A CONTINGENCY plan to deal with a worst case scenario was drawn up by Hillingdon Council in the run up to Climate Camp.

David Brough, head of democratic services at Hillingdon Council, put the behind-the-scenes plan together.

He told the Hillingdon Times: "Planning for climate camp was a major challenge for the council and this was because we didn't know the location of the camp before hand, so we had a lot to do in a short space of time.

"We were working with something that we were against but we knew we had to be there to support the residents."

He added: "There were many issues we had to address, like the possible threat from the day of direct action, because we had no idea how many people it would affect."

The hardest job for Mr Brough and the rest of the team was to plan ahead for something they knew very little about and the location wasn't revealed until a couple of days before.

But as soon as the site for the camp was known the council drew up some leaflets which they distributed to homes across the borough and some of the officers even hand delivered them in their own time.

The leaflets gave out information about climate camp, together with contact numbers.

The council bought 5,000 bottles of water as a contingency for the day of direct action, in case any action threatened disruption to people driving on the motorway to Heathrow.

If people were stuck in traffic on the M25 and the M4, the council planned to give bottles out free of charge to drivers.

A spokesman for the council, said: " We did make it clear from the start that the council would not be supporting Climate Camp but we had a duty to protect the residents and it would be at no cost to the tax payers."

Mr Brough, added: "Went on the camp daily to check things such as the water the supply to make sure it was clean to drink, so even though we didn't support their protesting, we still made sure they would be safe during their time there."

Other elements of the contingency plan involved making arrangements for site safety, (including liaison with the Fire and Ambulance Services, collecting refuse and recycling, and daily visits made to the site to make sure standards of public health and safety were being upheld.

Emergency supplies of thermal blankets were taken to the pavilion in the event that the forecast gales and bad weather resulted in tents being blown down.

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