Corrected oral evidence
Oral evidence, 2 July 2026.
The Chair
Good morning. Thank you very much for coming to see us this morning to help us with this important inquiry into national resilience. I know that some of your organisations have submitted written evidence, which has already been extremely helpful and I am sure you will be able to build on that. I should remind you that this is a public session. It is being broadcast live and in a couple of days you will each receive a transcript of the session. If you spot any factual inaccuracies or other inaccuracies, that will be your opportunity to make corrections. If you suddenly think of anything that is missing, we welcome supplementary evidence in writing and that will be the point to do it. We have a lot of questions to ask the three of you. Before you give your first answer, please introduce yourself briefly so that we have that on the record. I will kick off with the first question and I want to ask it to you all. We hear a lot about the call for a whole-of-society approach to preparedness and resilience. Could you each comment on how you think that the whole-of-society approach should incorporate the emergency services and to what extent that is possible, or should be possible, through the structures and systems that connect national and local, whether they exist already or not? I will start with Mr Woodman.
Alex Woodman
Good morning. I am the chief fire officer for Hertfordshire and the national lead for resilience at the National Fire Chiefs Council. I chair our group of LRFs across the UK in the National LRF Chairs Forum. The opening point is that I think we have a strong resilience system across the UK but, as with anything, it could be enhanced and be better. We have a very strong localised approach, which is built through our local resilience forums that sit across the UK in its entirety. They also exist in the devolved administrations where the principle is the same. The areas of expansion we are looking at and some gaps, if I put them forward at the start, are that we do not have a convening authority or a lead agency for resilience. Clearly, Government take the lead role but, in turn, we are the delivery arm of that. We are very much currently required to operate under the Civil Contingencies Act and we do that, but we do not have a delivery arm clearly with a lead agency for the Government’s resilience action plan and those other functions. I will do this as a bid, but we feel in the fire and rescue sector that we could play a key role in leading across the UK because of the structures and the way that we operate. My key points are that I think we have a strong system. We have a culture of preparedness and resilience. The two words can mean many things to many people, which can be part of the challenge, but I think we have the opportunity to enhance that with things like a national resilience forum, a lead agency for convening and delivering. That would strengthen our delivery across what are currently the category 1 and category 2 responders in the CCA.
Mark Williams
Good morning. I am the head of the National Police Co-ordination Centre for England and Wales. I am also the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for civil contingencies on behalf of the police chiefs. Building on what Alex said and on your question, it is possible and it should continue. I feel that policing is very well integrated into the resilience structures as they are. We work very closely with our fire colleagues, other emergency services and other agencies in emergency preparedness and testing and exercising and, as Alex said, very importantly, at the local resilience forums across the country. About half of them are chaired by police officers in one way or the other. Most of them are senior local officers for the area, often executive officers. Where we do not chair those groups, we sit on them and recognise that in subsidiarity the best solutions often come at a local level. Local partners and local solutions work very effectively in the vast majority of issues that are being addressed. As Alex also pointed out, there are some gaps in how we connect national and local, and we are very supportive of playing our part in that. In addition to your point about how we contribute to the shared resilience and whole resilience piece, I think we can as a service and we provide leadership within local resilience structures. We offer 24/7 national coverage and a national mobilisation capability to support resilience day in, day out. Also, I hope that we act as a trusted voice and communicator as an institution locally, along with the fire service and other trusted agencies, which at times of crisis is incredibly important. In answer to your question, I feel that we are very well integrated already. We work very closely together. Only Last week I was working with the fire chiefs council on a CPD input, explaining our approach to localisation and how we can learn from each other. That co-ordination co-working is typical and common day in, day out across the country.
Matt Killick
Good morning. I am the chief operating officer for St John Ambulance. I do not sit here representing a statutory organisation. I sit here representing a charity and my view of this is from the third sector. I agree with what colleagues have said in many ways about the ability in a local focus on resilience and response. When it works, it works exceptionally well. The benefit of having the voluntary sector around the table is that it helps the local understanding of need with the building of trust at a local level, the understanding of what local communities may want or require from a response, during the response and after the response as well. The gap, as I see it from a voluntary sector perspective, is that there is no mandate to involve the voluntary sector at local or national level. For me, that is a huge gap. If I think about Covid—while I do not want to bring people back to that rather challenging time—my role at that point was the director of crisis response at the British Red Cross. What I saw from the moment Covid started to close our front doors was the voluntary sector, local communities and faith groups stepping up and supporting their local neighbours, literally without being asked, without any requirement to mobilise at pace. Then the larger organisations like the Red Cross and St John came in behind that with the right structures but we then worked in partnership far more effectively with fire and rescue, police and ambulance. St John delivered NHS vaccinators and we recruited 30,000 volunteers to deliver the vaccination programme. That is just one example of a multitude of aspects that happened locally and nationally. It was all done through relatively robust but quite quick relationships being built behind the scenes and with communications about how we respond to this. That is great in many ways but, as we all know, partnerships should be built in peacetime. What we are not doing from a structural perspective in any way, shape or form to the level of rigour that we need—bearing in mind the risks that we are seeing in the next three or four years in this country—is systematically putting in place the right structures and the right controls. While I do not want to go on too much about funding, there is a lack of a funding in this space for the voluntary sector. If you think about the 20,000 volunteers I have in St John Ambulance who are medically trained, they are part of probably most of the communities that are represented around this table. They already understand their community, already live on the street and already respond to local provision, and we are just one organisation among thousands that already have highly trained, highly vetted and highly able and willing people who will stand up at key moments of crisis. For me, it is about putting in place a structural approach, whether it is legislation or better guidance for LRFs, because the voluntary sector is there. I also feel that there is a risk that it is not fully understood. Often people think the voluntary sector is maybe your local charity shop. It absolutely is that in many ways but, because of the vibrancy, it is faith groups, larger organisations like Red Cross, St John and Scouts. There is a multitude of other organisations that make up a rich tapestry, which in turn can be quite challenging to engage with in some ways, but having the right structure, the right funding and the right approach to engage in that could make a fundamental difference to any of the challenges that we will see in the future.
Lord Spellar
Where do local authorities fit into your scheme here?
Alex Woodman
I will take that to start. If you look at the structure of any LRF function, the local authority is regarded as a category 1 responder under the Civil Contingencies Act. There should be an absolute round table with our local authority partners within those LRF frameworks. They are well represented across the board. In London there is a very strong LRF network and structure. The complexity comes from the fact that arguably it is probably easier for us in the blue light services to identify who the person is sitting in the chair at theLRF. If I use Hertfordshire as an example—I chair the LRF there—we currently have 10 district authorities and a county council. All are represented in a certain way, but it is fair to say that some of the demands as a category 1 responder on a local authority can be extremely challenging for them. Like Matt just said with the voluntary sector, we become a bit limited at the point of the co-ordination of people, the humanitarian assistance that is needed in crisis, and this is when we look to charities and local authorities. They are such a crucial part of the response, but it can be difficult for a local authority to mobilise the structure in the same way that a blue light service can.
The Chair
We will be coming back to more detail on local authorities in a little while, but I will turn to Lord Peach first.
Lord Peach
I will declare my interests. I am the president of UK reserves for the Armed Forces. I am not just going to talk about that but I am very pleased by the way you described the mobilisation. In the context of the threats, risks and challenges we face, of course the scenario that we are not used to exercising is multiple concurrent threats. My question is: do you have enough people to manage multiple concurrent threats when it all happens at once? Are there reserve-type elements for your blue light services as well as for the military? My second question, which is linked, is that many of our reservists in all three Armed Forces are actually your employees or your volunteers, and that is just the way society has evolved. The question is: if we mobilise, who has first call? I am not suggesting that we will get to the bottom of this today, but it is a question that we have not really asked through exercises for many years.
Alex Woodman
I will go first; tell me if you think I am wrong. It is a very complex landscape. I spent the last two days with colleagues in the military going through some of that exact planning assumption and working. I know you have heard from colleagues in the SJC who have told you about the risk profile that we currently face. This work is under way. What we are looking at as services—and this is one we would play into government—is that the work around homeland defence and the conversations that are happening there needs to accelerate at a greater pace. Our military colleagues are extensively planning in this space. We are working as civilian services with them. On the risk that you speak to with reservists, we are working through and looking at that mapping and modelling. Prioritisation during that risk is crucial and the question I often ask with a lot of these scenarios is: who is in charge? We need some of that clarity and this is probably where we would look to government with their convening role to say, “This is the risk profile that is live. We are working to it but it needs to accelerate.” These conversations are live.
Mark Williams
Building on that point before I come back to concurrency and reservists, we have established a full-time senior officer in the role of liaison with military and other emergency services colleagues on the planning and preparedness for the risks and threats that we face in the defence space. Clearly, that is quite a significant change of posture from that which existed for the last few decades, to be honest. A lot of work is ongoing to establish and prepare the police service for its role and what would be required of it in any heightened conflict situation. We regularly consider concurrency in everything that we plan for. A good example and a very practical current one is we know that the Euros are coming to England, Wales and Scotland in 2028. We know that there may also be a G7 at some point during the year. There is possibly a G20 coming to the UK at the end of 2027. We know that demand spikes in the summer. We know that in recent years disorder, protest and other challenges, many of which stem from geopolitics at a global level, play out on the streets across the country. We are already considering the concurrency of those events, our demand profile, our resources and the training and capacity building we need to put in place in advance of that summer in particular. That work has already started and we do that routinely now for major events and other operations that are taking place. We layer on top other reasonable worst-case scenarios to establish whether or not we can sufficiently mobilise in a law-and-order space to cope with any demands. On reservists, like Alex, we have started the process of better understanding the commitments that we have. We carried out a survey in 2025 of those who are volunteer reservists, those who at the moment are serving in the TA or other voluntary roles. There is a small proportion of them in the 145,000 officers across England and Wales. About 2.2% to 2.9% in most of the forces offer some voluntary support. What we do not yet know—and we are surveying now and will get the results back this August, I hope—is those who are in the strategic reserve. That will give us greater clarity and more specific numbers, which will help us with planning, should they be mobilised for any particular threat on who owns them and how that plays out. Our assessment is that those who are likely to be affected are those with specialist skills, who have worked previously in EOD search and other capabilities like that. That will have a knock-on effect, of course, on local policing services at that time, but it is work in progress.
Matt Killick
On your first question about having enough people, St John Ambulance specifically has about 20,000 volunteers and about 1,400 staff. That is sufficient for what we do day to day for our delivery profile, whether that is first aid at public events or other activity. However, if you look to the next three to four years and the level of our volunteers who potentially are reservists or paramedics or other healthcare professionals in the NHS, straightaway there is a significant risk that a large proportion of those will be taken out of our workforce, and understandably so. For us to look at that and understand from a concurrency perspective whether we have enough people in our workforce, candidly the answer is probably no. We are looking presently at how we work with other voluntary sector organisations who understand command and control and mobilisation at pace, and bring together those collective skills. Next year we celebrate 150 years of St John Ambulance. If you look back at World War I and World War II, we worked in partnership with the British Red Cross and many other organisations. That is the footing we are getting back into behind the scenes to work out how we can collectively respond, not just within the sector but across other commercial organisations where potentially they will not be doing the same activity and we can mobilise those individuals as well. It is a big piece of work to do behind the scenes but it is a genuine risk that we are looking at right now.
Lord Oates
You have already touched slightly on the local resilience forums. Can you say a little bit more about how you think they could be used more effectively, particularly in planning for emergencies as well as responding to incidents, including the role of the voluntary sector? Mr Killick, would you like to start?
Matt Killick
Yes, happily. LRFs are an immense function locally and, as I mentioned earlier, when they work well, they work exceptionally well. Moving from planning and preparedness for emergency to the build to resilience is a fundamental shift that needs to be put in place. As a society, I do not think there is much recognition about the risks that we face in the coming few years or the need to be resilient and what that means in reality. I remember when the term “whole-of-society resilience” was coined a few years ago and everyone was scratching their heads trying to come up with a definition. If you go into Google now, there are 3,000 definitions that all pretty much say the same thing. There is a huge opportunity for the LRF function to be the core central conduit locally and to bring in the voluntary sector. The reason I keep on talking about the voluntary sector is, as you have probably heard, I am very passionate about it, but they are the individuals in many ways, shapes and forms, as colleagues have said, who understand the local community and specific needs, are there prior to the emergency happening and post the emergency finishing. They are the ones who potentially can support and understand what community resilience definitely means, whether it is an individual, a household, a community or the system that sits around that. There is huge scope for LRFs. More funding, more support and training and more guidance is needed for LRFs. As I said, the prescription around engaging with and not just having due regard to the voluntary sector, as it is currently within the CCA, is critical. Without that, we will not see success when the worst happens. Unfortunately, as we all know, it is not if, it is when.
The Chair
Before we move on to the other panellists, can I just butt in? In your written evidence you said that St John sits on some local resilience forums. Do you think you should be sitting on them all?
Matt Killick
Yes, is the honest answer. We had a bumpy few years at St John for a whole range of reasons and we are in a far better place now. We are focusing now on how we have attendance at every single LRF. That is great for St John but, as Alex will know, you could have 100 separate organisations sitting around an LRF table, all representing different parts of the voluntary sector. That is phenomenal for the voluntary sector but entirely ineffective for an LRF trying to deliver a response.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster
Could I follow up on that, too? Is it completely practical in all areas? If there were a duty, but the local branch or whatever said, “To be honest, we are far too busy; we cannot be sitting on all those committees”, could you be flexible in that event?
Matt Killick
There has to be a flexibility to a degree anywhere. Personally, I think that there should be a duty for the local voluntary sector to be in that. On how that is structured locally, there are amazing local community leaders who can represent the broader sector and have a whole range of other meetings that feed into that. There are structural approaches that can work effectively. The vibrancy of the local area would mean that just because St John in this case is there, that does not mean that St John has to represent the voluntary sector. We can be part of the broader group and there will be other organisations that could represent it. There are structural approaches that have been tried and tested in many areas that would work exceptionally well, but it is based on the chair, the ability, the space, the time and the understanding.
The Chair
Thank you. Could you just circle back to Lord Oates’s original question about LRF efficiency and preparedness?
Mark Williams
Yes. May I say something again in support of Matt? My experience during Covid—at the time I was working in Scotland—was that we sought support from the third sector through a single representative because of the scale and size of the number of agencies involved, and it worked very effectively. It was the British Red Cross on that occasion but it represented the third sector and other agencies as well. I think there are ways through this but, nevertheless, it deserves greater thought and consideration. Going back to the LRFs and their effectiveness, I agree. I consider them very much the building blocks of whole-of-society resilience, and rightly so. They are a ready-made, effective structure in place across the country and can be taken advantage of. If there are areas that we wanted to develop and improve—their data sharing and risk intelligence—some of that would require cognisance of things like vetting and other information sharing. I know that there is work ongoing to try to meet some of those challenges: further and more realistic multiagency exercising, a real role in that testing and exercising space, and ownership and responsibility there. Strengthening communication with the public is critical on what the LRFs are, what they do and what they offer; I am sure that is an area that could be developed further. Underpinning a lot of that is a need for greater funding and strengthening of their statutory responsibilities as bodies, which I very much support.
The Chair
Thank you. Mr Woodman, do you have something to add to that?
Alex Woodman
As I said at the start, I am currently chairing our national group that brings together all the LRF forums across the UK. We have regionalised our structures. There is an element where this work is under way now about brigading, co-ordinating, structuring, making sure that it is easier for people to operate. The 38 LRFs across England are invaluable. As Matt said about the localism, understanding the hyperlocal is crucial. I think that what has not been structured in the past is making it easy, if you are a national group, to bolt in 38 different ways and probably add value to what you are saying. Having the duty across the board is crucial. We need to make the system work for people where there is a national conversation that we are trying to bring to the fore, so you speak on behalf of and we structurally see the national picture but the local delivery is still crucial. It is basic command and control of what we are doing. We are starting to implement and bring that in so that we have local, regional and national co-ordination and then we bring it together with key system leaders at a round table, so that you can speak at the national level and to your point: do you need someone 38 different ways? Probably not, but you need to have the ability to pull a lever and have that support coming in at the hyperlocal when you need it. I think that would create a far stronger strategic conversation to our preparedness and, dare I say, when we have to respond to major incidents, the ability to have the convening power of those faces around the table would strengthen the local responses.
Lord Spellar
I fully understand the national centre you are describing, but where would it sit within the administrative system?
Alex Woodman
The image I will try to get in your mind is I always describe it like an hourglass. The top of that is government machinery driving government in crisis: the COBRA unit—experts in doing that—and MHCLG RED and its delivery unit will drive government during crisis. The local delivery currently is all operating in an individual space. We are looking to grip the middle of that hourglass, supported by colleagues in MHCLG RED and the COBRA unit to create a delivery cascade. I would expect to see in preparedness, as I said, national and local. In crisis you can ramp that group up to operate in a command and control space. The Grenfell Tower fire was hyperlocal in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, but you needed co-ordination of national assets and there was international demand on us. So it should have the ability to do two things— prepare for, and respond to.
Lord Oates
How will the LRFs be affected by the expected merger of police forces? Are there things that can be learnt from the Scottish experience and the Scottish resilience structures?
Mark Williams
Obviously, we will need to await the outcome of Lord Hogan-Howe’s work about the structures and how policing may look in the years ahead, but clearly reform is upon us and there will be changes. There will be an impact on LRFs in some way, shape or form. It is hard to say exactly what that is at this stage before we have greater clarity on how many forces there might be and what the geographic spread of them looks like. It may present some challenges in that space but, equally, it presents opportunities, and the refreshing of the structure and potentially a consideration of the LRF structure and how it best serves or works alongside policing will be very important. You touched on Scotland, where I worked for the majority of my service. If I say there is more a command and control model, that is not fully accurate, but there are a number of layers within the resilience partnership structure: local, regional and national. I always found the regional structures to be hugely beneficial. They were supported by funded resilience officials—Scottish government officials. They brought co-ordination and oversight to local support and activity and they linked into the Scottish strategic resilience partnership, which provided an assurance function for what was happening at a local and regional level. There was a natural structure, which worked well in preparedness. It is hard to say whether that will fit a model in the years ahead but clearly there may be lessons to learn from that because there were benefits. I choose to look upon the force restructuring as an opportunity to refresh and reconsider. Given the environment and the whole-of-society structures we are seeking to achieve collectively, this offers a once-in-a-long-period opportunity.
The Chair
Mr Woodman and Mr Killick, do you have anything to add to that or shall we move on to the next issue?
Alex Woodman
I think it is an opportunity. I do not think it takes away. There is an opportunity to convene around it. We will feed back into Lord Hogan-Howe’s review. It creates the opportunity that Mark has said.
Baroness Northover
This leads on from what you have been saying, Mr Woodman in particular, about having no convening authority. Looking at the legislation that is overseeing this, how far should the Civil Contingencies Act clarify or mandate the resilience expected of organisations, including emergency services and critical infrastructure providers? Do you have any other comments on what needs to change to make this as effective as possible? I will come to Mr Woodman first.
Alex Woodman
I think that the CCA in its own right is pretty clear in most places. It requires a duty on category 1 and category 2 responders. I have to say that is not language that I like because it creates a tiered system and, as we have said, when you have crisis and preparedness the agencies that are leading are not always the ones you think will be. Our voluntary sector colleagues lead massively in response. For humanitarian assistance in crisis, you need a round table of people. Sometimes the language is not helpful. One of the areas that we have discussed over the years as missing is the lead agency. At the moment it tells many people what to do and the LRFs bring people together. We have heard about some of the challenges with representation. One of the areas that we are discussing is that this is where the fire and rescue service could play a valuable role with its convening power. We have spoken of trust. One of the comparisons we have given is the way that the Government deliver their Contest strategy. It is a different subject matter but the police are the lead authority for that and we have strong multiagency structures underneath it. At the moment, for resilience, the Government do not necessarily have a delivery arm in that way and that is a role that the fire and rescue service could play in the future as the convening authority, with chief fire officers bringing people together in the geography that they operate in to deliver. It does not take away from the responsibility of others but creates a very good structure that we have seen in other areas with a lead agency to work across all the partnerships to help deliver the requirements of the CCA.
Baroness Northover
Is there a need to change the legislation or can it just be implemented?
Alex Woodman
I am not an expert on bringing in legislation, but I think it could be a shift in direction and guidance. I would have to look at the implementation of the Contest strategy. I think that it is more about government direction in this space. It would need to look at the evolution of the role that fire and rescue can play with its convening power. I do not think that it is heavy legislative change; it is government direction and policy advice with the doctrine of the CCA. The CCA is being reviewed at the end of this year. It is more about having a vehicle for change and a lead agency, so I do not think it would be a complex legislative change.
Mark Williams
I agree with that. In many ways it is about the definition of role. I am less clear on whether that does or does not require legislative change, but the definition of role is really important and where the ownership of resilience risk lies so that there is accountability alongside it. There are some gaps in the CCA from a policing perspective; how enforcement is achieved is a good example. The police do not struggle with it but it is not a common role that we fulfil unless at times of crisis, of which Covid is a good example. Further clarity, definition and foresight on that would be helpful. We have touched already on the strengthening of the statutory basis and funding of the LRFs, which would be beneficial in the review and consideration of the CCA, coming back to the point that that is the building block for whole-of-society resilience.
Matt Killick
I mentioned earlier the line in there is about having regard to the voluntary sector and we would want that language to be strengthened. There is a risk of putting a dependency on a sector that has no statutory funding, so there is a risk in that space as well. The two have to go hand in hand to a degree. We are an immensely capable sector that can mobilise exceptionally quickly. There is something for me about clarifying the expected resilience capabilities across all sectors in that. It is a shift in the language in the CCA to what is expected of the voluntary sector organisations that are an auxiliary to government or other aspects as well, so it is about being really clear. While you do not need legislation to potentially do a lot of this work, having it there gives you the backbone and enables you to come together and utilise that to the benefit of society. The CCA has been reviewed many times. It has not fundamentally changed that much over its evolution. I think that we are at a point now as a society based on what we have learned and going on what we see as the risks in the coming few years where this is an opportunity to review the CCA and make it truly fit for purpose in the future.
Baroness Mobarik
I have a quick question. Assistant Chief Constable Williams has touched on it, but what would you say is the greatest vulnerability in the UK’s emergency response system that is receiving too little attention? What should Parliament be doing to address that?
Alex Woodman
I will go first and again see if colleagues agree. I would play this back the other way round and ask: what do the public expect when something has gone wrong? They do not really care who is doing it; they just want to be looked after in crisis and they have an expectation that the system will work for them. The gaps come where we do not respond and co-ordinate as a system. Across the UK, if you dial 999 now in a crisis you will get an excellent blue light response, your LRFs will go into activation and we will put in place strategic co-ordination groups. The risk comes when we look at particularly the humanitarian assistance side of delivery. That part of the system does not mobilise in the same way. Whether you are impacted by flood or evacuated as a result of fire, when our communities need humanitarian assistance—bringing in our local government colleagues, being able to work across the voluntary sector—the system does not currently work to mobilise in the same way, convene a round table at pace to deliver those services. I think that is where we need to shift to make sure that there is a single-system approach, not a really good blue light response and then a couple of days later we start getting the humanitarian assistance bit right. We can learn from previous public inquiries that tell us that. We are very good at gripping, structuring and putting things in place. We need to evolve system leadership to properly put our arms around crisis in all its phases.
Mark Williams
On the final point, the systemic risks and the system-wide risks are a huge issue—the concurrency that has already been touched on. Cyber is a good example where the impact on one agency or business has a ripple effect into huge areas of society. The planning for and emergency preparedness to plan for that is far more complicated and complex than it once was. Finally—and this is a police-only point—funding and support for resilience across society is inconsistent. Inconsistent funding leads to uneven preparedness and, as a result, there are risks that emergency services— sometimes the police—are seen as a service of first and last resort to fill the gaps when they appear. While we do that, and we will continue to do it, we need to close some of those gaps and consider how we more effectively join up the whole system of resilience support in funding and delivery.
The Chair
Before we move on from the Civil Contingencies Act, do you think it is still useful to distinguish between category 1 responders and category 2 responders as defined by the Act, or should they just be merged into responders?
Alex Woodman
As I said at the start, I think that it is unhelpful dialogue, if I am honest with you. It creates a tiered system and I am not sure where the value added is. I have always said that. Chair, given time, I can follow up in writing about some of the work we have done in this space and our view on it. There are more complexities around what could be done with the CCA that may be better set out for you.
The Chair
Thank you. Are there any other quick comments on that?
Matt Killick
I agree that if you dial 999 now you will get a great service from our blue light responders. The only challenge I have is that there is not enough resource already in those services. Last week when we had the red heat warning, we had multiple ambulance trusts contacting St John to say, “Can you help us?”—rightly so, as that is part of our position, but we had three or four days of quite significant heat and one ambulance trust had over 400 calls waiting in the stack to be allocated to an ambulance. That is one week of heat. Going back to the concurrency issue that we mentioned earlier, if you have these issues coming up, whether it is conflict on domestic soil or something happening in Europe that impacts us domestically as well, our blue light services will be exceptionally stretched. Already all our services and NHS trusts are under immense pressure. How we recognise, understand and generally grip that, and not wait for it to happen and then respond, is probably one of the biggest challenges that we will face. There are solutions out there but at the moment our systems are already significantly under immense pressure and I cannot see them getting any better moving forward, despite the best efforts from everybody around the table.
The Chair
Thank you. We will move on now to a different issue. Lady Winterton?
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster
You have given a comprehensive overview but I want to bring you back to the issue of public education and training. I know that the fire chiefs set out in their written evidence the work that is being done already on public education about fire risks and so on. The police chiefs said that building up public resilience eases the pressure on the emergency services altogether. I think the fire chiefs have already said this but there is a good opportunity to build on the public education that is already done. Would you like to expand a little bit on what that might look like in education and training?
Alex Woodman
From the fire chiefs’ perspective, we have the benefit of a trusting relationship with the public, probably arguably to the envy of many other agencies. We get through the front door and we engage with people in a different way. We have a very different relationship as fire and rescue with the public. We are seeing the opportunity of the prevention message we currently do in a number of ways about fire, we do lots with water safety and we get lots of buy-in from the public when we do things—we are looking at the ever-increasing risks that we face, the role that we could play in resilience and preparedness and the ability for us to message, work with, warn, inform. We do many home fire safety visits. We think that we could enhance those engagements and touchpoints and again a message that we can land and is often listened to.
Mark Williams
I completely agree. As a policing service, we also feel we have a very strong institutional level of trust with the public when it comes to things like communications in crisis and during times of need. It is incredibly important that it continues, albeit in a different relationship and role from that of the fire service. We are very supportive of the increase in civil capacity and the institutions that support that. It is incredibly important that we invest in the voluntary agencies, local communities and the groups and third sector that support communities in that way. There is no doubt that the greater resilience there is and the less demand there is on policing during times of crisis, the more self-fulfilling communities are. Critical to that is that public preparedness comes from clear, concise, honest communication that is understood from trusted sources, whoever that may be, because it feels like there is a gap there. I know there is work to address that on the cards but, the sooner that starts, the better and the more effective the journey will be.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster
St John Ambulance is out there in the community all the time at events, fairs and things like that. Do you have any written material that you give out to people or would that be useful?
Matt Killick
We do. There are a couple of different aspects to the organisation. We are the largest commercial trainer of first aid out there, and as part of our new strategy we have the ambition to train over 800,000 people a year in first aid skills. For us, training the public is core to what we do—everything from, yes, we will have a Resusci Annie at your local fete, all the way through to training in schools and other aspects as well. It is a real cross-section of how we do that. Luckily, synonymous with our brand and who we are, people recognise us for delivering that. There is a huge opportunity here. The bit that I am reflecting on is there is a need for the three of our agencies to come together to work more effectively. We are talking about similar members of the public, those individuals who have a propensity to act and who want to be trained. There is a flipside to this that we have started to see, especially with first aid training. It is the confidence to act irrespective of whether you have the right training or not. We tend to be in a far more litigious society now and people are slightly more worried about stepping forward and helping. We are not seeing this as an epidemic but it is definitely an issue. We launched a campaign a couple of years ago called CPR Bra, which is very simple. If you are having a heart attack and you are wearing a bra, the guidance is the bra comes off, especially if it is underwired because that can get in the way of putting the pads on someone’s chest effectively. I do not want to speak for the ladies around the table but I am pretty certain you would like to live as opposed to modesty being potentially taken away from you for a few minutes. I should not presume to assume. We recognise that the confidence for people to act when they have training is a key component of the training piece as well. There is an ability for us to think about that more effectively.
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster
We have had a lot of evidence from the Nordic countries about the leaflets that they give out, “This is what you need to do in the case of a disaster”. Could you envisage that if you had such information to give out to the public when you are at events, presuming you do not have that at the moment, would that be—
Matt Killick
We have first aid materials that we give out but nothing—
Baroness Winterton of Doncaster
First aid, yes. I am talking about bigger—
Matt Killick
Yes, I agree. It comes back to an earlier point—and I cannot remember who mentioned it—about the public trust. If you are at an event and you are given a leaflet that talks about resilience in emergencies, I wonder how many individuals would go, “Oh, that is interesting” and then just throw it in the bin on the way out because it does not resonate to them. However, we can think about organisations where there is implicit public trust—fire, St John, police, anybody else—and how we utilise that and promote, “This is really beneficial for you”, even if it is just to pin it on the fridge because it gives you the three or four most basic things to do in a specific situation.
The Chair
I think that links in with Lady Hunter’s follow-up question.
Baroness Hunter of Auchenreoch
Thank you for coming and bringing your expertise and experience to us. I am more interested in young people, and the older I get the more grandchildren I seem to accumulate. I have been asking them, “Are you prepared? Are you aware of what dangers might be out there?” There is a real dearth of knowledge among young people. They do some rudimentary first aid and fire drills but they do not have the concept of real risk. Baroness Winterton was talking about the Nordic style, having it in primary school. There is this new subject called citizenship to be brought into the primary school curriculum. I know the British Red Cross has been on about this for some time, saying this is a big opportunity. Have you been consulted about what should go into this new curriculum? What do you think should go into it? What are the best things to prepare young people?
Matt Killick
It is interesting. We have not been consulted in St John, as I understand, but that is the nature of many of these initiatives that develop and we are more than happy to be involved fully. When I looked into this, it is a quite tightly focused programme of five core areas—financial literacy, democracy and government, law and rights, media literacy, and climate education, as I understand it, I could be wrong. That was quite interesting for me because I thought, “Hold up, where is resilience in that?” That should be front and centre number one, and resilience is not just first aid. Resilience is everything we have spoken about today. It is slightly clichéd, but young people are the next generation. In St John we have over 20,000 young people who form our cadets and I had the privilege of meeting two of them yesterday, Dylan Hurst and Emily England, and Emily is our national cadet of the year. She is one of the most articulate, impressive people I have come across in a long time, along with Dylan, who is our outgoing cadet of the year. They work alongside the Lady Mayoress or the Lord Mayor of London every single year. It is a prestigious role and they have a vocal opportunity to talk about the needs of young people as well. You can engage with young people where it does not have to be scary, where it is not about saying, “Go and do drills where you sit under a table because something may happen”. You can make it fun and enjoyable, which means that education sticks. There is a huge opportunity for resilience to be a fundamental strand if we are developing a citizenship programme and that embodies everything that we have been speaking about today. Young people are exceptionally smart. Over half a million young people do Scouting, where I used to work, every single year. They have the ability to step up and be interested in what is happening around them. My two daughters regularly take me to task about a whole range of aspects, as I am sure many of your grandchildren and children do, too. It does not appear to be in that programme. If it is not in that programme, it is an immense missed opportunity, which we must look at.
Mark Williams
It is a real challenge in how we get the communication right for the right people. Communicating with younger people and students, who are arguably more reliant on digital, social media and other channels like that, means that, for example, they are more susceptible to disinformation and the way that that is often used by malign actors that undermine the efforts made in these spaces. Vulnerable members of the community may rely on a small number of trusted friends or family. Those in lower socioeconomic groups may not react well to a direction to stockpile food and other such things when they are more concerned about day in, day out, putting food on the table. We have to be balanced and nuanced in how we engage in this debate and communicate effectively on this approach. We do not want people to panic but we do want them to be more prepared, engage with each other and feel part of a community. We are addressing big society issues and I do not think they will all be solved quickly or with a single communication plan or strategy that comes out centrally. We need to enter into this with our eyes open but, equally, start that journey and nuance, consider, and carefully step incrementally through the journey that I think lies in front of us for re-engaging communities and society, enhancing their empowerment and resilience at a personal, family and community level. It will need to be targeted and channelled in certain ways for certain groups.
Alex Woodman
I have a brief point. What makes me nervous is that I am not aware that we have been consulted on that. One of the challenges that we all have is that the things that we do with young people do not necessarily sit within our statutory responsibilities. We have seen over the years, whether it is with the delivery of our cadets or otherwise, it becomes increasingly difficult for us to balance the investment in that against the front-line delivery. Fire and rescue services have to create a community risk management plan. That is our look at what we do and how we respond to that risk. The delivery of services with young people has become leaner and leaner over the years and I feel that is an opportunity that we are missing. We still deliver the King’s Trust and still have engagement, but we have probably seen that reduce over the years. That misses our opportunity to create the future resilient society that we are trying to do.
Baroness Hunter of Auchenreoch
You are saying that we should seize the opportunity of this curriculum and make recommendations.
Alex Woodman
Yes.
The Chair
Lord Farmer has a quick supplementary before we move to our final question.
Lord Farmer
This is fairly quick. It concerns the immediate situation on public education. At the moment we are not really a resilient culture. For instance, the A&E department is under pressure the whole time because people are turning up there in all sorts of areas. That is what we are used to. We need immediate education now to start dealing with that mindset because that is where we are. What do you think we should be doing to handle that?
Alex Woodman
Mark touched on a point to start with. There is a lot of information out there. It is really difficult when you try to lock in and say, “What are the five things we want to tell somebody to do to be prepared?” We need to look at our colleagues in behavioural psychology, and at good comms campaigns. The shift we must make—and we would look to government for this—is to say, “Are we speaking openly enough?” If you turn on the news at the moment, lots of people are seeing the risks that are coming to us. The shift needs to be talking about risk, having a prepared culture in a number of different ways with lots of different engagement strategies. We put lots of information out there at the minute but again, as Mark mentioned, do you actually go looking for that information? Do you feel prepared? I do not think we do what some of the Nordic countries do about having a clear message and golden thread across all the messaging that we are giving to people.
Baroness Paul of Shepherd’s Bush
Thank you for your evidence. It has been very interesting and you have been candid about your thoughts. With that in mind, what one recommendation or point would you like us to know about that we can do for preparedness and resilience? What is the one thing that we can do that keeps you awake at night?
The Chair
Top of your list, that we should be saying to government,
Alex Woodman
I will go first. We need a clear national resilience structure to be put in place. It is sharpening and enhancing everything that we have currently. We need more clarity, with a senior Minister leading and gripping and owning this portfolio of resilience and preparedness. That needs to play into who is the senior official who does not currently sit in one of the obvious delivery units. I would like to see the creation of a national resilience forum so it cascades all the way down in gripping how the UK prepares, how we structure and have, for a better term, a command structure in place with clear accountability. My fear at the moment is that things can go into different places, ultimately. I said earlier about the role that fire and rescue can play as a convening authority for that delivery and to me that is the role that we could look at aligning. I touched on earlier, and I will put it in writing to you, looking at the role with fire having community risk management plans. We are one of the agencies that is required to be structurally prepared for risk. There is a lot of synergy and alignment with what we are talking about on this subject here. That is what I think we should look at.
Mark Williams
It is that, and consistent funding that is not short term— that has a window that is longer than 12 months.
Matt Killick
I agree with colleagues, strangely. To add to that, obviously I am speaking about the voluntary sector. There are hundreds of thousands of highly skilled, highly trained volunteers already out there, and “volunteers” does not do them service. I have volunteers who do a full-time job and then come and do another full-time job in terms of hours every single week for St John. You can see that in droves across the entire sector. As I mentioned earlier, the voluntary sector is not formally recognised in these structures and that is my biggest clarion call here, for us to be seen as a core component of building national resilience. There is a real risk in some conversations with new entities and new forces being created. You do not need to do that. You have organisations, systems, structures, processes already there, but they are there by virtue of the fact that they are able to fundraise and do what they do and, frankly, resilience is a by-product of that. That is great in many ways but it is an immense risk. Any sustained approach is back to the funding issue. Funding is important, but it is about fundamentally recognising the voluntary sector and ensuring that they are part of national and local structures and enabling a standing capability and capacity as opposed to what happens in some areas now as more of an emergency add-on.
Lord Spellar
With which government department should this sit? You said about having a Minister. With which government department do you think it possibly should sit?
Alex Woodman
The Cabinet Office and MHCLG have clear roles in this but we do not have somebody who sits above that to say, “Are we prepared?” There are departments with a current KPI in this space, but we are saying that if you had somebody who sits above that, there would be a host department, somewhere that has a cross-cutting remit to challenge, hold to account, ensure preparedness on behalf of government and then arguably hold us all to account as well.
The Chair
Your three top-line recommendations are very clear, very strong and very helpful. Thank you very much indeed for your time today. I can close the public session.