United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation

United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation

UKWMO Emblem-of-Arms
Department overview
Formed	1957
Dissolved	1992
Jurisdiction	United Kingdom
Headquarters	Cowley Barracks, James Wolfe Road, Cowley, Oxfordshire (Co-located with HQ 3 Group Royal Observer Corps)
Annual budget	£4 million per annum (in 1990) including Royal Observer Corps running costs
Department executive	Roy Cooke, Director UKWMO
Footnotes
Funded by F6 Emergency Planning Division of the Home Office.

The United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) was a British civilian organisation operating to provide UK military and civilian authorities with data on nuclear explosions and forecasts of fallout across the country in the event of nuclear war.^[1]

The UKWMO was established in 1957 and funded by the Home Office and used its own premises which were mainly staffed by Royal Observer Corps (ROC) uniformed full-time and volunteer personnel as the fieldforce. The ROC was administered by the Ministry of Defence but mainly funded by the Home Office. The only time the combined organisations were on high alert in the Cold War was during Cuban Missile Crisis in October and November 1962. The organisation was wound up and disbanded in November 1992 following a review prompted by the government's Options for Change report.

Its emblem-of-arms was a pair of classic hunting horns crossing each other, pointed upwards, with the enscrolled motto "Sound An Alarm", a title also used for the latter of two contemporary public information films (the earlier one was called "Hole in the Ground"). Members of the UKWMO qualified for the Civil Defence Medal for fifteen years continuous years service, with a bar for each subsequent twelve years.