Department of Health: Emergency Planning Guidance: Registered Files

JA 261

1974-2005

This series contains files regarding the revision of emergency planning guidance, including proposals for setting up a Departmental Emergency Planning Unit and National Health Service (NHS) arrangements for dealing with major accidents (including civil nuclear emergencies)

Related files in File Office F: MH 150

ANE and BTP file series

Public Record(s)

English

• Department of Health, 1988-1988
• Department of Health and Social Security, 1968-1988

165 file(s)

Open unless otherwise stated

From 2016 Department of Health

Topics

Nuclear energy

Disasters and emergencies

National Health Service

The earliest record of this prefix is 1990 and it remained with File Office 127 until the branch notified Central File Records it was no longer used in 1996.

Series is accruing.

General administrative files have not been selected.

The Department of Health was formally created in 1988 through The Transfer of Functions (Health and Social Security) Order. Like many others, the department with responsibility for the nation's health has had different names and included other functions over time. In the 19th century, several bodies were formed for specific consultative duties and dissolved when they were no longer required. There were two incarnations of the Board of Health (in 1805 and 1831) and a General Board of Health (1854 to 1858) that reported directly into the Privy Council. Responsibility for health issues was also at times, and in part, vested in local health boards and, with the emergence of modern local government, with the Local Government Act Office, part of the Home Office. In the early part of the 20th century, medical assistance was provided through National Health Insurance Commissions. The first body, which could be called a department of government was the Ministry of Health, created through the Ministry of Health Act 1919, consolidating under a single authority the medical and public health functions of central government. The co-ordination of local medical services was expanded in connection with emergency and wartime services, from 1935 to 1945, and these developments culminated in the establishment of the NHS in 1948. In 1968, the Ministry of Health was dissolved and its functions transferred (along with those of the similarly dissolved Ministry of Social Security) to the newly created Department of Health and Social Security (DHSS). Twenty years later, these functions were split back into two government departments, forming the Department of Social Security (DSS) and the Department of Health (DH) After the 2018 British cabinet reshuffle, the department was renamed the Department of Health and Social Care.