'Poor planning did not cost lives'

12 April 2012

Despite a series of problems with the response to the July 7 bombings, no life was lost because of poor planning, the London Resilience Forum (LRF) said in its report.

London Underground staff behaved in an "exemplary" manner and NHS staff made sure 1,200 beds were available within three hours.

But failures on the day, including poor communications, lack of medical supplies and a remote co-ordination centre meant the jobs of emergency workers were hampered.

Police officers were too strict on the cordons, preventing engineers and others getting to the sites, while those dealing with the emergency were weighed down with calls from government departments.

The Family Assistance Centre, set up hurriedly in the days after the attacks, put many people off by its name.

The LRF, which was set up after the September 11 attacks, issued a number of recommendations in its report Looking Back, Moving Forward today, including the roll-out of a mobile digital radio infrastructure in the capital.

Partly implemented already, the Airwave system should be rolled out in police services by October 2007, ambulance services by early 2008 and fire services by mid-2009. "Special link vehicles" will be able to extend the Airwave radio system underground.

Better medical supplies will be placed at the major hubs of the transport network after a lack of supplies was apparent on the day. Poor communication was cited as the "greatest single area of concern" by the LRF and the report found that some frontline staff were forced to use their own phones.

The mobile networks were heavily congested: "This made it impossible to establish reliable communications between mobile telephone users, which had ramifications throughout the whole of the multi-agency response, and hindered strategic consultation between key London players."

The LRF said the access overload control (ACCOLC) which disabled the main phone network to all but 999 calls meant that some emergency workers on the ground could not get through when they "may have had a critical need for it".

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in