A UK-Wide test of the life-saving public Emergency Alerts system will take place at 3.00pm on Sunday 23rd April.
Following successful pilots in East Suffolk and Reading, the test of the new Emergency Alerts system will see people receive a message on the home screen of their mobile phone, along with a sound and vibration for up to ten seconds.
For the test, the public does not need to take any action – the sound and vibration will stop automatically after ten seconds. All people need to do is swipe away the message or click ‘OK’ on their phone’s home screen – just like for a ‘low battery’ warning or notification – and continue to use their phone as normal.
Emergency Alerts have already been used successfully in a number of other countries, including the US, Canada, the Netherlands and Japan, where it has been widely credited with saving lives, for example, during severe weather events. In the UK, alerts could be used to tell residents of villages being encroached by wildfires, or of severe flooding.
The Government has worked together with the emergency services and partners, including the Football Association and London Marathon, to make sure the national test has minimum impact on major events taking place on the day.
Emergency Alerts will transform the UK’s warning and informing capability; by working with mobile broadcasting technology it will provide a means to get urgent messages quickly to nearly 90 percent of mobile phones in a defined area when there is a risk to life, and provide clear instructions about how best to respond.
Best practice of Emergency Alerts in other countries have shown that they work more effectively in a real emergency if people have previously received a test, so they know what an alert looks and sounds like.
The system will be used very rarely – only being sent where there is an immediate risk to people’s lives – so people may not receive an alert for months or years.