Catalogue description City of Westminster Civil Defence Records

A brief account of the work of Westminster City Council's civil defence and related services may be found at CD 215.

Civil defence records for the City of Westminster during the Second World War, including large collection of photographs

The records listed are an amalgamation of records passed to the Archives Department from City Hall at various times and by various people. It has proved impossible to arrange the records in their original order or according to their places of origin. Thus documents from 'A' and 'B' report centres have amalgamated and arranged according to the type of record and the aspect of civil defence work with which they deal.

Westminster City Council Civil Defence

All files are open and available for consultation

• Second World War, 1939-1945

For the purposes of the civil defence during the 1939-1945 war the London area was divided into nine administrative groups. The City of Westminster together with the Metropolitan Borough of Chelsea, Fulham, Hammersmith and Kensington formed London Region Group 1. At a more local level, Civil Defence, especially air raid precautions (ARP), was co-ordinated by Report and Control centres. It is to the work of the Westminster City report centres that these records principally relate.

Westminster had two report centres, one at City Hall, Charing Cross Road, WC2 ('A' Report centre) and the other at Victoria Library, Buckingham Palace Road, SW1 ('B' Report Centre). The operational headquarters of the ARP Controller and Deputy Controllers, who had oversight of all ARP activities in Westminster, was at City Hall. The officer in charge of each report centre kept the ARP Controller informed of all operations.

Amongst other duties, the main functions of the report centre were to receive and co-ordinate information relating to enemy action received from wardens, police and other services; to despatch casualty and other services to incidents; and to keep Group & Regional Headquarters informed of operations and damage to special premises, road blockages and other matters affecting the movement of Civil Defence parties and troops.

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