More emergency exercises called for by committee

Jersey's government needs to do more emergency exercises to ensure the island is safe for events such as pandemics, a committee has said.

The Public Accounts Committee (PAC), which oversees how public money is spent, said it was encouraging "further work" from the next government on resilience planning following its Covid-19 follow-up review.

The committee said it believed most of the Covid-19 recommendations had been implemented but recommended government instil more emergency training exercises to strengthen its response.

PAC also scrutinised the fact the government spent more than £360m coping with the pandemic and found it needed to improve its uses of financial reserves.

Vice-chair of the committee deputy Karen Wilson said "emergency preparedness and organisational resilience remain central responsibilities" for government.

She said it was important to follow up on the recommendations made to government due to the "significant impact" of the Covid-19 pandemic and "due to the continued importance of emergency response and wider island resilience".

"Health service readiness, cross‑government incident co-ordination, clear accountability, infrastructure resilience, and legislative preparedness will all require sustained oversight," she said.

Wilson added this would ensure strengthened capacity and that lessons from the Covid‑19 pandemic and "other emergency situations were fully embedded".

She said it was encouraging to see improvements to the wider resilience structures including updates to the Crisis Resilience Improvement Plan and joint-exercises with the UK Government.

Wilson said it encouraged further scrutiny of the government's implementation of the Civil Contingencies (Resilience) Law once it was agreed and a "continued development of emergency preparedness through exercises alongside ensuring adequate long term financial planning".

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