Top Civil Servants and Emergency Services Chiefs visit Hope for CREST Conference

Liverpool Hope will welcome top civil servants and emergency services chiefs on Wednesday 17th October, as CREST hosts the North West Resilience Conference.

CREST is the Centre for Research in Emergency Services & Training - a unique network in England’s North West, providing a multi-disciplinary perspective in emergency services research and training.

CREST will welcome Christina Scott, Director of Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS) in the Cabinet Office along with James Cruddas, Deputy Director, Department of Communities and Local Government (DCLG) and other delegates from the Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) in the North West of England to engage in a frank and open discussion about developing and promoting resilience.

The Conference will debate improving and building resilience in a post-Olympic world in an era of deficit reduction and meeting interoperability challenges in a security dominated world including the future resilience architecture in the region.

About forty delegates representing the Category 1 and Category 2 responders as defined in the Civil Contingencies Act, 2004 (CCA) are attending the Conference. They include senior representatives from the three blue light services (police, fire and ambulance), local governments, utility firms, Army, NHS, Red Cross and the Environment Protection Agency.

Other speakers at the Conference include:

Jennifer Cole, Research Fellow, Royal United Services Institute

Steve McGuirk, Chair, North West Civil Contingency Forum

CREST Director, Dr Paresh Wankhade said: "The development of scholarship and closer links of the academia with the emergency services is a right step forward in the advancement of society to build stronger, academic and scholastic linkages."

For further information and details of other CREST events, please contact Dr Paresh Wankhade, Director, CREST at wankhap@hope.ac.uk or visit the CREST website.