Menu

Benefits of community emergency planning to your community

By planning in advance your town or parish council could help coordinate local response activities. Being prepared and able to respond to an emergency can often help people recover more quickly. This illustrates how successful community resilience can be and why over 60% of our communities are already engaged in this planning.

Preparing a Community Emergency Plan

Preparing a Community Emergency Plan can;

  • Help your community to cope better with a disruptive event, particularly if emergency services are overloaded
  • Reassure your community and give confidence in your organisation
  • Improve, organise and co-ordinate your community response to an emergency.
  • Provide your community and the services with a local point of contact and assistance
  • Help keep your community informed so people know what to do and are able to respond, especially in those first few critical hours following an incident
  • Help those that are vulnerable by providing care, support, information or practical help
  • Representing the community and assisting with community recovery.

Build up your Emergency Plan

There are four different levels of community emergency plan and templates are available to download below to help you build your plan.

We have written a community emergency plan guidance document to help you with the process of completing an emergency plan template.

Level 1

Gather some key community contact numbers and share them with the emergency services.

Level 2

Gather key contact numbers, identify local resources like a village hall, and think about preparing an emergency box.

Level 3

Get key contact numbers, identify local resources and prepare an emergency box, identify people that might be vulnerable in an emergency, and people with skills and resources that would be willing to help in an emergency.

Level 4

A joint plan. Think about writing a joint plan with a neighbouring parish, neighbourhood watch etc

Contact us for more information

Asking for assistance from the community

A community emergency plan works best when you can call on others to provide assistance or resources. This can range from somebody checking on vulnerable residents during periods of snow to a business donating equipment or offering other services which could be utilised to benefit the whole community during an event.

The most common feedback from parish councils we hear is that they have trouble going out to ask for volunteers and assistance from the community.  For this reason we’ve produced three standard letter templates to help you.

Simply add your own parish council details to the letter and print off. They can then be delivered to residents, businesses and other voluntary groups. The letter asks for contact details and the skills or services the volunteer can provide. Once the letter has been returned, they can be collated and you’ll have a ready resource of help should an emergency occur.

Promoting your Community Emergency Plan and its key messages

After you have produced your emergency plan it’s a great idea to promote it and the key messages within it. To help you promote your plan within the local community we have produced a set of advertisement posters which can be placed in key locations or included within your newsletter.

We have produced the adverts in three different sizes. An A5 one which is good for putting on display in the local shop, doctors surgery or noticeboard and two others that are smaller in size (65mm x 100mm and 58mm x 100mm) which are ideal for newsletters or your council website.

You can request an advert from the set by contacting us via the Contact Us Section

Contact us for more information