Our role in an emergency

What are our responsibilities

Under the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004, Croydon Council is a “Category 1 responder” alongside the emergency services, which puts a number of statutory duties upon us to ensure that we’re able to respond to emergencies that take place in the borough. These responsibilities include:

• Assessing the risk of emergencies occurring and use this to inform contingency planning; 
• Putting in place emergency plans and business continuity management arrangements; 
• Putting in place arrangements to make information available to the public and warn, inform and advise the public in the event of an emergency; 
• Sharing information and cooperating with other local responders to enhance co-ordination and efficiency; and
• Providing advice and assistance to businesses and voluntary organisations about business continuity management 

What support can we provide in an emergency

In an emergency, we have arrangements in place to support our residents when they need it the most. This includes:

• Maintaining a 24/7 on-call rota of experienced and trained response officers to respond to emergency;
• Deploying operational services (e.g. highways, building control, street cleansing) to support the emergency services in mitigating the impacts of an emergency;
• Providing temporary shelter and accommodation to those displaced; 
• Having arrangements to continue to provide our critical life and limb services if the Council is also impacted by the incident

Previous incidents in Croydon

Croydon has dealt with a number of large emergencies in the recent past, where we have had to work together with our partners to ensure an efficient and effective response for our affected communities. Notable incidents we’ve responded to include:

• Purley Flooding (2007)
• London Riots (2011)
• Kenley Flooding (2014)
• Croydon Tram Derailment (2016)
• Whitestone Way Gas Leak (2018)
• Shurgard Fire (2019)
• COVID-19 Pandemic (2020)