How we plan for emergencies

An emergency is any incident that calls for our response when services can’t deal with it under their day-to-day emergency procedures and resources.

This is likely to include major flooding, transport incidents such as a train crash, chemical incidents, flu pandemics, animal diseases and terrorist incidents.

In the event of an emergency, we aim to keep services running normally, but we would help the emergency services provide:

• rest centres (temporary accommodation, usually a school, leisure centre or other community facility) for use by anyone affected by the incident
• emergency transport
• emergency feeding
• public information
• temporary mortuaries (in a mass fatalities incident)
• specialist advice, for example engineers, planners, surveyors, trauma and after care
• support for the police, for example, in people evacuation, site clearance, or road closures

Following an emergency, we help to get things back to normal, and may offer more support to people affected by the situation.

Under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) we have a duty to prepare for emergencies. This includes developing and maintaining emergency plans, making sure public information is available, and conducting emergency exercises to test our own and partner organisations’ emergency response.