Since its inception civil defence in Britain has been a function of the local authorities on the basis that they have existing structures, staff and equipment on which to base and build a civil defence organisation. They know their area and its people and the people know the local authority. In the event of an attack they, or more correctly their staff, would be at the forefront of any response and from the early 1960s they would also have been involved in regional government.

 

The size of the task

 Plans made for the 1970s paid little attention to the crisis period before a nuclear attack but the new strategy in the 1980s required it to be considered. The Emergency Planning Guidelines for Local Authorities said that in the crisis period the local authorities should concentrate their resources on tasks related to the protection and survival of the people and generally to the war effort. This meant that they should prepare to implement their plans for the post-attack period whilst coping with the additional problems arising during the crisis and any conventional attacks. In practice, the tasks needed to put the local authorities onto a war footing would be enormous. Details of the preparations and activities they would have been involved with are given later but a typical urban district of 150000 people would have to find, set up, staff and equip say 5 large shelters, 75 Community Support Centres, 75 emergency feeding centres and numerous information points. It would need to close its schools and issue ration documents. Patients discharged from hospital might need to be looked after, as would those made homeless by enemy action. In some areas, refugees might be a problem. They would need to organise a radiac reporting network and train staff to use the equipment. Volunteers from the public would need to be recruited, organised and trained as community advisers, Community Support Centre helpers, etc. The Emergency Centre would need to be established, manned, possibly on a 24-hour basis, its communications brought to readiness and tested frequently and daily reports made to the REC. And all this should be done whilst maintaining “business as usual”[1]. After a nuclear attack, they would have to put their post-attack plans into operation as best they could.

 

The Controller

It was expected that the chief officer of the county or district council would be appointed as the Controller and it seems probable that Controllers at both County and District levels would be appointed at some time during the crisis period and given additional powers and functions under emergency legislation. After regional government had been introduced they would be members of the regional government answerable to the Regional Commissioner and the normal functioning of the elected councils would cease. EPGLA implied that under emergency legislation all the powers and functions would be vested in an emergency committee of 3 council members but the role of this committee was rather ambiguous. EPGLA said of the relationship of the committee to the controllers that “for as long as circumstances permitted it to act the committee should be consulted on general policy in relation to the disposition of council resources and the discharge of those functions essential to the life of the community. The Controller…would from time to time report to the committee on the steps that he, as a regional government official, was taking. The committee would leave day to day operational decisions to the Controller, whose actions must necessarily embrace matters beyond the committee’s knowledge and responsibility”. The implication is clear. The Regional Controller is the legitimate authority in the region and the Controllers are responsible to him. They might tell the committee what was happening, but the committee has no power except possibly in relation to the council’s peacetime functions and responsibilities most of which will have ceased or become irrelevant in the face of a nuclear attack. The implication is also clear that the Controllers powers and functions would go beyond those applicable to the peacetime council.

Regulations issued throughout the Cold War under the 1948 Civil defence Act required county councils to prepare for civil defence. The plans that had to be drawn up were all essentially short term and local dealing with the initial results of an attack and what might be called the survival period. There was no mention of planning for the longer term although this would probably have been better left until the time came given the huge number of uncertainties in this area. When EPGLA spoke of the roles of the Controllers, and therefore by association the county or district organisations it did so in these short-term rather than strategic terms. In a virtual repeat of the 1973 circular on Machinery of Government in War EPGLA said the County Controller’s tasks would be – 

·            To determine priorities.

·         To plan for the most effective use of surviving resources in the county.

·         To co-ordinate activities of local essential services.

·         To identify resources for future use.

These tasks would be achieved through the county’s chief officers, the District Controllers and representatives of services attached to the Controller.

 The District Controller’s tasks would be – 

·           To assess the position of the district.

·         To determine priorities.

·         To identify and co-ordinate the deployment of resources.

·         To exercise full functions of the district council and those additional functions which may be delegated to him by the County Controller.

These lists shows the differences between peacetime and wartime activities and confirm that the District Controller would be responsible to the County Controller as part of the regional government control chain. A situation that does not happen in peacetime local government where independencies are often closely guarded.

 

Regulations and plans

Local authorities had been required to prepare plans for civil defence under regulations dating from 1948 but in the early years they were left to the councils’ civil defence departments. Throughout the 1960s, the direct roles of the council increased and in 1967 more formal regulations requiring them to make plans were introduced. In April 1974 the local government structure in England and Wales was radically changed. Previously civil defence had been centred on the county and county borough councils. Now the counties were re-organised and the district introduced as a new second tier. This required a new set of civil defence regulations to be issued under the authority of the Civil defence Act 1948. The new Civil Defence (Planning) Regulations 1974 (1975 in Scotland) however imposed the same requirements on the local authorities as the earlier 1967 ones. The new Regulations made it a function of every County Council and the Greater London Council to make plans for – 

1. Collecting and distributing information on an attack
2. Controlling and co-ordinating action necessary as a result of an attack
3. Advising the public on protective measures
4. Organising a billeting service for those made homeless by an attack
5. Prevention of disease
6. Disposal of human remains
7. Distributing, conserving and controlling food in the event of an attack including emergency feeding
8. Repair, demolition, clearance, etc of buildings and roads
9. Providing and maintaining any other vital services
10. Training their staffs and those of the District and London Borough councils to put the plans into effect.

The District and London Borough Councils were required to assist in the making of the County’s plans and to carry them out. If a crisis occurred, counties, at the request of the “designated Minister” (in practice the Home Secretary) would have to take precautionary steps to implement the plans.

The key word continued to be plan. No physical preparations had to be made beyond writing the plans. But there was no direction as to what to include in the plans, how comprehensive they should be, how they should be structured and so on. Once a plan had been written there was no requirement to keep it up to date or do anything at all with it. They were to be drawn up by the newly introduced Emergency Planning Officers or EPOs although there was no requirement for the councils to recruit these planners. The EPOs were then largely left to their own devices. Each Home Defence Region had one county Chief Emergency Planning Officer who acted as a convenor of regular meetings of the EPOs in the region. Many also held meetings throughout the 1970s and 1980s with their opposite numbers in the armed forces and public utilities. The government departments continued to prepare circulars outlining their plans but there was very little guidance from the Home Office on the grounds that this was a local authority function and one in which central government should not interfere.

 

More regulations 

As discussed earlier the failure of Exercise Hard Rock in 1982 focussed the government’s mind on the role and activities of the local authorities and the new Civil Defence (General Local Authority Functions) Regulations were introduced in 1983. As well as plans for the same activities as the 1974 Regulations the new ones required new ones to be drawn up for rescue services, the use existing buildings for public shelter and the increased role for volunteers.

More significantly, there were two new requirements in the Regulations. Local authorities would in future be required to take part in exercises and there was now a specific requirement to “keep under review and revise plans” once written. There was however still no guidance about what exactly a “plan” should be nor any timescale for completion. The Home Secretary did however warn in Parliament that if local authorities did not perform their functions powers existed under the 1948 Act whereby the Minister could take on the task and pass the cost onto the council.

Initially there was still to be no monitoring of the plan making activities but it was soon announced that progress reports would be required. This was to be in the form of a questionnaire, later sent out annually to all counties and the six Fire and Civil Defence Authorities. The latter were introduced in 1985 to organise the fire services and carry out the civil defence obligations in the areas covered before their abolition by the Greater London Council and the metropolitan counties. Using these progress reports, the Home Office, overseen by a newly appointed Civil Defence Adviser, the veteran civil defence worker Eric Alley would monitor the local authorities. The first questionnaire found that local authority’s response to the Regulations was “not impressive” and only a handful of authorities had completed plans. They were then instructed to complete them by the end of 1985.

The Home Office produced a brief report on the implementation of the 1983 Regulations as at 31 July 1986. The report said that some plans were based on the 1974 Regulations and 14 counties had to be chased for replies. Three counties (Avon, Mid Glamorgan and South Glamorgan) had not submitted plans and consideration was being given to withholding the civil defence grant from them. Significantly, the report said, “…in most cases they [the plans] needed further work to meet the requirements of the Regulations”.  

The situation in Essex in 1986 illustrates what had and had not been done in one county. The county had produced an outline plan under the 1983 Regulations but no districts had any plans although 2 had ones from 1976. The county had both a main and a standby emergency centre but only 9 of the 14 districts had adequate centres and 5 of these needed further work. There was virtually no staff training. Most districts had appointed Scientific Advisers but they were not very active. Only 4 districts had any volunteer organisation. 

The Home Office report on the implementation of the 1983 Regulations in 1988 said that the standard of plans was much better than in 1986 when “…many of the plans received were incomplete, failed to take account of the government’s planning assumptions, contained little or no operational detail and in a number of cases amounted to little more than a statements of intent.” In 1988, the plans were generally better but “the picture still varies from authority to authority and even the best plans clearly require further work”. This applied in particular to plans below county level.

Many supposedly complete plans had gaps, often quite serious ones and usually relating to operational detail such as communications procedures and standard operating procedures for the emergency centres. Local authorities prepared what they had to do and most EPOs did their best but a middle-ranking council official suddenly told, in a period of developing crisis to put into operation part of a plan lacking in practical detail which he or she was previously hardly aware of would have been hard pressed.

 

The Planned Programme of Implementation

In response to the failings highlighted by the 1986 report the government decided to take a direct role in monitoring the local authorities’ activities. This would be coupled with a threat to withhold the civil defence grant, which by this time was also available to be used indirectly to support peacetime emergency planning. This resulted in the Planned Programme of Implementation or PPI. A draft version of the PPI had been sent to the local authority associations in July 1986 together with the report on progress in the implementation of the 1983 Regulations and draft guidance on preparation of plans. The PPI, as finally announced in 1986[2] was to be based on a “three year rolling programme, setting priorities and a time table for systematic monitoring by the Home Office”. Its main points were – 

(a)     Each county council and Fire and Civil Defence Authority would have a series of targets for the staged preparation of civil defence plans. 

(b)     The production of operational plans was to take place within 3 years based on the requirements of the 1983 Regulations. There was a rolling 6-month cycle to prepare plans under each of the operational areas. The Home Office laid down which plans were to be produced in each 6 monthly period. 

(c)     Plans had to be submitted to the Home Office, which would review progress each October. 

(d)     The approval mechanisms for the civil defence grant to local authorities would be linked to the satisfactory progress in making the plans. 

The Nuclear Free Zones were opposed to the PPI but the comprehensive, and no doubt expensive, legal opinion they took advised that it would be unwise for the authorities not to make the required plans.

The plans written up to the mid-1980s varied considerably in length and quality. They tended to be based heavily on the emergency services circulars and tended to have little practical content. Some of the lengthier ones were heavily padded with instructions on how to work dosimeters to measure radiation, how to write messages, diagrams of emergency feeding equipment and so on. One even had a diagram of a helicopter-landing site. Such detailed information might be useful in the hands of someone who would be implementing a well-developed, comprehensive plan but not in what was meant to be an outline of strategy. The impression often given is that the aim was quantity rather than quality. In practice, the plans were written and distributed to the principal council officers and other bodies involved such as the army and the Red Cross, but the people who might be asked to do the work at the grass-roots if a crisis developed were not involved.

The lack of guidance on plan writing was one of the main complaints of the Nuclear Free Zone movement. In 1988, some guidance was given on it[3] saying that the plan should give an understandable review of all activities and a framework for carrying them out. The plan should state the objectives, the organisation that would achieve them, the roles of the individuals, where resources would come from and what actions would be taken by individuals to carry them out. The plans drawn up under this guidance tended to read more like management textbooks than a simple practical guide for action in a crisis. Most were typically long lists of what had to be done with vague instructions such as “ensure food stocks are built up” and “identify sources of public concern”. The lists of tasks for individual officers were full of talk of assessing, co-ordinating, collecting, identifying and establishing. These can be called the “whats” or the aims of the plans. What was too often missing was the “hows” - how each task could be done. The plans would give lists of schools, etc which were to be set up as Community Support Centre even mentioning that they should have, following the circular on the subject, 8 staff and be equipped with food, first aid materials, etc. But the person tasked with actually setting up the centre on the day would look in vain for a plan of where in the school to set up various services, where to get the equipment, how to run it on a day-to-day basis, etc. The padding however tended now to be less but this did not stop one London borough filling its plan with 75 pages, one-third of its total length, of pictures of the outsides of the buildings intended for use as Community Support Centres. One Chief Emergency Planning Officer described his plan as nothing more than a wish list.

 

The subject of plans

The Regulations required local authorities to draw up plans for various civil defence purposes. These purposes had tended to stay the same throughout the Cold War although 1984 Regulations introduced some new ones. There was little guidance with drawing up each plan and certainly no “specimen” or standard on which to base them. Consequently, each local authority’s plans were different although there were some broad trends common to most of them. The following paragraphs look at the subject of the plans and the general response.

1.       The collection and distribution of information about an attack  

This largely related to the collection of information locally about fall-out. The local authority would issue Personal Dose Rate Meters for measuring fall-out to its staff at Community Support Centres, work parties, etc who would pass information back to the Scientific Advisors who in turn would work out when it was safe to leave shelter and for how long. There was also a general requirement to keep the REC and later RGHQ informed.

 2.       Control and co-ordination

This essentially meant establishing a group of senior officials under the Controller that would operate from the Emergency Centre to co-ordinate and direct the survival activities at the various levels of county, district and community.

 3.       Instructing and advising the public

This was mainly the task of central government via the Central Office of Information in the crisis period but districts would set up local information points to amplify the advice and give it a more local and practical basis for example on the levels of social security benefits payable and where to go for shelter.

After nuclear attack, there would be a desperate need for information but national television and radio would cease and there would be no newspapers or postal service. Districts would continue to provide local information points at say CSCs to distribute information about emergency feeding, volunteering, etc. Local controllers would be able to make limited radio broadcasts using the Wartime Broadcasting Service via the RGHQs. The problem would however not just be distributing information but of obtaining it. In reality, most communities would have little idea of what was happening outside their own immediate areas for many weeks.

 4.       Public shelters

There was no requirement for the local authorities to provide, or plan to provide, shelters before the 1984 Regulations. These now required local authorities to make plans for “utilising such buildings structures excavations and other features of land in their area as are suitable for the purpose of providing civil defence shelters for the public”. This implied that no shelters were to be specially built and also that they were to be shelters against the effects of fall-out and not blast. 

In the crisis period, people would be advised by TV and radio broadcast, adverts in the press and up to mid-1980s the Protect and Survive booklet to reinforce their homes against fall-out and to build an inner refuge. But some homes such as flats and mobile homes could not provide sufficient protection hence the requirement to provide shelter space usually in basement of building or underground car parks which would need to be stocked with bedding, water, food, lighting, etc for the expected 14 days during which people might have to stay under cover

Behind the shelter policy was the idea of “stay put” which had replaced the policy of mass evacuation. The government message would be that no place in the country was safer than any other from fall-out. Some areas were obviously more likely to be attacked than others but this point was glossed over. This idea was also behind the plans to disperse for example bulk food stocks and hospital supplies. They were not necessarily to be moved from a potentially dangerous area to a less dangerous one. The idea was to spread these resources so that they were not concentrated in any one place.

 5.       Rescue services

Pictures of the civil defence forces at work during the last war invariably show rescue squads digging survivors from the ruins of their homes. This concept continued when civil defence was re-established and a key part of the Corps was its rescue teams. Initially these were equipped with heavy rescue equipment and some training grounds featured specially built “nuclear villages” where the squads could practice on suitably ruined buildings. However, as the scale of the damage from a hydrogen bomb attack became known it was realised that the number of survivors who were not trapped would swamp any aid that could be provided so there was little point in trying to plan for large scale rescue work. The rescue squads were therefore re-equipped with much lighter equipment and the idea of organised groups steadily working their way into the heart of a devastated city digging out survivors as they went was abandoned.

Rescue was largely forgotten after the Corps was abolished but the need for some rescue capability for the conventional period was recognised in the 1980s. The planning response was usually to delegate the task to the fire brigade supplemented by council works staffs and volunteers.

 6.       Temporary accommodation and maintenance of the homeless 

In the 1950s large scale plans were drawn up based on those from the last war to evacuate “priority classes”, essentially women and children, from the cities that were expected to be targeted. They would be taken, usually by train, to reception areas where Corps member and other volunteers would arrange billeting with local families. As with most civil defence plans it was the easy things that were planned for. The real problem would come with the billeting of millions of people for an indefinite period and no one seems to have considered the effects of the men left at home without their families to keep the economy going while waiting to be bombed

The evacuation plans were gradually changed and when the precautionary period was reduced to only 2-3 days, a revised plan to move some 9½ million people from 19 conurbations only up to 50 miles was considered. It would still be totally impractical and it was quietly dropped in favour of the “stay put” policy in the mid-1960s although this was not formally announced until 1973. Evacuation was again considered in the early 1980s by a working party of the Home Defence Committee but nothing came of it.

The Protect and Survive booklet warned against moving away from home. It told readers that “...your own local authority will be best able to help you in war. If you move away - unless you have a place of your own to go to or intend to live with relatives - the authority in your new area will not help you with accommodation, or food, or other essentials.”. In practice, planners at all levels did not expect people to “stay put”. Although the Regulations required local authorities to plan only to accommodate local people made homeless by an attack, all the exercises assumed there would be floods of refugees or “self-evacuees” as they were called who would need to be fed and sheltered. The government feared that these refugees would clog up the transport system and Essential Service Routes were designated which would be kept free of them to allow for the movement of essential traffic. In reality, such a plan would not be practical and it was quietly dropped in the 1980s.

Even if people did “stay put”, and EPGLA said the policy was “only advisory” some people would still need temporary homes if theirs had been destroyed or if they were away from their own home at the time of the attack. The 1950s idea was for “Rest Centres” where those bombed out could find immediate assistance and shelter before being moved to more permanent accommodation. The idea of the rest centre was re-introduced in 1976[4]. Now there should be one centre capable of taking 200 people for every 10000 of the population. Again, this would only provide temporary care pending billeting although unlike in 1950s there was to be no formal billeting scheme. Billeting would depend on circumstances at the time but if necessary householders would be ordered to take in the homeless. Billeting was potentially an emotive issue and the 1980s plans tended to play down its impact. EPGLA simply referred to “…a number of options loosely described as billeting” and “…placing families in suitable houses”.

The 1980s strategy saw more need for a focal point for the community in the crisis period and beyond and idea of the Community Support Centre or CSC was introduced. These would provide the same services as the earlier rest centres but also be a focal point for information, volunteering, etc. The expectation was that one CSC would be set up for each “community” of around 2000 people. (It can be noted that this was the same basis as the 1950s Wardens Post area). The CSC, which in some plans was called a rest centre, would be staffed by volunteers and be pre-stocked with bedding, food, sanitation, emergency lighting, etc. Most local authority plans provided long lists of proposed CSC sites but in reality these were just lists of schools, village halls and other publicly owned buildings which would have space. Little was done to plan for their preparation and equipping.

 7.       Prevention of disease and the spread of disease

This would not be a problem in the pre-nuclear attack period except in areas with large numbers of refugees who would be living rough. The real problem would come after the attack when many people would be living in unhealthy and crowded conditions in public shelters and CSCs. Those in their own homes would have no running water, sewage or refuse disposal facilities. Emergency Feeding Centres would be a potential source of major food poisoning, to which would be added the problems of sewage, unburied bodies and rotting refuse. The basic message in the plans was to be aware of the need for hygiene.

 8.       Burial of the dead

One aspect of the 1980s planning task was the wide range potential attacks to prepare for – everything from a few conventional bombs to a major nuclear attack. A conventional war might produce a few dozen extra deaths at a time but a full scale nuclear attack would result in more bodies than any organisation could cope with. The problems of removing bodies from the rubble would be worsened by the restrictions imposed by fall-out. Almost certainly any area with large numbers of bodies would simply be abandoned. Many survivors from an attack would die from their injuries and later many more would die from radiation and disease. EPGLA and many local authority plans glossed over the emotive issue of mass burial whilst others covered it in considerable detail suggesting for example the number of graves that could be dug with a JCB. One London borough plan listed 45 items necessary for the disposal of human remains ranging from shovels to nailbrushes to gas masks. It did not however mention where any of these would come from. EPGLA simply speaks of leaving the place and method of disposal to an ad hoc decision at the time. Some local authority plans simply repeated this but others talk of earmarking parks, etc for mass burials.

 9.Provision for emergency feeding.

 This vital area is covered in depth in the next file. 

10. Works services

Local authority plans usually covered the provision of emergency works services using their own labour forces to clear blocked roads, repair lightly damaged buildings and restore essential services wherever possible.  

11. Provision and maintenance of services. 

This was a “catch all” requirement that EPGLA says would include welfare, education, transport, finance and legal, etc. It would have relevance in the transition to war phases when it would probably come under the general heading of “business as usual”. After a nuclear attack, such considerations would have little relevance. As the situation began to stabilise into the recovery period, thoughts could turn to providing these types of services but this would be under the direction of the Regional Commissioner. 

12. Voluntary organisation.

With the demise of the organised civil defence voluntary effort in 1968, civil defence lost its core of trained and organised “foot soldiers”. Consequently, all plans placed heavy reliance on the organised volunteer services such as The British Red Cross Society, the Salvation Army, the St John Ambulance and the WRVS although with little consideration of the numbers

of people these organisations could make available. Another standard assumption was that people would present themselves in a crisis and would be given “crash training” to help run a first aid post, CSC, emergency feeding centre, etc. Who would do this training was rarely considered.  

The 1980 home defence review emphasised the need to plan for community involvement and Circular ES2/81 enlarged on this saying that the principal objectives of community organisation in war are to help the community organise itself so as to improve its members survival prospects, to ensure that government information reached the people and to provide a means of assessing local conditions. The Co-ordinator of Voluntary Effort in Civil Defence drew up various papers and helped prepare a common training syllabus for “community advisers”. These people would be appointed in peacetime, hopefully on the basis of one for every 2000 people and receive a basic training consisting of a series of lectures on the background to civil defence. Keeping the volunteers interest after they had undertaken the initial training was a problem. Some counties organised further events and discussions on, for example, setting up support centres but they appear to have been in the minority.

The actual number of volunteers enrolled is unclear and the figures vary. The Home Office’s 1986 report said there were 15000 community-based volunteers and in the 1988 report it mentioned a figure of 25000. However, this latter figure probably included some 10000 members of the Royal Observer Corps and perhaps the 2000 or so Scientific Advisers. The Co-ordinator said in a 1989 letter that “the present scale and organisation of volunteer effort varies considerably” and urged local authorities to try to recruit more. Another 1989 paper mentions a figure of 19000 based on the annual returns the local authorities sent to the Home Office as part of the PPI process. The reality is perhaps best expressed in the Home Secretary’s reply to a Parliamentary Question in 1987. When asked if he was satisfied with the numbers of community advisers he said, “…much more undoubtedly needs to be done by most local authorities in accepting and training civil defence volunteers”. .

There were two groups of trained volunteers who were available to assist the local authorities – Scientific Advisers and members of RAYNET. The Scientific Advisers were originally called Scientific Intelligence Officers and they were recruited as part of the Civil defence Corps from local people with scientific knowledge to plot fall-out. From the early 1970s, the title Scientific Adviser was adopted as the emphasis moved from the immediate effects of an attack to considering the longer-term survival situation. Their role was enlarged to give more general scientific advice to the Controller for example on nutrition and morale but throughout their role was firmly anchored in the monitoring of fall out. They received training at local regional and national level but the establishment was variable across local authorities.  

Each home defence region had a team of scientists often recruited from universities headed by a Chief Regional Scientific Officer. In peacetime, they advised the Home Office and oversaw the recruitment and training of the local Scientific Advisers. In war, they would form part of the regional staff to give advice to the Commissioner. The Home Office stopped funding Scientific Advisers in 1993 and most were stood down. The regional level scientists were also stood down receiving only a cursory letter of thanks for their unpaid service[5].

The second group of volunteers came from the Radio Amateurs Emergency Network more commonly known as RAYNET. These enthusiasts would run most of the radio and teleprinter communications for the local authority emergency centres providing a vital core of expertise to supplement local authority staff. Most local authorities are still assisted by RAYNET volunteers who provide communications for peacetime emergencies.

  

Staffing

The use of volunteers leads to vital question of staffing. War appointments under the plans were made on the basis of peacetime roles so the County Education Officer was usually designated to become the County Food Officer (on the basis that the education department ran the school meals service), County Librarians became the County Information Officer, the County Surveyor the County Works Officer and so on. The jobholders would not necessarily know that they had been designated for a wartime role and such a responsibility could not be put into peacetime employment contracts. It was simply assumed that these people would turn up on the day although, as with RGHQ staff no special provision was made for the care of their families.

 The College ran various courses to introduce local authority officers and other people designated to have war roles. The main course was for Chief Executives and Chief Officers and from 1977 it was based on a desktop exercise called Hot Seat. The aim of the course, which lasted three and a half days, was “to prepare chief officers of local government for their responsibilities in civil defence planning and operations”. In particular, it examined the statutory responsibilities of local authorities, the relationships with outside agencies, the need for co-ordination between staff, the roles and responsibilities of the officers and problems likely in the pre-and post-nuclear attack phases. The delegates would role play in small groups a series of problems “injected” by the directing staff covering the pre-attack period and then the situation after the first 3 days, then one month and then one year.

Whilst most county plans were written following the requirements of the Regulations, outlining in turn how each would be met the district and borough plans tended to look in turn at the individual departments of the council and the roles allocated to them. The following table shows how the 1990 plan for the London Borough of Ealing allocated wartime functions to its peacetime Departments and, by association, to their staffs –

 Department                         Primary Function                                     Secondary Function

Chief Executive’s Office     Control & Co-ordination                            Law & order

                                               Press & Information                                  Rescue

                                               Information & advice                                 Food control

                                               Management Information

 

Technical Services             Communications                                       Homelessness

                                               Essential Services                                   Burial

                                               Route & sewerage                                   Adaptations to

                                               Clearance & repairs                                 premises

                                               Demolition

                                               Transport

                                               Rescue

                                               Public shelters

 

Education                             Community Support Centres                    

                                               Emergency feeding

 

Housing                                 Homelessness

                                               Building repairs

 

Leisure Dept                          Disposal of the dead

 

Social Services                    Voluntary organisations                            Homelessness

                                               Welfare

 

Environmental Health           Public Health                                             Homelessness

                                               Radiac monitoring                                    Emergency feeding

                                                                                                                   Disposal of the dead

                                                                                                                

Finance                                  Finance

 

Planning & Economic           Building repairs (private sector)

 

Development                                                                                           Public shelter

 

Libraries & Culture                                                                                  Press & public information

 

Personnel                                                                                                Volunteers

                                              

The Fire and Civil Defence Authorities had an unusual problem in that they had no staffs of their own and consequently would have to draw on their constituent authorities for staffing. The diagram below shows the nominal staffing for the London North West Group’s Control under its late 1980s plans. The 48 staff would come from among the Emergency Planners of the London FCDA and local borough staffs together with liaison officers from Maff, the army, etc. The Group Controller would have been the Chief Executive of the Borough of Kensington and Chelsea. The plan is theoretical because when it was drawn up the London North West Group did not have an Emergency Centre.