More than a million mobile phone calls were blocked on the day of the London bombings, against the wishes of the most senior police officers in charge, it emerged yesterday.
The Cabinet Office is being asked to re-examine the relationship between the phone companies and the most senior officials charged with reacting to major events after it emerged that City of London police erroneously ordered the firm O2 to switch to "access overload control" (ACCOLC) in a one-kilometre-radius area around the Aldgate bombing, where seven people died.
It happened 90 minutes after police and emergency services commanders on the key Gold Command Group made a decision not to use those powers on the basis that it would hamper the subsequent rescue operation and the search for the attackers. The confusion should never have occurred because the City of London force was represented on Gold Command.
The switch to access overload control meant that only designated officials from the emergency services were able to use phones in that area. Other calls were blocked for almost five hours.
The confusion emerged at the London Assembly, which is conducting a review of the way authorities and the emergency services reacted on July 7. The Metropolitan police took the lead after the attacks, and last month Commander Chris Allison told the review committee that Gold Command had discussed invoking access overload controls at 10.30am.
The phone system was overloaded but the decision was made to keep it open "because not everybody who was at those scenes in terms of our staff would have had the ACCOLC-enabled phones". Gold Command also wanted Londoners to "reassure their families and friends that they were OK," thus minimising panic.
But yesterday David Sutton, network continuity and restoration manager for O2, said: "We received a call from City of London police. We authenticated it and brought in access overload control. It went on at midday and off at about 4.45pm."
He said the existing protocol merely obliged his company to authenticate the request with the force involved but not the Gold Command group in overall charge. The review chairman, Richard Barnes, said: "I find it extraordinary that there should be a command structure and that people can just ignore it. This is something that must be investigated as a matter of urgency."
The force said it could not explain its actions further, "for operational reasons". It is known, however, that police would have been forced to consider whether mobile phones had been used to detonate the explosions until it became clear they were caused by suicide bombers.
Hugh Muir
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