On Saturday 22nd February 2020, businesses in the east of the City of London took part in a training exercise arranged by the City Security Council (CSC), and sponsored and supported by the City of London Crime Prevention Association, to test responsiveness to major incidents. The activity, which took place around Leadenhall Street, involved over 200 emergency service and private security personnel participating in exercises covering in a range of different scenarios.
The City Security Council, which was established last year, is a collection of security companies that operate within the City and joined together to form the organization with an aim to improve major incident responsiveness by private security.
“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,” said David Ward, Chairman of the City Security Council.
“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,” added Dai Evans, of the City of London Police.