Title

A consultant on crisis planning has urged the Government to include financial disasters in its emergency planning.

The credit crunch is now impacting on businesses, government and the communities which rely on them but Patrick Lagadec, a consultant on crisis planning, argued the issue needed to be put on the same level as flooding and terrorism.

The Civil Contingency Service, created after the fuel protests, meets to co-ordinate the public sector response from national to local levels.

Experts have often highlighted potentially-catastrophic events, such as a successful IT attack on banking or computers.

But Mr Lagadec, research director of the Ecole Polytechnique, argued the credit crunch could have severe consequences. He said: ‘A financial tsunami is not really different from a flash flood or a pandemic.'