of mobile phones in the event of network congestion

GENERAL

The committee expressed the view that there is a lack of consideration of the individuals caught up in major or catastrophic incidents. Procedures (in their view) tend to focus too much on incidents rather that on individuals, and on processes rather than people.
Emergency plans tend to cater for the needs of the emergency and other responding services, rather than explicitly addressing the needs and priorities of the people involved. The committee argue that London’s emergency plans should be re-cast from the point of view of the people involved in a major or catastrophic incident, rather than focusing primarily on the point of view of each emergency service. / ·  We welcome the useful contribution this report makes to the lessons learned from the tragic events of last July. Four years of planning and conducting exercises undoubtedly greatly improved our ability to respond to the shocking events of 7/7. The response of our emergency services, the London Underground staff and Londoners generally was phenomenal and we must not forget that. But we are also determined to build on this and make sure we capture and learn from all the lessons available to us.
·  We have to keep in mind the context. 7/7 was unlike any previous attack, and the biggest ever emergency service response in the UK. That response is regarded by experts worldwide as exemplary. Which other city could have transported over 400 injured people from four separate sites (three in Underground tunnels) to hospital in just three hours? There were incredible acts of bravery and dedication.

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