Lessons from a Whitehall-run pandemic simulation exercise in 2016 were kept secret from local government, the UK Covid-19 Inquiry has heard.
The final report on the findings of Exercise Cygnus – a three-day dry run for a mass outbreak of killer flu – found the UK’s preparedness and response was ‘not currently sufficient to cope with the extreme demands of a severe pandemic of the type that would have a nationwide impact across all sectors’.
Chief executive of the Local Government Association (LGA), Mark Lloyd, said the exercise had first been planned in 2014 but did not go ahead until two years later – by which time a number of local resilience forums dropped out, leaving just eight that participated.
He criticised the Government’s ‘top-down approach’ and how his sector tended to be ‘brought in as a participant on a small scale,’ adding: ‘Of course, we would like to have seen more involvement [from local government].
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