Preparing for emergencies
Those who would be involved in responding to an emergency at a local level are given the general name 'local responders'. They include the emergency services, local authorities and many others.
Local responders are the building block of emergency preparedness and response in the UK. Our local responders, particularly the emergency services, are world class, and are used to dealing with emergencies as part of their daily work. Hence, local responders are best placed to respond to most emergencies in the first instance.
It is only when an emergency proves to be wider in scale or bigger in impact than local responders can deal with through their usual means that regional and central Government become engaged to ensure an effective response.
Through the Civil Contingencies Act [External website], the Government has put in place a modern framework for civil protection capable of meeting the challenges of the 21st century. This legislation reflects the importance of local responders in preparing for and responding to emergencies. It sets out clearly the responsibilities of those local responders, and it delivers greater structure and consistency in local civil protection activity.
The Government worked closely with a wide range of organisations to make sure it is the right legislation - it commands the respect of all key responders (e.g. local government, police, fire) who are committed to ensuring it is implemented on the ground.
The Civil Contingencies Act puts duties on local responders in relation to preparing for emergencies. These include:
Co-operation between a large number of organisations is fundamental to emergency preparedness and response.
Many organisations are well used to co-operating in both preparing for and responding to emergencies. The Emergency Services, for instance, obviously co-ordinate closely when responding to emergencies. They also work closely in policy and planning, and undertake joint training and exercises. Likewise, utilities companies have close links with Local Authorities and Emergency Services.
Local responders carry out exercises [External website] (simulated emergencies) to test their ability to respond to the full range of emergencies (including natural disasters, terrorism and industrial accident). They do this together with central and regional government, and the devolved administrations, as part of the Government's co-ordinated exercise programme [External website].
The principle mechanism for multi-agency co-operation at the local level is the Local Resilience Forum. Local Resilience Forums are generally based on local police areas (with the exception of London), and bring together all the organisations that have a duty to co-operate under the Civil Contingencies Act, along with others who would be involved in the response to an emergency.
Local Resilience Forums ensure effective delivery of those duties under the Civil Contingencies Act that need to be developed in a multi-agency environment. In other words they ensure that preparing for emergencies is done in a co-ordinated, effective way by all local responders working together.
Find details of your Local Resilience Forum here.