The latest news in the ongoing man hunt for Raoul Moat in Northumbria continues to reveal the missed opportunities caused by the lack of emergency preparedness for incidents of this nature across the police forces of England.

Whilst it’s (a little) difficult to criticise the police for failing to prevent the first murder despite the clear tip offs they receive (undoubtedly they get plenty of similar calls?) there are still many lessons to be learned from the slow response overall.

Of course it’s very difficult to cordon a large area, and a rural area at that, using the sort of processes that the police normally adopts when responding to an incident – but perhaps that ought to prompt a re-think in tactics?  I would imagine that one of the lessons to be learned from the current situation will be that the emergency services need alternative means of achieving cordons and carrying out surveillance – probably using technology in its various forms.

It also gives a stark perspective to the challenges facing General Petraeus and the combined forces in tackling the Taliban across much large and more hostile areas in Afghanistan.

Imagine then, how much more difficult this task could be in the depths of December when we don’t have the luxury of very long daylight hours in which to carry out such a search.

I know from my years as a guided weapon system designer that the search box increases very dramatically with time so the need for speed in this case has been clearly demonstrated through the police force’s inability to locate and/or contain Moat within a know area.  The question is – why is that the case?  Were they worried about panicking the public or just slow to get the information released due to tortuous processes – my guess would be the latter having worked in a number of multi-agency GOLD commands.  We may never know.

So is speed everything in these situations?  Almost. There is little value in speed without policy, strategy and plans to provide the necessary framework that empowers staff to act appropriately at the end of a fragile command and control network.  In the military we refer to this as mission command – and ensure that everyone knows the rules of engagement and what their role and is and delegations are to maximise the effectiveness of the combined response.

So agility to opportunities – I’ve seen that somewhere before – and resilience to disruptions.

Well we haven’t truly had anything disrupting the police response and activity other than a little bit of media presence but if we had power cuts or severe weather or a debilitating stomach bug (say) amongst the deployed forces we might find the plans are more ragged even than has so far been apparent.

I can’t imagine that there is much else getting done within Northumbria police force whilst this is going on – which is why the government requires the emergency services to have tested business continuity plans in place so they don’t simply drop everything and lurch from crisis to crisis.

I think the responsiveness demonstrated during the Raoul Moat manhunt goes a long way to demonstrate the importance of agility and resilience in emergency preparedness.  Perhaps I’ll do a series of posts on this to cover some of the other emergency planning loopholes that this case reveals – for example – the police’s ability to communicate in built up or rural areas?

Business continuity and emergency preparedness planning for natural disasters is a smart move for every business owner but there are certain areas of the world where it could make the difference between life and death.

The following video is about 9 minutes long and illustrates the historical prevalence of natural disasters including several from the past 10 years.

Whilst we don’t advocate carrying a sandwich board labelled “The End Is Nigh!” and living every day as if it’s your last, we do think it’s sensible to look at the potential environmental hazards that could affect your business and your family before putting appropriate, tested, policies, strategies and plans in place to minimise the impact of possible natural disasters on your livelihood.

Please take a look at this short video and consider the likelihood of your being affected by similar incidents in your location. If you’d like to discuss any of the issues raised then feel free to give us a call or fill in a contact form here

Baroness Hine yesterday published her independent report into the swine flu (h1N1) outbreak in 2009 and praised the overall response as being very satisfactory despite some £20m worth of vaccine being procured and not used.

My own experience as one of the professionals hired to manage the outbreak and later plan and execute a mass vaccinations programme for 300,000 citizens indicates that despite this high praise, there are lessons to learn – which is why I’ve carefully titled this post because I do not think the lessons will be learned – yet.

My 3 key observations:

1. The NHS had to invent a logistics chain from scratch to distribute both the vaccine (cold chain) and associated consumables (needles etc) from a central hub or hubs through to the end users (mainly nurses in primary and secondary care settings).  This despite the fact that the NHS has been running for many years and been through 5 years of supposed planning and testing in order to evidence compliance with it’s statutory responsibilities under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.  The entire logistics organization o health could be and should be consolidated and streamlined (like the army, navy and air force have done in the Defence Logistics Organization (now D&ES)) which would improve efficiency and doubtless save a few £billion – really!
2. The medical profession appear to be the most undisciplined bunch I’ve come across in terms of following policy and instructions.  Every man jack of them seems to have a different opinion and they appear to instantly polarise when presented with an expert opinion on something.  This significantly undermined the take-up of vaccine within the health community as senior and relatively junior staff told anyone who would listen “I’m not having it – I don;t think it’s safe, it’s being rushed through, we don;t trust the CMO” etc.  I had one senior member of staff in charge of vaccinating an entire PCT who was pregnant with twins and fought against the jab for weeks; influencing colleagues against it by her misguided leadership – then suddenly panicked nad rolled up her sleeve when a couple of pregnant women lost their unborn babies and die.  Had this virus been more virulent her goos would have been truly cooked – of course I’m used to dealing with weaponised biological agents so maybe my decision threshold is sharper!
3. Warning and informing the public was both excellent and hopeless.  On the one hand we had the carefully crafted films and leaflets (once they finally got out) and the BBC news coverage with the excellent Fergus Walsh.  On the other hand we had utter indecision and an abject failure to TELL health professionals what they MUST do in order to protect the public.  This lack of clear leadership totally undermined the mass vaccinations programme; slowing take-up and compounding the negativity radiated by the heretical “health professionals” who put their uninformed (in most cases) opinion against the CMO and SHA advice; thereby undermining public confidence.  In the PCT that I worked the Chief Executive and Board Members consistently avoided the entire subject of pandemic – fiddling whilst Rome burned – and the Consultant in charge of infection control dithered and faffed about ordering hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of equipment and storing it instead of issuing it!  Again, had this been a more virulent outbreak, thousands would have lost their lives through their inaction.

In summary, the headlines of the report do not due justice to the reality that there is much work still to do in health before it can proclaim itself agile to opportunities and resilient to disruption.  Hopefully, some of the lessons identified might transfer into good practice – butI’m not so sure.

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