Written Ministerial statement from Margaret Beckett, Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, on the Government Decontamination Service, 21 July 2005

My Honourable Friend, the Minister of State for the Environment, announced on 25 January 2005 [Official report 25 January 2005 Column WS165] that the Government was intending to set up a Government Decontamination Service (GDS), as an executive agency of the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). The decision was part of cross-government work to ensure that the UK is prepared for a range of emergencies and has been developed as part of the CBRN Resilience Programme led by the Home Office.

The new Service will be launched on 1 October 2005. Robert Bettley-Smith, a Fellow of the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, has been appointed as its Chief Executive.

The Service will have four principal functions to ensure the UK has a highly effective decontamination capability.

Firstly, the Service will provide high quality advice and guidance to responsible authorities during their contingency planning for CBRN, significant HAZMAT incidents and during actual incidents, and regularly help validate and test the arrangements that are in place.

Secondly, the Service will work hand in hand with specialist suppliers and advisers to rigorously assess the ability of companies in the private sector to carry out decontamination operations, and ensure that responsible authorities have ready access to those services if the need arises. If required, the GDS will also help co-ordinate decontamination operations.

Thirdly, the Service will work with Government departments, responsible authorities, specialist suppliers, research organisations and other nations to improve decontamination technologies and capabilities.

Finally, the Service will be the Government's eyes and ears on the national capability for the decontamination of buildings, infrastructure, mobile transport assets and the open environment, will be a repository of information, and a source of expertise in the event of CBRN incident or major release of HAZMAT materials. The GDS will regularly review the United Kingdom's capability gaps.

The GDS will provide a service in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland as well as in England. In Scotland CBRN resilience is devolved. Scottish Ministers decided that the GDS should be invited to provide a service in Scotland and the Scottish Executive has been actively involved in its establishment. A similar statement will therefore be made in the Scottish Parliament. The Welsh Assembly Government is not responsible for CBRN resilience under the terms of the devolved settlement in Wales but has been fully consulted and supports the development of the GDS.

The following key performance targets to deliver these functions have now been agreed for the Service's first six months of operation:

• The GDS will put in place the first framework of contracts with specialist suppliers who have CBRN decontamination expertise, and as far as possible ensure the framework is scientifically robust, by the end of October 2005.

• The GDS will have defined its operational structure, role and response arrangements, agreed them with our stakeholders and secured the approval of the Ownership Board, by the end of March 2006. The GDS will have put in place a comprehensive training programme for its staff, by the end of December 2005, who will be fully engaged in CBRN response preparation and planning with stakeholders through participation in Regional Resilience Forum CBRN working groups and their equivalents in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by the same date.

• The GDS will have established effective working relationships with centres of excellence for scientific advice on CBRN hazards and their decontamination through mechanisms such as memoranda of understanding or the establishment of regular exchanges of information, by the end of October 2005. The GDS will have created a database of information on contaminants, their effects and relevant decontamination techniques for use within the GDS, and introduced a programme to ensure that it is reviewed and updated regularly, by the end of December 2005. The GDS will be working with other Government Departments by July 2005, particularly through the Home Office Science and Technology Programme, to improve understanding through research projects with academia and industry.

• The GDS will focus on developing a successful GDS team by developing (by July 2005) and implementing (by December 2005) a succession and recruitment plan that values diversity and talent, and by setting a clear training plan and starting the process of becoming accredited to the Investors in People standard by the end of March 2006. By the end of March 2006 the GDS will have established a baseline for staff satisfaction so that it can address areas where improvement is necessary in future years.

• The GDS will engage with its potential customers to deliver a new user-friendly and effective GDS. The GDS will carry out a customer satisfaction exercise to establish a baseline against which to set standards and objectives for the future. The GDS will endeavour to meet (within the constraints of the resources available) the needs of stakeholders for advice and guidance. To do this the GDS will draw up a communications plan, incorporating a strategy for stakeholder engagement, and secured the approval of the Ownership Board, by the end of November 2005. The plan will include the GDS's strategic objectives in communications, the resources it will commit to the task, and the range of opportunities that it will seek to make use of to deliver the plan.

• By the end of October 2005, the GDS will have established an Audit and Risk Committee (as set out in the Framework Document), established its terms of reference, and completed a comprehensive review of risks to the Service's core business and an action plan to address them.

• The GDS will work towards improving its efficiency by modelling, with the relevant specialist suppliers, the costs of two decontamination scenarios, so that it can set a baseline and show efficiency gains in future years. The GDS will also establish a baseline for the GDS's running costs and meet the Defra year on year 2.5% efficiency savings objective.

• The GDS will balance the GDS's books for the financial year 2005/06 within Government guidelines.