Getting help to start

The local resilience forum

Be Ready tells a community group that wants to prepare to get in touch with the local council or the local resilience forum. The forums are where the templates live. The Hampshire and Isle of Wight forum publishes an interactive community emergency plan template, an escalation guidance flow chart showing which organisation to contact in an incident, a Preparing for an Emergency booklet on the local risks, posters and leaflets, and a Community Resilience Handbook for groups that already have a plan and want the next steps. The forum works mostly with town and parish councils but says any community group can take part.

The council's emergency planning team

Every local authority has an emergency planning team, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight template says, which can guide and support a group during an emergency and is the place to seek training for any skills gap the plan reveals. Dorset Prepared describes a fuller service: the resilience and emergency planning teams at Dorset Council and BCP Council work with a community on its plan, help it identify its risks, skills, equipment and vulnerable residents, and, once the plan is ready, run a two to three hour test of it against a realistic scenario so that gaps can be filled before it is ever activated.

Dorset's template and the parish councils

Dorset Prepared published a new template Community Emergency Response Plan in March 2026, with a Getting Started guide and more detailed guidance. The Dorset Association of Parish and Town Councils, reporting this on 30 March 2026, said the longer guidance was somewhat dated and that it would work with Dorset Prepared and other forums to refresh it, with events, training and test runs through 2026. Its advice to councils was not to wait for the updated material before making a start, and it published a briefing note for its members on a realistic and workable approach.

Communities Prepared

Communities Prepared is a Groundwork project that supports communities across the country to grow their resilience, with training and tailored support for emergencies from flooding and severe weather to pandemics. Registration is free in three roles: community member, volunteer coordinator and professional. Members get learning resources, online sessions, a members' forum and a national network of groups. Be Ready notes that it keeps an interactive map of community emergency volunteer and flood warden groups, which is a way to find a group nearby that has already done the work.

The Community Resilience Development Framework

The Cabinet Office published the Community Resilience Development Framework on 3 September 2019. It is a 17-page document written for emergency planners, to make communities central to emergency planning, response and recovery. It updates the 2016 Community Resilience Framework for Practitioners. Be Ready says community groups can use it to think about the activities that help a community prepare, respond and recover. For a new group it is the clearest statement of what the planners on the other side of the table are being asked to do.

Other places to ask

Be Ready suggests asking other community groups in the area that already prepare for emergencies, and the local council or a local infrastructure organisation, a voluntary sector body whose purpose is to support other local groups. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland each have their own resources, which the page lists. For exercises, the Hampshire and Isle of Wight forum links to the Voluntary and Community Sector Emergencies Partnership's collection, which groups can adapt, and to the British Red Cross's free first aid training.