The effect of Civil contingencies Act (2004) in the larger local authorities in the United Kingdom

The Civil Contingencies Act (2004) brings together with accompanying regulations and non-legislative measures. It delivers a single framework for UK Civil Protection to meet the new challenges of the 21st century. It is a wide-ranging piece of legislation to combat unseen disaster risk in the UK. Under the act disaster risk information sharing is also encouraged as being good practice and a crucial element of civil protection work, underpinning all forms of co-operation within the local authorities. In sharing information the act states that the initial presumption should be that all information should be shared, although there are some exceptions to this. It is important that these are set out clearly as uncertainty about roles, rights and responsibilities in this regard is well known to be corrosive of attempts to foster information sharing for co-operative disaster risk management between different local government areas in the UK (MacFarlane, 2005). The recent introduction of civil contingencies is in many ways welcome. But the promotion of more resilient communities requires a bottom-up as opposed to a top-down approach. Government funding is aimed mainly at institutional level (O'Brien and Read, 2005). It is important to note that the focus is on consequences rather than causes, so the act applies equally to events and situations that originate outside the UK as it does for those within UK boundaries. In this context this paper tries to analyse what could be the effect of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 on the larger local authorities to implement disaster risk management system in the United Kingdom.