Communities and Local Government
A selection of images representing communities.
Direct contact 020 7944 4400- contactus@communities.gov.uk
- Fire and resilience
- Resilience and response to emergencies
- New Dimension
- Command and control and national co-ordination
Command and control and national co-ordination
Responding to a major incident will require co-operative working across the UK fire and rescue services and other emergency services. It is possible that incidents will occur in a number of locations simultaneously, and that services will have to respond outside of normal boundaries.
National Co-ordination
New Dimension will provide an enhanced national infrastructure to deploy and co-ordinate fire and rescue service resources in response to single or multiple large-scale incidents. This includes the provision of procedures and protocols for national deployment which interface and work within existing national inter-agency and cross-government emergency response arrangements.
The New Dimension project and the fire and rescue service have established a national co-ordination centre (FRSNCC) to record details of the availability and movement of New Dimension resources. Systems for the monitoring of equipment and maintenance have also been established. Information databases are held at several independent locations for added resilience.
Command and Control
A major incident could occur at any location, and part of the national co-ordination arrangements for a response includes the provision of regionally based vehicles for communications and co-ordination, known as enhanced command support (ECS) vehicles.
The New Dimension project has worked with the fire and rescue service to develop and procure nine ECS vehicles for England, to provide a mobile capacity for command and control. The ECS vehicles will add resilience to current national and regional arrangements for incident management, and will provide a capability should a catastrophic incident wipe out other fixed communication links.
In the event of an incident, a strategic holding area could be established which will reflect the needs of the incident and have the ability to scale up or down accordingly. One or more ECS vehicles will deploy to the strategic holding area, to provide command support to the incident commander and to manage activity within the strategic holding area. Support facilities within the strategic holding area could include storage of additional equipment, toilets, showers, catering, maintenance and the means to manage these.
Best practice of other agencies and international organisations is being used in the development of new training for command at a catastrophic incident level to develop the capability of the service to a new national level.
