Step 1 – Making your Plan

Step 1 – Making your Plan

1.1 Getting Started

This guide takes you through a step by step process that will enable you to:

  • Decide who your Community Emergency Plan is for
  • Get the right advice
  • Think about the risks your community faces
  • Think about local skills, knowledge and resources
  • Involve all the people who can help
  • Write and test a Plan

Remember that your local authority’s emergency planning contact can give you advice and support.

 

Who is your Plan for?

Most Community Emergency Plans will be made for a “geographical community” or place. This can mean one or more neighbourhoods in a city, a town, a village, or even a street.

Communities can also be made up of people who are connected by other things than where they live. When you are thinking about who your Plan is for, and who you will want to help you produce it, you should think about the different kinds of communities in your area (and neighbouring areas), that may need to work together and help each other in an emergency. You can consider all sorts of factors, for example - race, age, gender, disability religion, and shared interests.

It may help you to gather background information on your community, such as a map of the area covered, which includes things like:

  • main roads and rail lines
  • rivers, lochs and other water courses
  • community facilities like schools, village halls and care homes
  • grit bins

 

Who can you work with?

One of the first things to think about is who can help you. In many areas there are already active community groups and businesses which help to respond to emergencies. Consider what already exists around you and whether an existing group could be built upon to include dealing with emergencies.

As well as your local authority, you may want to talk to your Community Council or local councillors, as well as local organisations like the Police, Fire and Rescue Service, Ambulance Service, and voluntary organisations active in your area such as mountain rescue teams, St Andrews First Aid, the Royal Voluntary Service or the British Red Cross.

It’s important to remember that you need to have support from your community for a Plan to work. People need to be prepared to sign up and offer to get involved in helping if an emergency happens.  Raising awareness and encouraging people to see the value of ‘joining in’ are an important part of building the foundations for a Plan.

To make your Plan more effective, as diverse a group as possible within your community should have a chance to get involved. Different people bring different skills and opportunities. For example some people may not be able to clear snow, but could be willing to help look after people who have to leave their homes in an emergency. People from different ethnic communities may have language skills, and could help communicate with people in your community for whom English isn’t their first language.

You could have an open meeting where the community can discuss their ideas for the Plan and find out who is interested in helping to create it. There may already be a regular meeting where you can do this – such as a Community Council meeting, Neighbourhood Watch or Residents’ Association. You might want consider if there are groups within the community for whom an open meeting wouldn’t work well, and think about other ways to get their views.

You’ll need to bear in mind that different methods might be needed to communicate with different people. For example, people with childcare responsibilities may not be able to attend evening meetings and not everyone will be comfortable getting information through social media.

You may want to consider:

  • Discussing the idea at meetings of your community groups, and with other community groups in the area.
  • Leaflet drops to local households (to save effort, where possible, you can co-ordinate doing this at the same time as other leaflets are being distributed).
  • Distributing leaflets through local shops, pubs or other services using community websites, newsletters, papers and social networking.
  • Including information in letters sent home with school children.
  • Making use of social contacts to spread the word.

When you’ve got a group of people together who want to take part, you could form a Community Emergency Group. This will usually build on an existing community group such as a Community Council, Residents Association, Neighbourhood Watch or Rotary Club. But it could be a new group set up for this purpose. This is the group that will lead your preparations and coordinate the action you take with the emergency responders in your area.

Who will take the lead?

It may help to identify a coordinator to take a lead role in organising and taking forward the work of this group, and helping to keep up motivation and interest from the community.

It is important that the person taking on this role has a good understanding of your community, and has the backing and support of community members.

 

1.2 Identifying risks

In order to plan for emergencies you need to know:

  • What risks you face?
  • How likely are they to happen?
  • If they happen, what would their impact be?
  • Are any people in your community particularly at risk?

It’s important that you focus on those risks that:

are important to you and that you can do something about.

Examples of the sort of risks you can consider are described below.

 

Environmental risk

  • Are there any particular areas that flood regularly?
  • Are parts of your community  frequently cut off by snow?
  • Are there any sites of environmental or historic importance which may be impacted?

Infrastructure risks

  • Is there a major transport facility (like a train station) in the area?
  • Are there any vulnerable bridges or main roads?
  • Are there any large or important industrial sites in the area?

Social risks

  • Are there are any known vulnerable people/groups in your area?  Examples may include:
    • People who have recently had an operation
    • People without access to transport
    • People with limited mobility
    • People reliant on regular medication or health visits
  • Are there any groups who might find it difficult to understand emergency information?
  • Are there any groups who don’t live in the area full-time, like holiday makers or travelling communities, to consider?

Emergency responders cannot always immediately determine exactly what individuals might want or need, and nor can they always identify who in your community might be vulnerable in a crisis, particularly those who may not have previously received support. This requires local knowledge and your help. Think about how you could share this information with the emergency responders if an emergency occurs.

For each risk, you should also think about what actions you can take to reduce the risk of it occurring, or to minimise its impacts. For example, If your community is subject to regular coastal or river flooding, are you and other members of your community group: 

  • Registered with Floodline Scotland to receive flood warnings https://myfloodline.sepa.scot/register
  • Aware of the Scottish Flood Forum and the extensive resources they provide to help you prepare for and recover from flood. https://www.scottishfloodforum.org
  • Aware of the “Flood Risk Management Plan” held by your local authority.
  • Aware of sandbag supplies and how to access or replenish them.
  • Aware of key ‘assets’ in your community such as people who own 4x4 or ‘all terrain’ vehicles who could assist with getting people or supplies into or out of an affected area? 

The emergency responders already do a lot of work to identify the risks in their areas. They meet regularly as multi-agency Resilience Partnerships in the North, West and East of Scotland with a number of local partnerships within those regions. 

These groups have the responsibility for the coordination of regional emergency planning and for overseeing the response to, and recovery from, major emergencies. They also have a duty to publish a “Community Risk Register” showing what risks have been identified in your area, and their potential impact on it.

It is worth looking at these documents to help you think about the potential risks to your local area and their impacts.

These risk registers mainly talk about relatively high-level threats or hazards, and how the emergency responders can address them. Your group is likely to have local knowledge and insight of other risks in your area that may not be included in those registers. 

For example, is there a local road that regularly floods, or a footpath that could get blocked in severe weather, cutting off members of the community from vital amenities?

If there are risks within your community which need action, then you can have a say in how money is spent within your local authority. Participatory budgeting (PB) is a way for people to have a direct say in how local money is spent. PB is used across the world, and now in Scotland, where community groups and local authorities are using PB to give power to local people. Find out more at https://pbscotland.scot/

 

1.3 What can your Community Emergency Group do to prepare?

Communities around Scotland help each other through emergencies in many different ways. Here are a few examples:

 

Encourage Household Preparedness

Encourage individuals and families to think about what they would do in the event of an emergency. Ready Scotland provides a printable Household Emergency Plan which you can encourage people to use. You could circulate this through your online communication channels or provided a printer version at community events. 

 

Sharing Information

Getting timely and accurate information to people before or during emergency situations, if it is safe to do so, will help them to prepare for disruption and know where they can get the right support. 

 

Hands On Help

Clearing local access paths of snow and ice and putting down grit, if you’re fit, well and able. Helping neighbours to install household flood protection, such as laying out sandbags or putting up flood barriers. Checking up on relatives or neighbours who might need help during a power cut.

 

1.4 Assessing community skills and resources

Once your community is aware of the risks and what their impacts might be, it is important to consider what skills, resources and equipment your community already has that could be used, if needed, during an emergency.

You may be surprised at the level of knowledge you have, and the wealth of equipment and other resources in your community. In any case it’s better to find out now what is or is not available, rather than when an emergency happens.

You may want to look at your community’s existing skills and resources under the following headings and add this information into your Plan:

 

Volunteers

People already help each other in emergencies. However, as part of your planning, you could speak to people and groups in your community and ask them, in advance, if they would be willing to volunteer during an emergency, and if they have skills, tools or other resources that could be used. For example, local farmers and tree surgeons may have equipment (see below) and expertise which they are willing to use and perhaps have included on the SFRS Community Asset Register.  Some people may be trained in first aid or food preparation. Many people will be able to help in tasks like clearing snow. Some local authorities have contracts with farmers to assist during severe weather, you may wish to check with your own local authority if there are any arrangements like this in your area. 

You might also want to consider talking with existing local groups to see if their volunteers or contacts would be willing to help in an emergency. For example, sports clubs, faith groups or school parent councils may be willing to help out if required. It is important to make sure that you keep volunteers up to date and engaged in your emergency planning.

More information about managing groups of volunteers can be found at Volunteer Scotland www.volunteerscotland.net

 

Tools and equipment

With your Community Emergency Group, think about what tools and machinery might be needed if an emergency occurs. There may be people in your community who are qualified, capable and willing to operate these tools and machinery in an emergency. For example tree surgeons may have useful skills and equipment, farmers may be willing to use their tractors to help.

It’s important to make sure that anyone using this kind of equipment is properly qualified and insured to do so. This is for their own protection, and also to protect the people they are helping. 

 

Supplies

In an emergency, your community may require supplies, like food and water, which may be difficult to obtain. You should talk to your local authority to see what arrangements are in place already and, where appropriate, consider talking directly with local businesses and suppliers who might be willing to provide these supplies. If a written agreement is made between your community and the supplier, attach this to your Plan.

 

Transport

Find out which vehicles could be used by the local community and know how to access them in an emergency. It is important to make sure that vehicle owners are properly licensed and insured to use their vehicles in this way.

 

Insurance, health and safety

You should definitely not see insurance and liability as a barrier to preparing your community for emergencies.  Having a Community Emergency Plan does not mean that volunteers should be putting themselves in danger, or endangering other people in the community.

For every-day activities that you might do to help your neighbours, in a personal capacity, your ordinary household buildings or contents insurance will generally provide personal liability cover. You must always take reasonable care, and not take unnecessary risks. If you are in doubt, you must check your insurance policy or contact your insurer.

If you are part of an existing group, you may have third party liability insurance, and you can check with that insurer that the types of activities you want to do will be covered by your policy.

If your group is not employing anyone, health and safety legislation will not apply to you. However if you are motivated to do something to help your community in an emergency, you will want to make sure that the volunteers who are working with you do so safely. 

Some communities have made arrangements with their local authorities to enable actions taken as part of their community emergency plan to be covered under the local authority’s third party liability insurance. You may want to discuss this possibility with your local authority. 

For Community Councils covered by Zurich Municipal Insurance, it has been agreed that community resilience activities that don’t involve mechanised equipment will be covered under existing policies. You must contact Zurich Insurance to check if this applies to your group. 

There are fuller guides to Insurance and Health and Safety in this document's annexes. 

 

Identifying and supporting places of safety

In an emergency, your local authority might need safe places or “rest centres” for people to shelter, or which can act as “hub” for information sharing across the region’s communities.

Your local authority is likely to have already identified a number of key locations, but your Community Emergency Group may be able to offer support in setting up additional locations in your local area or linking up with already identified places of safety.

 

Emergency Contact List

It is important to keep a record of who is in the Community Emergency Group, as well as others in the community who have offered their help in an emergency. This will help you contact everyone quickly in an emergency and make it easier for you and the emergency responders to identify who is part of the Community Emergency Group. 

You may want to record contacts in a “telephone tree”, which sets out a process through which people have responsibility for ringing other contacts, sharing the work. 

There are a few principles for storing people’s personal data safely, for example:

  • Make sure the personal data you (your group) hold is accurate and kept up to date.
  • Only collect and store the minimum amount of information needed.
  • Make sure people know how to contact you if they want you to remove their data from your records.
  • Tell people what data you have about them if they ask you to, and remove it if requested.
  • Store data securely, and only share data with those who need the information. 

For further information see www.ico.org.uk

 

Sharing your Plan – get other views

Once you have drafted your Plan, share it with your community, your local authority and emergency responders to get their views. It is important that all members of the community feel that the Plan works for them. 

By sharing the plan you may get more people interested in it, gain further support and ensure that everyone knows who to contact and what assistance you can provide.

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