Question to the Home Office:

To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department, what contingency arrangements are in place to maintain police communications in the event of a failure of the Emergency Services Network or wider telecommunications infrastructure.

The Emergency Services Network (ESN) is designed as a mission-critical communications service, with resilience built into its end-to-end architecture, governance and operational arrangements. It will provide police and other emergency services with priority and pre-emption over ordinary commercial mobile traffic, helping to maintain emergency communications during periods of network congestion or major incidents.

ESN has contracted for high levels of service availability and is working with delivery partners and cross-government resilience forums to ensure that ESN can withstand and recover from incidents affecting power, telecommunications and other supporting infrastructure.

Where telecommunications capacity is reduced, ESN users will be prioritised over commercial users. ESN resilience planning also includes enhanced coverage, resilient transmission, use of satellite connectivity for some remote sites, deployable coverage where appropriate, and contingency planning for severe weather and power disruption, including the deployment of at least 2000 additional generators for power outages. If, despite these measures, ESN coverage is unavailable in a particular area, users will be able to communicate using Tetra Direct Mode Operation, which does not rely on network coverage.

The Home Office has undertaken, and will continue to undertake, testing and risk assessment as ESN is developed and implemented. For security and operational reasons, it would not be appropriate to disclose detailed contingency arrangements or specific technical mitigations.

Additionally, individual police forces and emergency service organisations also maintain their own business continuity and disaster recovery arrangements for scenarios affecting communications infrastructure.