‘Keep Calm and Carry On’: informing the public under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004

Abstract

Part Iof the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004 provides a framework that governs the planning and preparations for a wide range of potential emergencies. It requires the engagement and cooperation of numerous ‘public’ bodies, including central government, local authorities and the emergency services, as well as a range of ‘private’ organisations such as utilities companies. It is apparent that information plays a fundamental role in the Part I planning provisions and associated guidance. This article will focus on one specific information-related provision, namely the duty to maintain plans to warn and inform the public in the event of an emergency. It undertakes detailed analysis of the CCA 2004 provisions, secondary legislation and extensive government guidance regarding informing the public and related media-handling. It analyses these measures in light of two competing organisational models identified by Walker and Broderick as being present across various CCA 2004 arrangements. The tensions between traditional authoritarian ‘command’ structures on the one hand, and more flexible, decentralised arrangements, on the other, are particularly pronounced in the context of informing the public. They reflect the challenges of maintaining political authority while handling and disseminating information that is fluid in nature and evades control.

Keywords:

• civil contingencies
• information
• media
• technology
• theory

Notes on contributor

Rebecca Moosavian is Senior lecturer at Northumbria University School of Law and teaches jurisprudence and intellectual property law across a range of undergraduate and postgraduate courses. She acted as course leader for the Open Learning LL.B programme from 2004 to 2010. In 2009 she completed an M(Phil) thesis on prime ministerial exercise of the war prerogative in the Iraq war. She has published work in the areas of constitutional law and privacy, and her wider research interests include intellectual property and jurisprudence, particularly critical legal theory.

Notes

1. These are identified as three of the four ‘top-tier’ threats to UK. HM Government, A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty: The National Security Strategy, Cm 7953 (London, 2010), 27.

2. See, for example, Ben Wisner, Jean C. Gaillard, and Ilan Kelman, eds., The Routledge Handbook of Hazards and Disaster Risk Reduction (Abingdon: Routledge, 2012).

3. The Pitt Review, Learning Lessons from the 2007 Floods, 18.1, http://webarchive.nationalarchives.gov.uk/20100807034701/http:/archive.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/pittreview/thepittreview/final_report.html, (accessed November 10, 2013).

4. Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (Contingency Planning) Regulations 2005, SI 2011/615 (hereafter CCA(CP)R).

5. Listed in Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA), Part I, Schedule 1.

6. Listed in Ibid., Part III, Schedule This should be Part 3, Schedule 1. (it is in Schedule 1, not Part III of the Act).

7. CCA(CP)R, reg 4.

8. Ibid., reg 4(1)–(3), reg 4(4)(3) and regs 4(4)(b), 4(7), 4(9), respectively. A list is available at https://www.gov.uk/local-resilience-forums-contact-details (accessed December 13, 2013).

9. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness (London, 2012), 4.41–4.42, Box 4.4, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/emergency-preparedness. See, further, Cabinet Office, The Role of Local Resilience Forums: A Reference Document (London, 2013).

10. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 4.36–4.37.

11. CCA, s 2(1)(a); and CCA(CP)R, reg 13.

12. CCA(CP)R, reg 15. For example, the current CCR for Northumbria Local Resilience Area can be accessed at http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/pdf/CRR%207.1%20-%2023%20Apr%202012.pdf.

13. CCA, s 2(1)(d). For an example of an emergency plan, see the flood response plan for the Northumbria area, http://www.northumberland.gov.uk/idoc.ashx?docid=9ea03264-2f6d-4eca-9a48-d27b97e8163f&version=-1.

14. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery (London, 2010), 4.2.19–33, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/emergency-response-and-recovery; and Cabinet Office, Responding to Emergencies: The UK Central Government Response (London, 2013), 5.3–5.8, https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/192425/CONOPs_incl_revised_chapter_24_Apr-13.pdf.

15. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 4.2.23.

16. Particularly Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness; and Cabinet Office Emergency Response and Recovery.

17. CCA, ss 9(1)–(4).

18. CCA(CP)R, reg 26.

19. See https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/national-risk-register-of-civil-emergencies.

20. Cabinet Office, Responding to Emergencies, Section 2.

21. Ibid., Section 3.

22. Jim Broderick and Clive Walker, ‘Applying “Civil Protection”: A Review of the Civil Contingencies Regime in the UK’ (paper delivered at the Society Guardian conference on ‘Public Sector Emergency Planning and Business Continuity: Debating the Impact of the Civil Contingencies Act to Ensure your Community is better Prepared for the Future’, London, May 21, 2007), 10, 11. See also Clive Walker and James Broderick, The Civil Contingencies Act 2004: Risk, Resilience and the Law in the United Kingdom (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 17.

23. These are the two most influential models that recur across government guidance and literature. For further discussion, see Timothy Sellnow and Matthew Seeger, Theorizing Crisis Communications (Oxford: Wiley–Blackwell, 2013), chap. 5, 114–19.

24. See, for example, Burmah Oil v. Lord Advocate [1965] AC 75(HL): 100 (Lord Reid); and Peter Hennessy, The Prime Minister, the Office and its Holders Since 1945 (London: Penguin, 2001), 103.

25. The Buncefield Incident 11 December 2005: The Final Report of the Major Incident Investigation Board, Vol. 1, [153] http://www.buncefieldinvestigation.gov.uk/reports/ (accessed November 10, 2013).

26. Joint Committee on the Draft Civil Contingencies Bill, Draft Civil Contingencies Bill (2002–3 HL 184, HC 1074), Annex 7, 108–9.

27. Twigg, ‘Disaster Risk Reduction, Mitigation and Preparedness in Development and Emergency Programming’, 118, http://www.odihpn.org/hpn-resources/good-practice-reviews/disaster-risk-reduction-mitigation-and-preparedness-in-aid-programming (accessed November 10, 2013).

28. CCA(CP)R, regs 5, 7.

29. Broderick and Walker, ‘Applying “Civil Protection”’, 12; and Pitt Review, ES.96.

30. Draft Civil Contingencies Bill, [101]; Walker and Broderick, The Civil Contingencies Act 2004, 243; and Clive Walker, ‘Governance of Critical National Infrastructure’, Public Law (2008): 323.

31. Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk (January 2011), 52, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/communicating-risk-guidance.

32. Thomas Hobbes, Leviathan (1651; repr., London: Penguin, 1985).

33. Ibid., 183–8.

34. Ibid., 192.

35. Ibid., 227.

36. Pierre Schlag, ‘The Empty Circles of Liberal Justification’, Michigan Law Rev. 96 (1997): 1, 26–7; and Jacques Derrida, The Beast and the Sovereign, Vol. 1 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009), 39–40. For a discussion of fear in the context of disasters, see Frank Furedi, ‘New Dimensions: The Growth of a Market in Fear’, in Handbook of Disaster Research, eds. Havidan Rodriguez, Enrico Quarantelli, and Russell Dynes (New York: Springer, 2006).

37. A term repeatedly used in HM Government, A Strong Britain in an Age of Uncertainty.

38. Ulrich Beck, ‘Politics of Risk Society’ and Anthony Giddens, ‘Risk Society: The Context of British Politics’, both in The Politics of Risk Society, ed. Jane Franklin (Cambridge: Polity, 1998), 12, 28.

39. Sellnow and Seeger, Theorizing Crisis Communications, 117–119.

40. CCA(CP)R, reg 4(1)–(3) (emphasis added).

41. Ibid., regs 44A, 47–50.

42. Broderick and Walker, ‘Applying “Civil Protection”’, 3 (emphasis added).

43. Scott Lash, Critique of Information (London: Sage 2002), 1.

44. John Perry Barlow, ‘The Economy of Ideas: Selling Wine without Bottles on the Global Net’, https://homes.eff.org/∼barlow/EconomyOfIdeas.html (accessed October 10, 2013).

45. Ibid.

46. Manuel Castells, The Rise of the Network Society (Oxford: Wiley–Blackwell, 2010), chap. 6, 500; and Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 4.4.22, 8.3.3.

47. Zygmunt Bauman proposes ‘fluidity’ as ‘the leading metaphor for the present stage of the modern era’. Bauman, Liquid Modernity (Cambridge: Polity, 2000), 2.

48. Lash, Critique of Information, 3, 18–21.

49. Ibid., 2, 18–20; and Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, xxxi–xxxii, chap. 7.

50. Lash, Critique of Information, 73–5.

51. Ibid., 4.

52. Ibid., 20, 26; and Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, xviii–xxvii, 501.

53. Lash, Critique of Information, 20.

54. Ibid., 39.

55. Ibid., 40, 41, 42.

56. Ibid., 35, xi, 25.

57. Brand, quoted by Barlow, ‘The Economy of Ideas’.

58. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.31.

59. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 8.1.1 (emphasis added). See also 7.4.2.

60. CCA, s 2.

61. Ibid., s 2(1)(g).

62. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.1, 7.6–7.7, 7.38–7.40; and Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 8.3.1.

63. CCA, s 2(1)(g); and CCA(CP)R, reg 20.

64. CCA(CP)R, reg 28.

65. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.35, 7.26.

66. Ibid., 7.105.

67. Ibid., 7.72, 7.75.

68. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.6.

69. Cabinet Office, ‘Expectations and Indicators of Good Practice Set for Category 1 and 2 Responders’ (April 2009), 27, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/expectations-and-indicators-of-good-practice-set-for-category-1-and-2-responders.

70. CCA(CP)R, reg 32.

71. HM Government, Preparing for Emergencies: What you Need to Know (London, 2004), http://www.direct.gov.uk/prod_consum_dg/groups/dg_digitalassets/@dg/@en/documents/digitalasset/dg_176618.pdf.

72. CCA(CP)R, reg 29.

73. Ibid., reg 33.

74. Ibid., reg 34.

75. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.22 Annex 7D step 3, 7.99.

76. Cabinet Office, ‘Working with the Media’, chap. 8 in Emergency Response. See also Clive Walker, ‘The Police and the Mass Media in Emergencies’, Human Rights Review 1, no. 1 (2011): 15.

77. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, 8.3.5.

78. Ibid., 8.5.8–8.5.11.

79. Ibid., 8.5.3–8.5.5.

80. Ibid., 4.2.23, 4.2.25.

81. Ibid., 8.51–8.52.

82. National Steering Committee on Warning and Informing the Public, https://www.gov.uk/government/policy-advisory-groups/national-steering-committee-on-warning-informing-the-public (accessed November 10, 2013).

83. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, chap. 13.

84. Ibid., 8.2, 13.4.1. See also Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, Annex 7A; and Cabinet Office, Responding to Emergencies, 3.40–3.42.

85. Cabinet office, Emergency Response, 13.1.4.

86. See, for example, Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 3.4; and Cabinet Office, Social and Behavioural Science Guidance for Local Resilience Forums in Planning and Conducting Civil Alerts (London, 2012), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/public-emergency-alerts-reviews-and-guidance.

87. CCA(CP)R, reg 27, reg 30 (emphasis added).

88. National Risk Register (see note 19), 1.16.

89. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 2.6.6; and Cabinet Office, ‘Expectations and Indicators of Good Practice’, 56.

90. Thomas Drabek and David McEntire, ‘Emergent Phenomena and the Sociology of Disaster: Lessons, Trends and Opportunities from the Research Literature’, Disaster Prevention and Management 12, no. 12 (2003): 97, 98–9; and Wisner et al, The Routledge Handbook, 477.

91. London Assembly, Report of 7 July Review Committee (London, 2006), 4.1, recommendation 22, http://www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/archives/assembly-reports-7july-report.pdf.

92. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.109.

93. Ibid., 7.103.

94. Use of images is one of six guiding principles of a communications strategy advocated in Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 46.

95. Pitt Review, ES.75

96. Ibid., 23.10–23.11, recommendation 68.

97. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 2.6.7 (emphasis added). See also Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 47.

98. Guidance indicates that maintaining public credibility is an ongoing challenge for governments. Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 8, 52.

99. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 8.1.1 (emphasis added). See also Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.4.2; and Cabinet Office, Responding to Emergencies, 3.40.

100. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.42–7.43.

101. Ibid., 7.58. See also Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 46.

102. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.59.

103. Ibid., 7.15, 7.60, 7.62, 7.86. See also Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, section 6.4.

104. Ibid., 2.28, 7.16.

105. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, 95 (case study).

106. Juan Carlos Villagran de Leon, ‘Early Warning Principles and Systems’, in Wisner et al, The Routledge Handbook, 486.

107. Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 18.

108. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.57.

109. Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 8.

110. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, 8.3.2. See also Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.32.

111. The BBC initiative, ‘Connecting in a Crisis’, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-15250977, (accessed December 11, 2013) seeks to preserve the communication channels of local and national radio and BBC TV news.

112. London Assembly, Report of 7July Review Committee, 6.2–6.3.

113. Pitt Review, 23.1, 23.2.

114. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.121, but see 7.111, which states that responders cannot rely solely on the media to reach those involved: ‘targeting will need to be more precise’. So, although it is effective, it has limitations.

115. London Assembly, Report of 7July Review Committee, 6.1, 6.4.

116. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 15.3–15.4, 15.13.

117. Ibid., 7.125, 7.137. See also Ford Burkhart, Media Emergency Warnings and Citizen Response (Boulder, CO: Westview, 1991), 27, 31.

118. Twigg, ‘Disaster Risk Reduction’, 314.

119. John Sorensen and Barbara Vogt Sorensen, ‘Community Processes: Warning and Evacuation’, in Rodriguez et al, Handbook of Disaster Research, 198.

120. London Assembly, Report of 7July Review Committee, 6.18

121. Ibid., 6.20, 8.1.

122. Ibid., 6.19.

123. Ibid., 6.17.

124. Ibid., 6.21. See also Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 12.

125. London Assembly, Report of 7 July Review Committee, 6.11 onwards, recommendations 35, 41.

126. Ibid., 7.7, 8.6. Guidance acknowledges that inconsistent, contradictory messages can damage public confidence and be hard to repair. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.62; and Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, 8.3.4.

127. London Assembly, Report of 7 July Review Committee, 8.1, 8.3, 8.17, recommendation 43.

128. Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA), Exercise Watermark Final Report (London, 2011), 3.111-3.112, recommendation 30, https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/exercise-watermark-final-report.

129. The Pitt Review found that public information during the 2007 floods was difficult to find, inconsistent (ES.99, 20.10), not explained clearly (ES.63) or too technical (10.24). In essence, ‘there was no single authoritative voice’ for warning and informing the public’ (ES.62, recommendation 35).

130. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, 8.3.3, 2.5.1, 4.4.17.

131. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.83. See also London assembly, Report of 7 July Review Committee, 6.21.

132. Sellnow and Seeger, Theorizing Crisis Communications, 30.

133. Twigg, ‘Disaster Risk Reduction’, 177.

134. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, chap. 8.

135. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.118. See also Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 19.

136. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.117.

137. Ibid., 5.12–5.13.

138. Pitt Review, 23.3; and Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.122. See also Burkhart, Media Emergency Warnings, 12.

139. Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 48.

140. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.124.

141. Ibid., 7.123.

142. ‘The multiple voices of disaster are easily lost over time, leaving posterity with only the official account of what took place. Such narratives need to be handled with care as they inevitably obscure how some use such events for their own profit.’ Greg Bankoff, ‘Historical Concepts of Disasters and Risks’, in Wisner et al, The Routledge Handbook, 42.

143. Robert Littlefield and Andrea Quenette, ‘Crisis Leadership and Hurricane Katrina: The Portrayal of Authority by the Media in Natural Disasters’, Journal of Applied Communication Research 35, no. 1 (2007): 26, 42.

144. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, 8.1.2. See also Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.122.

145. Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 56, 61; and Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, 8.5.6, 8.4.3.

146. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.124.

147. Ibid., 7.122.

148. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response, 8.3.2. See also Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 60.

149. Littlefield and Quenette, ‘Crisis Leadership and Hurricane Katrina’.

150. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 8.5.1–8.5.2. Guidance states that media monitoring is one of six guiding principles of a communications strategy. Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 46.

151. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.132.

152. Ibid. 7.133, 7.110.

153. This has been a particular focus for the National Steering Committee on Warning and Informing the Public (see note 82).

154. Cabinet Office, Public Emergency Alerts: Mobile Alerting Trials (London, 2013), https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/mobile-alerting-trials-for-public-emergencies/public-emergency-alerts-mobile-alerting-trials.

155. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.128. For actual examples, see Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 95.

156. ‘City Evacuations: Preparedness, Warning, Action and Recovery: Final Report of the DFUSE Project’ (2013), 6, 5, http://www.cityevacuations.org/uploads/6/8/1/7/6817950/finalpublic.pdf.

157. Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 8.4.3.

158. Although traditional media are arguably a more effective initial warning mechanism. ‘City Evacuations’, 13–15, 37.

159. DEFRA, Exercise Watermark, 3.117–119; Cabinet Office, Emergency Response and Recovery, 8.3.14; and Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.131.

160. Castells terms this ‘mass self-communication’. Castells The Rise of the Networked Society, xxx–xxxi. See also Sellnow and Seeger, Theorizing Crisis Communications, 127–131.

161. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.131.

162. DEFRA, Exercise Watermark, 3.117.

163. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.131. See also DEFRA, Exercise Watermark, vii and recommendation 32.

164. Cabinet Office, Emergency Preparedness, 7.130 (emphasis added).

165. ‘City Evacuations’, 6, 12. See also Sellnow and Seeger, Theorizing Crisis Communications, 73.

166. For example, reliance on social media to disseminate emergency information may marginalise groups without access, and also presupposes the resilience of this technology in such circumstances.

167. ‘City Evacuations’, 7.

168. DEFRA, Exercise Watermark, 3.123. See also ‘City Evacuations’, 5, 25.

169. For example, CTB v. News Group Newspapers Ltd. [2011] EWHC 1334 (QB).

170. Barlow, ‘The Economy of Ideas’.

171. Twigg, ‘Disaster Risk Reduction’, 314. See also Sorensen and Sorensen, ‘Community Processes’, 186.

172. Twigg, ‘Disaster Risk Reduction’, 177.

173. ‘City Evacuations’, 25.

174. Ibid.

175. Rebecca Moosavian, ‘Judges and High Prerogative: The Enduring Influence of Expertise and Legal Purity’, Public Law (2012): 724, 740–748.

176. Cabinet Office, Communicating Risk, 46.