About Emergency and Contingency Planning
What is emergency planning?
Emergencies can happen at any time. Most can be dealt with by what we normally see as "the emergency services" - Police, Fire and Rescue and Ambulance. But some emergencies are so large or so long-running that they affect whole communities. Think of the recent floods, some people still haven't been able to go back to their homes. But floods are not the only cause of emergencies - industrial accidents, animal diseases and major public protests have all affected large numbers of people across the country in the past few years.
Thankfully these major emergencies are very rare but it is important that we are all as well prepared as we can be. The Council's emergency planning service work hard to make sure that the disruption caused to residents would be kept to a minimum if the worst ever happened. Some of our main roles would be:
- Making sure our services continue to run as well as possible;
- Arranging accommodation for people made temporarily homeless by the emergency;
- Rehousing people made permanently homeless by the emergency;
- Providing information and advice to the public.
The Council's work in this area is governed by legislation - the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA).
An emergency as defined by the CCA is:
"An event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare in a place in the UK, the environment of a place in the UK, or war or terrorism which threatens serious damage to the security of the UK."
The CCA places seven duties on North Warwickshire Borough Council. The duties are:
- Make risk assessments
- Create emergency plans
- Communicate with the public
- Co-operate with other responding organisations
- Share information with other
- Make our own business continuity arrangements
- Promote business continuity to businesses
The pages listed further down aim to give you some more information about the work we do and how you might help prepare yourself for emergencies.
For more information about what we are doing in Emergency Planning, please contact Policy Support on 01827 715341 or email policy@northwarks.gov.uk
The Borough Council works with Coventry, Solihull and Warwickshire Council's Resilience Team and more information and advice on emergency planning and links to other useful websites can be found by visiting the CSW Resilience Team website.
Flooding
The latest information on areas effected by flooding can be found on the Environment Agency website. Practical advice from the Environment Agency on what to do to protect yourself and your property.
Warwickshire Community Risk Register
What is Risk Assessment and why is it important? Risk Assessment is the first step in the emergency planning process and aims to identify those risks which could result in a major emergency in Warwickshire. Each risk once identified is then quantified.