The role of the secretariat was to ensure the United Kingdom's resilience against disruptive challenge, and to do this by working with others to anticipate, assess, prevent, prepare, respond and recover.
In the aftermath of the Y2K bug scare, the fuel protests of 2000, flooding in autumn 2000, and the foot and mouth epidemic of 2001 the UK government felt that the existing emergency management policies and structures were inadequate to deal with natural or man-made disasters, and formed the Civil Contingencies Secretariat in July 2001, located in the Cabinet Office.
In 2002 David Blunkett, then Home Secretary, stated, in a written reply to a parliamentary question: The remit of the Civil Contingencies Secretariat is to make the United Kingdom more effective in planning for, dealing with, and learning lessons from emergencies and disasters.He went on to state: The Secretariat services the Civil Contingencies Committee, which I chair and in addition as part of the Cabinet Office reports to my right hon.
Friend, the Prime Minister (Mr. Blair) through the Cabinet Secretary (Sir Richard Wilson).The Civil Contingencies Committee, often informally referred to as COBR from the name of the room used, is a forum for ministers and senior officials to discuss and manage serious (level 2) and catastrophic (level 3) emergencies.
[12] The secretariat was led by a director and initially comprised five divisions dealing with:[13] In 2012, the CCS still had five sections, with a slightly different emphasis:[14] Following the Covid pandemic, and as a result of the risks faced by the UK becoming more complex, interconnected and demanding, the Cabinet Office made changes in July 2022 to support how the government responds to emergencies and to improve the long-term resilience of the UK.