Resilience First along with the National Preparedness Commission and Pool Re explores whether business is prepared for future terrorist activity in the capital
Lord Toby Harris, Chair of the National Preparedness Commission was commissioned by London’s Mayor on the capital’s ability to meet and respond to terrorist attacks. London remains at a substantial level of alert to terrorist activity. In recent years, there have been incidents at Westminster Bridge, London Bridge, Fishmongers Hall, and Parsons Green. Lord Harris’ report (harris_review_-_march_2022_web.pdf (london.gov.uk)) is a review of the 2016 report on terrorist activity in London and considers what the city has learnt since then and assesses our current state of readiness with 294 recommendations and a section, with six recommendations, specifically for the business sector. Resilience First shares the latest thinking on the role of business in managing the response to and the recovery from terrorist activity in the capital. If the capital is to be resilient towards terror activity in the future, then the business community has a critical role to play and needs to work more closely with emergency services to achieve this.
Simon Collins, Board Chair at Resilience First, said:
“With around six million people employed in London, businesses are at the front-line of any future attacks. It is imperative that business is prepared. There is a cost to this but the cost if an attack occurs will be significantly greater if we are unprepared. One of Resilience First’s core activities is working with business on security, and we will continue to share best practice and guidance. The learnings from Lord Harris’ report apply to businesses in cities across the United Kingdom.”
Lord Harris, Chair of the National Preparedness Commission, said:
“Substantial progress has been made since my last report in 2016 and nearly all recommendations from then have been implemented. But we cannot afford to be complacent. The nature of attacks has changed and more likely to be carried out by an individual. New technology, such as drones, is available, and we need to be wary of our public services becoming too stretched.”
Ed Butler, Chief Resilience Officer at Pool Re, said:
“Pool Re was delighted to be able to help Lord Harris with his report, by sharing our unique terrorism data and modelling to help to inform the report. The growing macro drivers of terrorism, in particular those fuelled by climate change – migration, global food poverty, population and growing disparity between the northern and southern hemisphere – will all impact on the future terrorism and extremist landscape.”
Emily Payne, Security & Defence expert, PA Consulting said:
“Business needs to take an integrated approach to security and countering terrorism. They need to think through the issues around people they employ and work with, their assets, their operations, and the leadership that organisations provide. The interdependencies between these are important, too. We look forward to the UK government releasing its forthcoming UK National Resilience Strategy and we expect that to provide guidance on the role of business in responding to and preparing for terrorist activity”
