NCEC - About Us

Safeguarding against chemical accidents

NCEC delivers fast, up to the minute advice and products setting global standards on emergency response and compliance.  We take pride in building strong relationship with our customers, becoming an extension of their organisation, with unparalleled levels of friendly and accessible services delivered by world leading experts.  In 2008 NCEC celebrated its 35th birthday and the 25th birthday of Chemdata.  Over the last three decades NCEC has developed as part of AEA.  What hasn’t changed is our commitment to provide accurate advice in plain language to protect people, property and the environment.

Role

NCEC (National Chemical Emergency Centre) plays a key role in national and international arrangements for responding to chemical incidents. In the UK NCEC provides a 24 hour advice service to the public emergency services on dealing with chemical incidents as part of the Chemical Industries Associations Chemsafe scheme. In addition to its national role, NCEC also offers a number of commercial emergency response services at global level, such as Carechem 24, to assist companies in providing and obtaining chemical emergency response advice and information.

Expertise

NCEC has been operating the UK's national 24-hour chemical emergency response centre since 1973. This makes it one of the most experienced teams in the world in understanding the requirements of both the chemical industry and the emergency services. NCEC is staffed by a team of Emergency Responders who are all qualified chemists.  Every Responder undergoes extensive training in chemical health and safety, emergency response and communication skills before they can deal with a real emergency.  In addition, each Responder is continuously evaluated and refresher training courses are provided regularly at team level.   We operate from a secure centre, patrolled by uniformed police officers, in mainland Britain and utilising a resilient core communications centre to ensure maximum service reliability.  As well as the Emergency Responders, NCEC is supported by a team of experienced data administrators who are responsible for ensuring that NCEC's databases are fully up-to-date. The administrative team is backed by a pool of consultants.  Several NCEC consultants advise supranational organisations such as the EU, ILO or WHO on chemical incidents procedures and regulatory matters.

Sponsors

NCEC is part of the AEA Group and is supported by the Department for Transport (DfT) and the Chemical Industries Association (CIA)

Quality Assurance

As part of AEA, the NCEC is recognised via Lloyd's Register Quality Assurance (LRQA) which has issued the certificate of approval to AEA for the Environmental and Quality Management System Standards below.

BS EN ISO 9001: 2000
ISO 14001: 2004 Certificate of Approval
The TickIT Guide Issue 5 (Overall business certificate)