The government is imposing new legislation under the name of ‘Protect Duty’, increasing the protection of the UK’s publicly accessible locations against terrorist attacks and ensuring they are equipt to deal with all possible incidents. Additional security measures and perimeter protection will be required for public venues, organisations, and public spaces under this new legislation.

Please can you provide the following:

1. A bullet point list of all the measures the council has taken in preparation for the introduction of the ‘Protect Duty’ which is expected to come into effect in 2022
Information not held. We are at the initial stages of planning for the Protect Duty and an officer briefing on the key requirements has been prepared.

2. The full amount (in £) the council has spent to date implementing the aforementioned measures as well as the amount of money (in £) assigned to make the above changes ahead of the introduction of ‘Protect Duty’
No funding has been spent or assigned at this stage as Homeland Security are at the stage of developing proposals for implementation of the Duty which will then be shared with partners. There is no timeline for this yet as the date for implementation is dependent on when the legislation is introduced, agreement by Parliament and development of appropriate mechanisms and functions.

3. If you have not yet assigned a budget or implemented measures ahead of ‘Protect Duty’ coming into effect, do you expect to do so in the next 6 months? (please answer either Yes, No or N/A)
As above, the requirements for implementing the Duty are not known nor is the timeline, therefore while the Council is at initial planning stage, the resource requirements are not yet known. Once this is information is available budget implications will be assessed to feed into the financial planning process.