Cabinet Office Briefing Room
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The Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms (COBR) are meeting rooms in the
Cabinet Office The Cabinet Office is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for supporting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister and Cabinet ...
in London. These rooms are used for committees which co-ordinate the actions of
government A government is the system or group of people governing an organized community, generally a State (polity), state. In the case of its broad associative definition, government normally consists of legislature, executive (government), execu ...
bodies in response to national or regional crises, or during overseas events with major implications for the UK. It is sometimes referred to as COBRA by media sources.


The facility

The Cabinet Office Briefing Rooms are a group of meeting rooms in the
Cabinet Office The Cabinet Office is a Departments of the Government of the United Kingdom, ministerial department of the Government of the United Kingdom. It is responsible for supporting the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, prime minister and Cabinet ...
at 70 Whitehall in London, often used for different committees which co-ordinate the actions of bodies within the
Government of the United Kingdom His Majesty's Government, abbreviated to HM Government or otherwise UK Government, is the central government, central executive authority of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland.
in response to instances of national or regional crisis, or during events abroad with major implications for the UK. It is referred to as COBRA by media sources, even when the acronym is spelt out by officials. The reason for the different titles is unclear; it may have been confused with other meeting rooms in the Cabinet Office which are not part of the COBR facility, including the old Treasury Board Room, which is labelled "Conference Room A", located in Kent's Treasury, a different part of the Cabinet Office building. A single photo of one of the rooms in COBR was released in 2010 in response to a
Freedom of Information Act Freedom of Information Act may refer to the following legislations in different jurisdictions which mandate the national government to disclose certain data to the general public upon request: * Freedom of Information Act (United States) of 1966 * F ...
request.


The committees

The composition of a ministerial-level meeting in COBR depends on the nature of the incident but it is usually chaired by the
Prime Minister A prime minister or chief of cabinet is the head of the cabinet and the leader of the ministers in the executive branch of government, often in a parliamentary or semi-presidential system. A prime minister is not the head of state, but r ...
or another senior minister, with other key ministers as appropriate, city mayors and representatives of relevant external organisations such as the
National Police Chiefs' Council The National Police Chiefs' Council (NPCC) is a national coordination body for law enforcement in the United Kingdom and the representative body for senior police officers in the United Kingdom. Established on 1 April 2015, it replaced the forme ...
and the
Local Government Association The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national membership body for local government in England, local authorities in England and Wales. Its core membership is made up of 317 English councils and the 22 Welsh councils through the ...
. The Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) is a sub-committee of COBR.


The events

The first COBR meeting took place in the 1970s to oversee the government's response to the 1972 miners' strike. Other events that have led to meetings being convened include the 1980
Iranian Embassy siege The Iranian Embassy siege took place from 30 April to 5 May 1980, after a group of six armed men stormed the Embassy of Iran, London, Iranian embassy on Prince's Gate in South Kensington, London. The gunmen, Iranian Arabs campaigning for th ...
, the
11 September 2001 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...
, the July 2015 presence of migrants in and around Calais, the
COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...
, and the 2024 England riots.


Criticisms

In 2009, former senior police officer Andy Hayman, who sat on a committee after the
7 July 2005 London bombings The 7 July 2005 London bombings, also referred to as 7/7, were a series of four co-ordinated suicide attacks carried out by Islamist terrorists that targeted commuters travelling on Transport in London, London's public transport during the ...
and at other intervals from 2005 to 2007, was highly critical of its "cumbersome, bureaucratic and overly political" workings in his book '' The Terrorist Hunters''.


See also

*
National Security Council A national security council (NSC) is usually an executive branch governmental body responsible for coordinating policy on national security issues and advising chief executives on matters related to national security. An NSC is often headed by a n ...
*
Civil Contingencies Secretariat The Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS), created in July 2001 and disbanded in July 2022, was the executive department of the British Cabinet Office responsible for civil defence, emergency planning in the United Kingdom. The role of the sec ...
* ''COBRA'' (British TV series) *
Scottish Government Resilience Room The Scottish Government Resilience Room (SGoRR) is the emergency and crisis response co–ordination facility of the Scottish Government, activated in cases of national emergency or crisis, or during events abroad with major implications for Scot ...
, the emergency management centre used by the
Scottish Government The Scottish Government (, ) is the executive arm of the devolved government of Scotland. It was formed in 1999 as the Scottish Executive following the 1997 referendum on Scottish devolution, and is headquartered at St Andrew's House in ...
in Scotland to co–ordinate response in Scotland


References

{{coord, 51.503, -0.127, display=title Emergency management in the United Kingdom Cabinet Office (United Kingdom) Individual rooms National government buildings in London