Writing a community emergency plan

What the plan is for

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight Local Resilience Forum puts it plainly: the emergency services have to prioritise those in greatest need, and communities may need to rely on their own resources until professional help arrives. A community plan helps all volunteers know their roles when there is an emergency, and it can be shared with the emergency services so that everyone works together.

Dorset Prepared, the Dorset forum, calls its version a Community Emergency Response Plan. The Dorset Association of Parish and Town Councils describes it as a written plan of who will do what, when and why, plus the how, of managing an emergency in the community. It does not replace the council, the emergency services, the utility companies or government departments. It adds local support for residents, especially the most vulnerable.

Before you start

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight template asks for two things first. Read the risks for your area on the forum's website or in its Preparing for an Emergency booklet. Then complete the household emergency action plan for your own home, because resilient communities are made up of prepared households.

The sections of the template

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight template is an interactive PDF with blank tables. Its sections are:

• Getting the team together: the emergency coordinators, how to contact the emergency services and other local organisations, and the emergency volunteers.
• Understanding the incident: which coordinator is signed up to each alert (Met Office weather warnings, flood alerts, animal health alerts and weather health alerts), and the questions to ask when something happens. What has happened, where, who is affected, what is happening now, and what might happen next.
• Local assets: buildings and locations, local organisations and groups, and community skills.
• Contacting the community: online methods, offline methods, and who contacts each group.
• Activating the plan: the triggers, which coordinator decides, and the first step.
• Things to consider: who to share the plan with, data protection, insurance, inclusion and where copies are stored.
• Next steps: testing the plan, learning and development, and helping households prepare.

The template suggests three triggers: a flood or weather warning from a trusted source such as the Met Office or the UK Health Security Agency, an emergency you have identified yourselves such as a power or water outage, or a direct request from the emergency services or the council.

What the Dorset template asks you to identify

Dorset Prepared says the resilience teams at Dorset Council and BCP Council will work with a community to identify the risks it faces, what it can do to manage them, who has useful skills and training, what equipment is available, how to keep vulnerable people safe, and how to look after and use volunteers.

Personal data in the plan

The Hampshire and Isle of Wight template says to check with people before putting their personal details in the plan and to keep it secure. The forum's web page encourages groups not to create lists of vulnerable people, because the data goes out of date quickly and makes the plan harder to share. It suggests keeping the contact details of local groups, such as Age UK or toddler clubs, who can reach those people in an emergency. Get permission before sharing the plan outside an emergency. The template's closing advice is revisit, revise, repeat: review the plan every year and after every use.