Create an emergency plan for your community

Community resilience is where people come together in the event of an emergency. By using local resources and expertise, they help themselves and each other.

Communities who are resilient can also assist the emergency services when needed.

Our aim to enhance community resilience is to strengthen engagement, build trust, share information and best practice, and to support training and development of community resilience activities and projects by:

• harnessing local intelligence to build, shared situational awareness of local risks and vulnerabilities to better inform response
• reinforcing collaboration with agencies and communities locally by improving:
  • cooperation
  • planning
  • resilience activities
• identifying businesses and volunteer organisations involved in resilience activities, for example:
  • response
  • training
  • education to the public
  • facilitate links between similar organisations

Creating an emergency plan for your community is good practice so that in the event of an emergency you can:

• use local resources to help emergency services with their response
• help those in the community that are vulnerable
• help manage the response of the voluntary sector

Communities that spend time planning for emergencies are able to deal with them better and recover faster.

This does not mean creating a whole new community network or a one-off response to an incident. It is an ongoing process to improve emergency preparedness. We are keen to work with communities to encourage them to write community emergency plans. There is no statutory responsibility for these groups to plan for, respond to, or recover from emergencies.

As part of an emergency plan, you will need to consider:

• local risks or hazards specific to your location
• local resources or groups that may be able to support emergency services in their response
• people in the community that are vulnerable
• how vulnerable people can be provided with care, support, information, or practical help
• how you will communicate the plan to people in the community and inform them of local risks
• how you will work in partnership with the local authority,town or parish councils, emergency services, voluntary and faith groups in the event of an emergency
• how you can maintain communication with important groups
• what steps you can take to help recovery after different emergencies
• how you can influence decisions to reduce the likelihood of different emergencies occurring

Here are some resources which may help you and your community form an emergency plan:

• Preparing for Emergencies: Guide for Communities
• Community Emergency Plan Toolkit
• Community Emergency Plan Template
• Resilience in society: infrastructure, communities and businesses

You can view an in-depth guidance document that explains how to:

• align people and politics
• assign roles in the community by setting up a community hub
• manage people in a large area

The guidance can be used by any network or group, especially if you don't have a resilience plan.

View the creating local resilience guidance written by The National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+] (NCSR+).

A Community Emergency Hub is a group of people with roles and responsibilities that can be used during an emergency or disruption.

They're a way for local people to work together to solve local problems. They cooperate with the council and emergency services.

They usually operate out of a chosen location.

During a disruption or emergency, they can:

• give information and advice to the community
• focus the community response on using what's available to give the most help
• match what people need with offers of help
• establish a safe and supportive gathering place
• help to connect the community with emergency services

Community Emergency Hubs are a national initiative. View more information about Community Emergency Hubs on NCSR+

You should choose a location which is already being used by the community. It should have all the facilities needed. It should:

• be accessible to all users
• not exclude anyone culturally (for example buildings with an alcohol license or a faith building)
• be big enough
• have multiple (separate) rooms

It should not rely only on a building, so the chosen location can be moved to another place if needed.

When using the location, after arriving you should check that the environment is safe and move somewhere else if it is not.

Things to look for include:

• flooding
• cordons
• fires
• the smell of gas

First of all you should:

• identify priority groups
• go into the community to check on who (and what) has been affected and what they need both;
  • immediately after the disruption
  • regularly in the days that follow
• check everyone has shelter
• report medical emergencies
• report life-threatening situations

You should work as a team and establish roles (the same role can be given to multiple people, and roles can be swapped). Establish a hub coordinator and ensure everyone knows who this is.

We can send you a kit which contains lanyards. Everyone involved in the hub should wear them.

We can send you a kit which contains:

• a guide to Community Emergency Hubs
• a safety briefing
• lanyards for roles (these should be worn when they're on-duty)
• maps of the community
• AM/FM/DAB radio
• stationery

To request a kit or setup a hub, email [email protected]

Our team are happy to talk to you about this and support you in:

• looking at local risks
• identifying opportunities to become more resilient (such as training and communications)

For guidance or to tell us about your community emergency plan, email [email protected].