About the Department
The Emergency Management Department of the Velocity Interoperability Network is responsible for preparedness and for the coordinated response to emergencies at the sites of the Velocity Interoperability Network. It maintains the register of emergency plans, operates the Network Coordination Centre, sets and issues the Network alert level, trains and directs the site response teams, and publishes guidance for households and for member organisations.
The Department was established on 6 September 2026. Before that date each member organisation made its own arrangements for emergencies at its own premises. Those arrangements differed from site to site, used no common alert scale, and made no provision for a hazard affecting more than one site at once. During the transition period from 10 August to 5 September 2026 the arrangements were transferred to the Department and rewritten to a common form. The result is the register of twenty-four plans published on the Register of Emergency Plans page.
How the Department is organised. The Network Coordination Centre at Central Exchange is staffed continuously from 07:00 on 7 September 2026 by a duty coordinator and a duty log-keeper. At each of the six principal sites — Central Exchange, Northgate Relay, Southbank Terminal, Eastfield Campus, Westbrook Distribution Site and Meridian Court — a site emergency controller holds the site emergency plan and directs the response at that site until the Centre assumes direction. Below the controllers are the site response teams: 186 members of staff of member organisations, trained by the Department and released by their employers when called.
The Department does not replace the emergency services of the places in which the sites of the Network stand, and it does not provide medical treatment; injuries and illness are the responsibility of the Health Department of the Network. Its work is to prepare, to warn, to coordinate and to record.
Responsibilities. The Department's work falls into six areas.
- Emergency plans
- The Department maintains the register of emergency plans for the whole of the Network: a site emergency plan for each principal site, a hazard response plan for each hazard the Network is exposed to, and the continuity plans that keep essential functions running while a response is under way. Every plan has a named owner and a review date.
- Warning and informing
- The Department sets the Network alert level, issues alerts to registered addresses, and publishes the guidance by which staff and citizens judge what to do at each level. It is the single source of official information during an emergency at a site of the Network.
- The Network Coordination Centre
- The Centre at Central Exchange keeps the common picture of conditions across the sites, receives reports from the site emergency controllers, directs the site response teams, and records the log by which a response is afterwards reviewed.
- Training and exercises
- The Department trains the members of the site response teams, runs the exercise programme by which the plans are tested, and publishes the findings of each exercise so that member organisations may act on them.
- Preparedness guidance
- The Department publishes guidance for households on what to prepare and what to do, and advises member organisations on the arrangements they are required to keep at their own premises.
- Statistics and reporting
- The Department publishes quarterly statistics on incidents, exercises, response times, trained responders and the currency of the plans in the register.
For the Department's origins and the milestones since its establishment, see History. For answers to common questions, see the frequently asked questions. General enquiries may be sent to contact@emergencies.gov.vin.