Exercise Harrier

Every eighteen months, the London Resilience Partnership participates in a large scale table top exercise to test the strategic decision making and multi-agency regional response to a major incident. Such an exercise forms the cornerstone of the Partnership's Training and Exercising Strategy.

The last such exercise, Exercise Harrier, was held in October 2009, involving over 250 players from across London.

The 2009 scenario focussed on a mid-air plane collision over East London that additionally saw significant utility disruption as well as to the need to deal with high numbers of dead and injured. The incident passed the "Major Incident" threshold which saw the need for regional multi-agency response and recovery co-ordination.

The exercise was externally evaluated with a post-exercise report written. Lessons were identified which have been taken on board and incorporated into the regional response - the lessons have been taken forward by various partners across London.

The exercise met all its set aims and objectives. These were:

Aim

To exercise the London multi-agency collaborative response to a regional emergency, requiring the implementation of the Strategic Co-ordination Centre (SCC) arrangements. This will satisfy the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004 requirement for planning and testing emergency response arrangements.

Objectives

• To demonstrate an understanding of the London Resilience Partnership's plans and procedures
• To exercise the strategic decision making process
• To exercise the communication arrangements in London
• To exercise the workings of the Recovery cell in London

The lessons identified from the exercise are feeding into ongoing planning, these included:

• Ensuring that a robust method is in place to create and distribute a common recognised information picture across all responders;
• That all strategic decision makers across the region are familiar with the range of regional response plans - or a mechanism is put into place to summarise key facets of plans;
• Enormous value is gained from staging regional training and exercising events; That the handover from the response to the recovery phase of an incident needs to be clearly documented, including which organisation leads at particular stages of the regional response.

The next exercise of this scale has been planned for March 2011 to coincide with a national exercise. In addition, London partnership organisations will participate in the exercise programme for London 2012 which will commence during 2010.