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The Interdepartmental Liaison Group on Risk Assessment (ILGRA) was established in 1991 on the initiative of the Health and Safety Executive, the regulatory body for most industrial risks in the UK. Risk is a prime example of an issue that pervades policies across government and for which there is a recognised need for integration of policy-making. The ILGRA network in liaison mode was characteristically weak in terms of the interdependencies between the participants. The trigger for the transformation of the ILGRA network from liaison to interdependency came fortuitously. A commitment was given in the White Paper that an annual Forward Look on Government funded Science, Engineering and Technology (SET) would be published and the first of these described a long-term exercise to be undertaken under the aegis of ILGRA on risk assessment and toxicology. The remaining issue of methodologies concerned the development of a common UK approach to negotiations on risk assessment at international level.

The anticipation and prevention of potential industrial accidents with severe consequences has benefited from the development of formal methods of assessment for the different stages of the life cycle of an accident. A similar approach has subsequently been applied in other situations where anticipation of hazards is necessary, including natural disasters and in areas such as food safety and public health. The application of the methods in high hazard sectors of industry has been accompanied by new regulatory procedures in the UK to ensure effective implementation. This paper reviews the relevant lessons from experience of regulating and managing industrial safety and responding to natural disasters and other hazards. It is concluded that learning from this experience would be beneficial to assessing and minimizing threats from terrorist acts and to improving preparedness and prioritizing protective