Businesses in the Eastern Cluster of the City of London took part in a major training exercise on Saturday 22nd February, to test their readiness to respond to major incidents, using a range of different scenarios and procedures set in the Leadenhall Street area of the City. More than 200 members of the emergency services and the private security sector participated in a joint training exercise, which tested how key agencies would react and respond in the event of a major incident.
Working in partnership with the emergency services and the City of London Corporation simultaneous incidents were set up throughout the training exercise to test different stakeholder responses. This is the first exercise arranged by the City Security Council (CSC) since its formation in June 2019. The CSC is a collective of premier city security companies with the specific purpose of improving incident responses by security companies in the City of London in times of major crises.
David Ward, Chair of the City Security Council said “This has been an extremely insightful and successful exercise for all involved. The ability to test our collaborative approaches using simulated real-life scenarios is invaluable in our understanding and future preparedness to deal with major incidents. Working alongside the emergency services has been hugely beneficial and I would like to thank everyone involved in making the training day possible. We will now plan to develop further exercises to build upon this and our increasingly close working relationship across the City.”
T/Commander Dai Evans from the City of London Police commented “This exercise in the Leadenhall Street area helped to test our shared response to a range of incidents, including a chemical substance attack and identify any areas for development. It is absolutely vital that when major incidents happen that we are agile, coordinated, and well-rehearsed in our response. Exercises like these give us the chance to learn valuable lessons on how we can further improve our responses.”
