WHEN someone as well respected as John Kelly feels the need to publicly voice his concerns, we should all be worried.

For 14 years, Mr Kelly headed Oxfordshire’s emergency planning department, but his stinging criticism of a catalogue of delayed responses and mistakes by County Hall, the police, fire and ambulance services is as serious as it is astonishing.

He was prompted to speak out after reading that it took an age for the above agencies to get their acts together and release details about the recent outbreak of Swine Flu in Oxfordshire.

But this was only the latest in a long line of poorly executed emergency responses.

Mr Kelly said senior management were slow to tackle emergencies on several other occasions.

He slammed the way the county council responded to the summer flooding in 2007, the heavy snowfall, and the shambles that was last year’s Game Fair at Blenheim Palace.

Mr Kelly has sympathy for the media, too, saying the failure to provide a robust response to inquiries about the closure of Magdalen Bridge on May Morning resulted in County Hall failing to get the public on its side.

So, things aren’t quite as rosy as County Hall would have us believe. How strange.

Mr Kelly deserves respect for putting his head above the parapet.