Response
When an emergency occurs at a site of the Velocity Interoperability Network, the response is directed from the Network Coordination Centre at Central Exchange. The Centre is staffed continuously from 07:00 on 7 September 2026 by a duty coordinator and a duty log-keeper. It keeps the common picture of conditions across the six principal sites, sets the Network alert level, issues alerts, and directs the site response teams.
The Department's object during a response is narrow and can be stated in one sentence: that everybody at an affected site knows what is happening and what to do, that the people who need help to leave are accounted for, and that a truthful record is kept from which the response can afterwards be learned from. It is not the Department's task to fight fires, to treat the injured or to repair what has failed; it is to make certain that those who do those things are called at once and are not working against each other.
Who does what. The functions below are held during every response, whatever its cause.
| Function | Held at | Responsibilities |
|---|---|---|
| Duty coordinator | Network Coordination Centre | Sets the Network alert level, directs the response across more than one site, and authorises the release of a site response team to another site. |
| Duty log-keeper | Network Coordination Centre | Keeps the log on which the review of the response afterwards depends: every report received, every decision taken and the time of each. |
| Site emergency controller | Each principal site | Directs the response at the site until the Centre assumes direction, and remains in charge of the site thereafter under the Centre's direction. |
| Deputy controllers | Each principal site | Two at each site, so that the duty is always held. A deputy has the full authority of the controller when acting. |
| Site response team | Each principal site | Searches buildings, directs people to the assembly points, accounts for those on the register of persons requiring assistance, and reports the position to the controller. |
| Member organisation point of contact | Each occupied premises | Accounts for the organisation's own staff, applies the organisation's continuity arrangements, and answers to the site emergency controller. |
From report to review. Every response follows the same eight steps, whether it concerns one building or the whole of the Network.
Step 1: A report reaches the Centre
A report may come from a site emergency controller, from a member organisation's point of contact, from an automatic monitoring arrangement, or from any member of staff or citizen who writes to the Department. Every report is logged at the time it is received, whether or not it is acted upon.
Step 2: The duty coordinator assesses it
The coordinator establishes what is happening, which sites are affected, whether the effect is spreading, and which plan in the register applies. Where the position is unclear the coordinator assumes the worse of the two readings until it is resolved.
Step 3: The alert level is set
The coordinator sets the level for the site or for the Network as a whole, and records the reason in the log. The level may be raised by more than one step at once; it is lowered one step at a time.
Step 4: The alert is issued
The alert goes to every registered address, is published on this site, and is repeated at the affected sites by the local warning arrangements recorded in each site emergency plan. No alert is issued by one means alone.
Step 5: Direction passes to the Centre
At Alert and above, the Centre assumes direction of the response. The site emergency controller remains in charge of the site and reports to the Centre at intervals set by the coordinator, normally every thirty minutes.
Step 6: The response is conducted
The applicable plan is followed. Where the plan does not fit the circumstances, the coordinator departs from it and records the departure and the reason in the log; the departure is examined in the review.
Step 7: The level is lowered and the response closed
The coordinator lowers the level one step at a time as the position allows, and closes the response when the site has returned to its normal working. Closure is notified to every registered address.
Step 8: The response is reviewed
Within ten working days the Centre reviews the log with the site emergency controller. Findings are carried into the plans concerned, published in the Newsroom, and counted in the Department's quarterly statistics.
Exercise Meridian, 27 August 2026. The plans are tested by exercise. The most recent and the largest is set out below, hour by hour, with the findings it produced. Nine exercises were held during the transition period from 10 August to 5 September 2026; Exercise Meridian was the only one to involve two sites.
27 August 2026, 09:00
Exercise Meridian begins
The exercise opened at Meridian Court against a scenario in which prolonged rainfall brought surface water into the lower floor of the site. The site emergency plan and the flooding and power failure hazard plans were under test. 148 people took part, of whom 21 were members of the site response team.
09:14
Site emergency controller reports to the Centre
The controller reported water entering the lower floor and requested that the alert level for the site be raised to Alert. The duty coordinator raised the level and opened the flooding hazard plan.
09:25
Warning issued to the site
The warning reached the whole of the site eleven minutes after the controller's first report, against a standard of five. The delay was traced to the site address system, which does not reach two of the outbuildings, and to the response team alerting those buildings on foot.
10:02
Simulated failure of the electrical supply
The supply was withdrawn on the exercise scenario. Reserve lighting operated on all but one stair, where it had not been tested since the transition period. The stair was cleared on torchlight in four minutes.
10:40
Buildings searched and accounted for
The response team completed the search of all eleven buildings. Two people recorded on the site register of persons requiring assistance were no longer at the site, and one person requiring assistance was not on the register; the register was found to be out of date.
11:30
Direction assumed by the Network Coordination Centre
The Centre assumed direction of the response and held it for the remainder of the exercise, taking reports from the controller every thirty minutes and testing the release of a response team from Southbank Terminal to Meridian Court.
13:20
Exercise closed
The exercise ran for four hours and twenty minutes. The alert level was lowered to Advisory and then to Normal, and the site returned to normal working.
3 September 2026
Findings carried into the plans
Three findings were recorded: the eleven-minute warning, the out-of-date register of persons requiring assistance, and the untested reserve lighting. All three were carried into the revised Meridian Court site emergency plan, which was reviewed on 3 September 2026.
13 October 2026
Exercise Northgate II
The next exercise will be held at Northgate Relay, testing the site emergency plan against a loss of network connectivity affecting more than one site. Its findings will be published in the Newsroom and in the quarterly statistical release.
The Department publishes the findings of every exercise, including those that reflect badly on its own arrangements. An exercise that produces no findings has been designed too gently.
Common questions about a response.
The four alert levels are set out on the Network Alert Levels page, the plans under which a response is conducted on the Register of Emergency Plans page, and what to prepare beforehand on the Preparedness page. Reports and enquiries may be sent to contact@emergencies.gov.vin.