Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II was ‘a towering figure in our national life', and embodied everything that local government stands for – public service and community.

This was the view of chief executive of the LGiU Dr Jonathan Carr-West, writing for The MJ the day after her death. How did councils step up to support their communities at such a momentous time in the history of the United Kingdom?

Writing in The MJ, chairman of the Local Government Association Cllr James Jamieson said ‘councils across the country provided important leadership and support' during this time of national mourning.

Robin Tuddenham is chief executive of Calderdale MBC. Speaking to The MJ last week, he underlined the crucial nature of the role played by local government. He said: ‘Local authorities have a fundamentally key civic role to play within our communities and our places and our civic duties are something we take very seriously and they're very important to us and our population.'

Referring to Operation London Bridge, the ‘well developed' confidential plan for the time following the death of the Queen, he said the document had been constantly reviewed with Government, the Cabinet Office and local authorities. ‘What this effectively means is a range of communications to our communities, including a communication from our Mayor to the Royal Household to express sadness at that news, and preparations for the transition to the Proclamation [the formal method of publicising the Accession of King Charles III] of the new King.'

The national Proclamation took place on the Saturday after the Queen's death, with a series of county proclamations taking place the next day, followed by a proclamation in each district. Mr Tuddenham said: ‘We have very well established protocols around flag flying, with flags flying at half-mast between now and the state funeral. The book of condolence is open to the public, people are laying flowers at our civic hall, Halifax town hall. We opened the town hall in Queen Victoria's reign and there is a whole tradition of association between town halls and the monarchy. It's a very important symbolic destination.'

In London, emergency planning and resilience have been significantly strengthened over the years since the Grenfell Tower disaster in 2017. London Councils working with local authorities has developed a more robust response system for dealing with major incidents. London's local authority chief executives are on a rota system throughout the year to carry out a number of weeks of ‘Gold Command' duties. That person assumes the role of ‘duty' chief executive for the London boroughs, available to attend emergency services or similar Gold meetings in the event of a major incident.

KIngston RLBC is the oldest of the four royal boroughs in England. The borough's chief executive Ian Thomas was Gold Commander at the time of the Queen's death, from 1 August through to 14 September. He told The MJ that on the morning of the day of the Queen's death, 8 September, he had recirculated Operation London Bridge to key stakeholders. He said he had seen at first-hand how well London boroughs responded, and added: 'Without exception, London boroughs activated that plan with alacrity. It was an opportunity to see London at its very best, at such a sad time for the nation.'

He added: ‘I'd like to pay tribute to all of the chief executives and their local resilience and civic teams. They appeared to effortlessly implement Operation London Bridge in what was an efficacious response to the sad passing of Her Majesty. From a Gold Command perspective, things went incredibly smoothly.'

Mr Thomas said London's chief executives worked together on sharing information with each other ‘with regard to the interpretations that we were getting from the centre'.

‘We were getting lots of correspondence from Central Government as well as from the Palace, through Lord Lieutenants and Deputy Lieutenants and the structure that supports the whole of civic society. It all kicked in really well. We were sharing information and supporting each other through the process.'

The effective way local government has been able to link up with Central Government throughout the period was praised by joint chair of LGComms and head of profession, communications and marketing at Essex CC Andy Allsopp.

Speaking to The MJ last week, he said: ‘The Cabinet Office and the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) have actually played a blinder this week, no question, in terms of their communication, their briefing, but most importantly their availability to answer the questions that are emerging from local authorities about those points of detail.'

Those centre-local networks are a pandemic legacy, he added: ‘DLUHC and the Cabinet Office set up regular team briefings for local authorities. The expectation of what those briefings are like, what kind of information we get and how things flow out and how we can ask questions back – that was established during the pandemic. They've adopted very similar approaches.' It all helped to preserve a consistent communications approach across the country.

He told The MJ that local government communications professionals have ‘stepped up hugely, and should be congratulated by councils for doing so. If they haven't been already I'm sure that will be following on very shortly'.

His professional group have been involved through the planning of Operation London Bridge for several years, through briefings, exercises and simulations.

He added: ‘The other thing to say of course is that last year with the sad death of Duke of Edinburgh, that enabled us in a sense to test out some of the plan's aspects, that we've implemented this week.

‘That gave us a huge amount of confidence in terms of our ability to mobilise plans when we needed to, and do so very quickly and slickly when the moment came following the announcement of Her Majesty's death.'

But there were always the unexpected elements, and parts of the plan ‘that became more difficult and problematic because of local circumstances'. These included aspects such as the Proclamation ‘and having to deal with the communication of complicated flag flying protocols and the explainers for the ceremonies that took place up and down the country that really encapsulated a moment of history, so that was a huge undertaking in less than 48 hours for communications teams'.

What has also been in evidence across local government, he said, was ‘a huge amount of support for each other – mutual aid and people just asking questions and getting answers back from colleagues within the communications family using the Facebook groups and the networks that we've got'.

One example highlighted by Mr Allsopp was that of Surrey CC, who he said were ‘doing an absolutely fantastic job supporting their [council] colleagues in Windsor & Maidenhead, in terms of their preparations on Monday [for the committal service for the Queen in the George VI Memorial Chapel inside the grounds of Windsor Castle], to cope with the communications challenges'. This included using approaches such as geotargeting – delivering information within a defined geographic boundary – to make sure that all of the right information and advice for people who might want to line the route reached local communities.

Returning to the chief executive of Calderdale MBC, Robin Tuddenham, he said it has been a period ‘where people do maybe stand back from the day-to-day role of councils and whatever they feel about services at a time that's clearly extremely challenging, and look at the permanent and long-term role of local government in terms of its civic role in place. It's a positive and important thing for local government.'