I recently attended an IOSH branch meeting at BAWA in Bristol for a presentation on ‘Planning and responding to Incidents’ by Will Kearns, Resilience Officer from South Western Ambulance Service. It was a very interesting presentation which focused on how risks and threats have changed, how the response from the emergency services has changed and how our individual and / or business response also needs to change accordingly.
As many of you will know, there is a requirement in both ISO 14001:2015 (clause 8.2) and OHSAS 18001:2007 (clause 4.4.7) to establish, implement and maintain processes / procedures to prepare for and respond to potential emergency situations. There are various legal requirements to plan and prepare for first aid and fire incidents so all businesses should have arrangements in place for those, however the other types of potential emergency situations which your business could face is going to vary widely depending on the context that you operate in. For example, if you run a glass fronted shop in a busy pedestrianised area you are likely to face different threats than if you operate out of a small industrial estate on the edge of a town.
Will’s presentation focussed on large scale incidents such as terrorist threats, with the recent series of ‘MTFAs’ (marauding terrorist firearm attacks) in London and across Europe, the current UK threat level is at severe which means that an attack is highly likely.
I think there has always been a societal expectation that the emergency services will come and rescue you immediately if you are caught up in an incident, but this is now changing in response to the type of attacks. It is now more likely that the first response to a terrorist attack will be from members of public (potentially your employees) as until the area is cleared of threats and declared safe by armed police, the ambulance and fire crews are unlikely to be allowed access to the area. The current government guidance of actions to take in in the unlikely event of a terrorist incident are:
Run
Hide
Tell
There is more information on each of these steps and a useful video on the Stay Safe pages of gov.uk. There is also lots of information and an app to download on the Citizen Aid pages, this app gives you guidance and appropriate first aid advice for bomb blast, gunshot and stabbing injuries (not something currently covered in most first aid at work courses!)
Like any other threat to your business, you need to risk assess it and decide what reasonable actions you should take to prepare and protect your business and employees. This could be something as simple as having contact details for all of your employees held in secure locations (either virtual or physical) so you can contact everybody easily or as complex as a full emergency plan and dynamic lockdown procedures – whatever meets the requirements of your context and business.
What actions are you going to take to ‘be prepared not scared’?