The Civil Contingencies Committee is a British cabinet committee chaired by the Home Secretary

Home Secretary

The Secretary of State for the Home Department, commonly known as the Home Secretary, is the minister in charge of the Home Office of the United Kingdom, and one of the country's four Great Offices of State...

. It is intended to deal with major crises such as terrorism

Terrorism

Terrorism is the systematic use of terror, especially as a means of coercion. In the international community, however, terrorism has no universally agreed, legally binding, criminal law definition...

 or natural disaster

Natural disaster

A natural disaster is the effect of a natural hazard . It leads to financial, environmental or human losses...

s. It is supported by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat

Civil Contingencies Secretariat

The Civil Contingencies Secretariat, created in July 2001, is the department of the British Cabinet Office responsible for emergency planning in the UK. The role of the secretariat is to ensure the United Kingdom’s resilience against disruptive challenge, and to do this by working with others to...

, which is part of the Cabinet Office

Cabinet Office

The Cabinet Office is a department of the Government of the United Kingdom responsible for supporting the Prime Minister and Cabinet of the United Kingdom....

.

The Civil Contingencies Committee, through the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, operates a website, UK Resilience, which is intended as a central source of public information on British civil defence and disaster preparedness activities.

The committee is generally referred to as COBRA, after the room in which it meets.

See also

• Cabinet Office Briefing Room A
• Civil defence
• GTPS
  GTPS
  The Government Telephone Preference Scheme is a British system for limiting outgoing calls from landlines if the network is overloaded during an emergency. Numbers registered under the GTPS will still be able to make outgoing calls if the service is limited...
  
  
• ACCOLC
  ACCOLC
  ACCOLC was a procedure in the United Kingdom for restricting mobile telephone usage in the event of emergencies...
  
  
• Intelligence and Security Committee
  Intelligence and Security Committee
  The Intelligence and Security Committee is a committee of parliamentarians appointed by the Prime Minister to oversee the work of the Intelligence machinery of the United Kingdom...