Emergency planning in Oxfordshire needs to be urgently improved following a catalogue of delayed responses and mistakes to crisis situations, the county has been told.

The warning came from John Kelly, who retired as emergency planning officer for Oxfordshire last year after 14 years’ service as the man responsible for overseeing the county’s response to everything from flooding to pandemics.

Mr Kelly believes that key agencies need to work more effectively together to ensure a more co-ordinated response to emergencies, especially with the threat of a swine flu pandemic. And he says greater effort needs to be put into ensuring that information and advice is more speedily released to the public.

The county’s long-serving emergency planner said he decided to speak out after reading claims last week that it had taken too long to release details about a six-year-old Oxford girl who contracted swine flu. But he maintains that the case is only the latest in a series of disappointing emergency responses in recent years.

He said there had been a delayed response to the summer floods in 2007 resulting from a “lack of senior management involvement”. He recalled an email being sent out to county council staff telling them to go home early as emergency teams struggled to deal with the crisis.

He was also critical of the county’s responses to snow emergencies, preparation for the May Morning celebrations and the traffic chaos resulting from last year’s Game Fair at Blenheim Palace, which left much of the county gridlocked.

He told The Oxford Times that many past problems resulted from delays in bringing together senior figures from the police, emergency services, local councils and the health service.

He said: “I am disappointed with the public information on the swine flu case at Sandhills Community Primary School. A protocol was in place for the setting up of the ‘gold command’ emergency response structure. This should have met earlier early on to set a strategy, usually with life-saving as priority but also to deal with public relations.

“There was nothing to be gained from sitting on the information. You look at what happened in London, where schools said they had a problem. I don’t understand why the public message did not go out immediately. Parents had appeared calm here.”

The ‘gold command’, made up of representatives from all the key agencies, should be called at times of emergencies. But Mr Kelly said he feared it had not been put in place quickly enough in the past.

He said: “I fear that, as ever, practised plans are being ignored and the well-tried means of deconflicting different agencies’ responses are being ignored or delayed.

“I am afraid that it was ever thus with a delay in setting up gold during the 2007 flood to the detriment of a joint response and with the failure to set up a gold for the Game Fair last year.”

He said the failure of agencies to provide a “robust and concerted response” to media inquiries about whether Magdalen Bridge should be closed on May Morning had resulted in loss of support for its case.

Mr Kelly, who took early retirement last year, received an MBE in recognition of the role he played in the 2007 floods.

A joint statement from Oxfordshire Primary Care Trust, Thames Valley Police and Oxfordshire County Council insisted action had been taken speedily.

It said: “The Thames Valley Local Resilience Forum's influenza pandemic strategic planning group acted as gold command. It was initiated at a very early stage in the swine flu scenario following a briefing by regional government. Daily meetings took place initially with daily conference calls and briefings at a strategic level with several organisations involved.”

It also said the timing of the announcement about Oxfordshire’s first case of swine flu had been in line with national guidelines.

Chief Fire Officer and county council Director for Community Safety John Parry said: “The response of all agencies towards the flooding in Oxfordshire has been praised nationally.

“All of the inter-agency reviews after the flooding acknowledged that gold command ought to be have been called sooner once the incident happened. That is very old news indeed. It had no impact on the emergency response. I am saddened to hear Mr Kelly is seeking to denigrate his former colleagues."