Authorities in Greater Manchester Declare Major Incident

Due to a recent rise in coronavirus infection rates, there has been a major incident declared by the authorities in Greater Manchester.

Greater Manchester is one of the new areas under a local lockdown; this implemented restrictions similar to those found at the start of the national lockdown and came into force on Thursday the 30th of July. Greater Manchester Combined Authority (GMCA), which is compiled of ten councils including Bolton, Bury, Manchester, Oldham, Rochdale, Salford, Stockport, Tameside, Trafford and Wigan, has announced that the public should be ‘reassured’ that the guidelines remain unchanged. A spokesperson from the GMCA has said that ‘This move was simply to enable public agencies to access any additional resources they needed as quickly and efficiently as possible.’ There have also been statements from Manchester City Council and Greater Manchester Police which carry the same common message of reassuring the public from any scare.

You may not have heard, but during the month of June, Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole council declared a major incident due to the vast influx of beachgoers amid a heatwave. So this isn’t the first time it’s been declared recently and I think we can all agree that it won’t be the last.

But what really is a major incident? Well according to Jesip (Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles), which is an organisation that sets out the standard approach on how organisations like the police or councils work together, a major incident is an event or situation with a range of serious consequences, which requires special arrangements to be implemented by one or more emergency responder agencies. I know this post is on the shorter side but I hope you have learnt something from this and hopefully, you will be hearing more from me soon.