Operation Feather a success after years of planning

The passing of Queen Elizabeth II came as a shock to most of us. However, there are many organisations that had been planning for this sad event for many years. In local terms, the biggest impact on our area was always going to be the route of the queue to allow members of the public to pay their respects to the Queen lying-in-state.

In the end, over 250,000 people passed through the London Bridge area as they walked between Southwark Park and Westminster Hall. Named ‘Operation Feather’, this was coordinated by DCMS, the Government’s Department for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, but to succeed it relied heavily on local partners to organise, inform, protect and manage.

We would like to thank all involved, especially our TLB Operations Manager Aneta Szkodlarska and her team of BID funded Police Officers, PCs Nick Morant and Lee Noble.

In our area, Team London Bridge worked with Southwark Council’s Emergency Planning Team, the Met Police, British Transport Police, City of London Police, Potters Fields Park Management Trust, Southwark Wardens, London Bridge City and Better Bankside to make sure the impact on our community was minimal and the people queuing were looked after. Local businesses were kept up-to-date via our Security Alerts system.

Andy Snazell from the Emergency Planning Team at Southwark Council told the recent Southwark Security and Resilience Forum that the relationships with the local BIDs and businesses were vital to the success of the operation.

The operation proved how vital our security network is and underlined the importance of the Southwark Community Safety Zone, where these plans had been discussed over many years.