Responding To CBRN Events: Joint Operating Principles (JOPs)
Date: 23/12/2025
Product type: Operational Guidance
Product area: Hazardous materials
In response to the publication of the revised Responding To CBRN Events: Joint Operating Principles for the Emergency Services, we have raised a change request to amend the terminology in the Hazardous materials guidance. This was approved by the NFCC Operational Guidance Forum on 8 December 2025, and will be presented to the NFCC Operational Preparedness, Response and Resilience (OPRR) Committee on 15 January 2026. Providing they approve the change request, the changes to the guidance will be published soon after that date.
As the three pieces of Operational Guidance for Hazardous materials and the Foundation for Hazardous materials are currently under review (to be published during 2026), we have restricted the change request to the content that is directly affected by the JOPs for CBRN events.
In very basic terms, it means that the terminology will be changed from Hot – Warm – Cold zones to Dirty – Decon – Clean zones, for all hazardous materials incidents, including CBRN events. It should be noted that this will not change the terminology for Hot – Warm – Cold zones for other types of incidents, including terrorist attacks, road traffic collisions and water rescue incidents.
A further What’s New post will be issued once the changes have been made to the guidance.