Cabinet Office UK Resilience

Main navigation

Assistant Director – Performance and Strategy – Capabilities Team

Role

The Capabilities Team within the Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) is responsible for both identifying the main risks faced by the UK and ensuring the country has the capability to deal with the consequences should these risks materialise.

The team produces the National Risk Assessment, covering both the natural hazards and malicious threats that would have a national impact, and the National Resilience Planning Assumptions which gives guidance on the level of capability we should be aiming for in order to be prepared for these risks.

Work to improve resilience against malicious threats feeds into the PREPARE strand of the UK's Counter Terrorism Strategy (CONTEST); the Capabilities Team is also looking to bring resilience planning against both threats and hazards together under an overarching UK Resilience Strategy.

Furthermore, the Capabilities Team has adapted the National Risk Assessment methodology and led on the production of an Olympic Safety and Security Strategic Risk Assessment.

I am responsible for a whole mixture of different areas. The specific areas that take up most of the time in my team are:

• Devising and writing the risk assessment for the 2012 Olympics;
• Identifying and agreeing the strategic objectives for our work and measuring our performance against those;
• Leading on our engagement with non-EU countries to either help improve their resilience or to learn from their ways of working.

The role is extremely varied and involves juggling lots of different balls: no two days are the same. It’s about making sure that people know what they are working towards and why and also making sure that we are not ignoring gaps in our preparedness so that we are as ready as possible to meet the full range of challenges we might face.

Another key area of work is delivering presentations and representing the Cabinet Office effectively across Whitehall. Most importantly though, in CCS we must always be prepared to be on standby to support in the response to any crisis – even if they take place on the weekend!

A day in the life of Andy, an Assistant Director in the Capabilities Team

09:15 - I arrive in the office following my commute in from Hertfordshire, I check my emails and have a quick catch up with the team so that everyone knows what we’re doing today.

10:00 - First meeting of the day is one with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office to discuss our contribution to the Government’s CONTEST Overseas work. It’s a good discussion, really interesting stuff.

11:30 - I get back to my desk and an inbox containing a mixed bag of emails - some I can deal with quickly but some I’ll need to add to my “to do” list.

12:00 - First thing on the list is to write a paper for one of our high level committee meetings that’s coming up next week. It’s all about what our overall resilience objectives are and how we are going to achieve them over the coming months. I have to work closely with the Office of Security and Counter Terrorism in the Home Office on this and make sure I’m thinking about the whole range of work going on outside CCS.

13:00 - Grab some noodles from the place round the corner, enjoy the sunshine for a bit in Embankment Gardens and then head back to my desk.

14:00 - Once I’ve got through a few more emails and set up a meeting with some colleagues from the Met Police. I have a project update with Natalie, who works in my team and leads on one of the major projects I manage. The project involves designing and writing a safety and security risk assessment for the London Olympics in 2012. This has involved a huge amount of work coordinating people across government and the agencies to gain a consensus on our priorities.

15:30 - Have a chat with another member of my team to help him out with presentation he is giving next week to some of our local responder colleagues in Birmingham. This is an important part of our work - making sure we join up across the national, regional and local levels to make sure that our work continues to mesh effectively.

16:30 - I put the finishing touches to my paper and catch an urgent email from Defra on the UK adaptation to Climate Change programme.

17:00 - I then just about have time to meet up with colleagues across the unit to discuss arrangements for a meeting with our counterparts in France to share good practice on our approach to Civil Emergencies.

18:00 - Home time, I lock my papers away in the safe and head for the tube.