Role of the Civil Protection Unit

In our busy and varied lives, major emergencies are an inevitable but sad fact of life. They manifest themselves in many different forms, from natural disasters (such as severe weather, flooding, epidemics), to man-made accidents associated with commercial and industrial activity, to terrorism and wars.

Major emergencies can occur suddenly, unexpectedly and anywhere. They may be confined to local areas or they may cover a wider area which in turn causes disruption to services, casualties and potential loss of life.

For the well being of our communities and those outside our area who may be affected, it is essential that the Civil Protection Unit plays its part in recognising and assessing risks, encouraging action to prevent major emergencies and minimising the effects of such incidents.

This is achieved through close coordination between the Unit, the emergency services, neighbouring local authorities, voluntary agencies and other outside organisations, in plan preparation, staff training and in devising or running exercises designed to reinforce training and to validate agreed procedures to ensure an effective and integrated response.

As a Unitary Authority, with statutory emergency planning and community resilience responsibilities, we must have in place a plan that guides our response should an emergency impact upon the Council itself or the community it serves. Every major emergency is different, so it is impossible to write a plan that can cover every eventuality. Despite this, we must respond in a rapid, effective, efficient and co-ordinate manner whatever the emergency may be. Our Emergency Response Plan seeks to facilitate this, by setting out what actions we will take and how - including the command, control and communications structures that will be used, the roles and responsibilities of Council departments and how we will work with the other key agencies who will inevitably be involved in responding to the emergency.

The public version of the Emergency Response Plan sets out the framework that the Council will use to co-ordinate its own response to the impact of a major emergency. This is an extract of the full version of the plan and is provided to give the public reassurance that mechanisms and procedures are in place to deal with any such event. In order to ensure that departments can work effectively, we are unable to provide the exact details as to how services will be maintained and security sensitive information pertaining to specific locations, personal information and operating systems has been removed. If you have any questions about the plan please contact the Civil Protection Unit.

Documents

To view these documents you might need to download some software. Visit our downloads page for more information.

Emergency Response Plan - provides guidance to Council Officers and Service Departments on the various procedures and actions that will be put in place in the event of a major emergency. File format Adobe Acrobat (pdf) - 545KB