Preparing for emergencies
Last Updated: 14 March, 2006
What's being done to protect the UK?
The police, fire and ambulance services are specially trained to deal with major emergencies and have specialist equipment to cope with a whole range of incidents. If necessary, military assistance can be called on by the Government and the emergency services.
There is now increased baggage and passenger screening at UK airports, and where appropriate UK aircraft carry plain-clothes police. Stronger cockpit doors have also been fitted to all sizeable aircraft.
We have also installed state-of-the-art surveillance systems at ports and traffic entry points into the UK. Also, all transport operators have emergency plans to evacuate you safely from their services if there is an emergency.
To check on the safety of a particular destination or country, ask your travel agent or the Foreign & Commonwealth Office at www.fco.gov.uk [External website] or call 0845 850 2829.
The UK has had to live with the threat of terrorism for many years and the emergency services have well established plans and procedures in place to deal with a wide range of events.
The Government has a comprehensive programme of work to improve the response to a range of disruptive emergencies that might affect the UK, not only terrorism.
It aims to ensure we are able to respond to emergencies at the national, regional and local level, and to make sure that the essential services (food, water, transport, health, financial services etc) keep operating.
Over the last three years security around vital national resources such as water, energy and transport systems has been improved, safety advice given to potentially vulnerable businesses and locations, and laws toughened to make it more difficult for terrorists to operate here.
A lot of this work has to remain secret so potential terrorists don't get useful information.