Many local councils had built protected Civil Defence Operations Rooms, often in the basements of their County or City Halls, prior to 1960. With the winding-up of Civil Defence in 1968 some of thes bunkers fell into disuse but others were retained in mothballs and later recommissioned and upgraded with the resurgence of Home Defence planning under the Thatcher government
Throughout the 1980s many councils, with the aid of generous Home Office grants, built sophistcated new Emergency Centres, but others did not. Provision depended to a great extent upon the political whims of the councillors, despite a degree of central government coersion.
Home Office circulars issued in 1971 required that councils provide a County Main bunker at or close to their peace-time HQ, and a standby bunker in a remote location. Many of the county standby bunkers were just token gestures.
The formation of the new District Councils in 1974 led to a rash of new bunker building and some of these are the most modern and sophisticated of all