LONDON, March 21: Britain would not be able to cope with a major terror attack, the country's top emergency planners say, according to the Independent on Sunday newspaper.

Patrick Cunningham, chairman of the Emergency Planning Society, said that local authority planners would be able to offer little more than "a token gesture of support" in the aftermath of a major disaster.

The society represents professionals involved in emergency planning, crisis and disaster management. "It is absolutely unbelievable," Cunningham was quoted in The Independent on Sunday as saying. "We are concerned that our own emergency plans are not going to meet public expectations. It just does not make sense."

Iain Hoult, the organisation's chairman in southern England, said that Britain was "very, very badly prepared" for an attack on the scale of the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 202 people. Their comments come less than a week after Britain's top police officer, Sir John Stevens, said a terror attack on London was inevitable. -Reuters