Emergency Planning and Business Continuity Unit

A wide range of emergencies, disasters and other incidents pose a potential threat to everyone. Fires, burst water mains, building collapse, loss of transport services, heavy rain, hot weather, snow, crime, public demonstrations and industrial action are examples of the types of emergencies the borough could face.  

The result can involve the loss of basic services such as water, electricity, gas or telephones. It can mean damage or threat of damage to homes and businesses by flooding, fire or blast. In some cases, evacuation of homes and businesses may be required. Conversely, it could mean that everyone must remain indoors for a period of time.

Emergency Planning is the general term for the work that the Government, Emergency Services, Local Authorities, the Health Services and other organisations carry out  in preparing plans and procedures for responding to, dealing with and recovering from any incident/emergency.

What do we do in an emergency?

In the event of any incident requiring the assistance of Islington Council, the Emergency Services will contact us by way of an agreed procedure.

The role of the council is then to:

• support the emergency services
• support people affected by the incident
• provide mutual aid to other responders
• maintain normal Council services
• plan for medium and long term consequences and recovery from the incident

The type of assistance that can be offered is the provision of:

• transportation
• rest centres
• examination of building structures
• highway closures and diversion routes
• specialist equipment
• welfare/support

Once the immediate life-threatening period has passed, the council will play a major role in restoring normality to the area as quickly as possible.

Under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004), we have the duty to provide and maintain robust and resilient contingency plans. The purpose of the contingency plans (crisis response plans) is to provide staff with plans, procedures and information they will require to enable them to mitigate the effects of any major emergency occurring within Islington, whilst allowing council services to continue to provide their usual day to day services as far as possible.

The Crisis Response plan, details how the council will respond to an emergency and details roles and responsibilities for each department to ensure a coordinated response. The plan is designated to enable mobilisation of resources, at short notice, in response to any incident in addition to ensuring that core critical services are maintained in the event of major disruption.

A major incident is defined as: A major incident is any emergency that requires the implementation of special arrangements by one or all of the emergency services and will generally include the involvement, either directly or indirectly of large numbers of people.

During an emergency, the council works closely with its partners in the emergency services, health services and government in preparing for a range of potential emergencies. The borough has a platform for all agencies involved in emergency response which meets quarterly to discuss emergency issues and updates on developments called Islington Emergency Forum.

Community risk register

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 places a legal duty on the council to work with other responding agencies to assess the risk of an emergency occurring and produce a Community Risk Register.

We have worked with our partners in North Central London to assess the risk of emergencies occurring within our area. We do so in order to produce effective plans to deal with these risks as they occur.

Risk assessment is a continual process, but periodically we collect all of our current assessments of risk into a single document called a Community Risk Register. This document is available for the public to view, and is published on our behalf by the London Fire Brigade Emergency Planning Department on its website.

The Community Risk Register for North Central London can be found in PDF format on the London Fire Brigade website. Please refer to the link to the website on the right-hand side of this page under useful websites.

Contact

To contact the council about any emergency planning or business continuity issues, email emergencyplanning@islington.gov.uk

Tel: 0207527 2000

Fax: 0207 527 3375

In case of an emergency during and after office hours, call 020 7527 2000.

Council tenants in need of emergency repair can call 0800 694 3344.

You may also wish to register for alerts (flood alerts) on Environment Agency website. Remember to have an ‘ICE’ phone number in your mobile phone contact details

Useful Contacts

For details of local NHS hospitals, GPs, nurse led service, A&E or advice on various medical conditions call 0845 4647.

The website for the NHS direct and a number of other emergency services, government agencies, utility providers, neighboring councils and news channels can be found on the right-hand side of this page under useful websites.