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The Service

Specialist Response - Civil Resilience

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Mutual aid

Hampshire was the first Service to recognise the possible need to mobilise significant resources to any part of the country for catastrophic events.

A convoy procedure has been developed which included enough vehicles and resources to provide a completely self sufficient package of resources that could operate even if the local resources were overwhelmed with little supporting infrastructure.

This was established for mass decontamination and USAR mobilisations and involves moving over 30 vehicles and 100 personnel.

Various exercises in and out of the County have been carried out to test the system and the lessons learnt shared nationally. Convoy procedures have now been adopted in some form by most authorities.

Convoys

We are currently developing a wider, more flexible range of convoys from lessons learnt at Carlisle and Buncefield. This will include compact convoys for specific purposes that are essentially just the operational portion which will be easier and faster to move.

They will take sufficient support with them for initial operations but will either need to plug into local support or await further supporting elements from Hampshire at a later stage.

This principle has been tested by a series of exercises and incidents in 2007/2008.

Mutual Aid Photo