Strathclyde Emergencies Co-ordination Group

[Stuart Clink]

In Strathclyde, the strategic coordinating group established under the Civil Contingencies Act is known as the Strathclyde Emergencies Coordination Group (SECG). Its membership includes Strathclyde Police, Strathclyde Fire and Rescue, Scottish Ambulance Service, Transport Police, Coastguard, fourteen different Local Authorities, four NHS Health Boards, the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency and the usual utilites and other Category2 responders.

At their meeting yesterday the Strategic Group of the SECG agreed to ratify the Strathclyde Police agreement with us for all members of the SECG. There was apparently a very positive response from the members – these being the chief executives of the various organisations involved. In particular David Goodhew, Assistant Chief Officer and Director of Operations at Strathclyde Fire and Rescue spoke up on the virtue of having access to our 4x4 resources during severe weather etc.

Strathclyde is a vast area with around 1/20th of the UK population and a coastline greater than that of France. With the number of organisations involved it would have taken us years to negotiate with them all seperately, so when we were formed last year we approached the SECG directly with this outcome in mind.

Strathclyde Police are obviously the lead organisation in setting this up, and will also provide a 'single point of contact' for the other SECG organisation to call us out through their Force Control Centre.