What would you do if there was an emergency or major incident in your community such as a flood, large fire or power outage?
Would you know what to do if you – or your neighbours – needed additional support or had to be evacuated?
If you are part of a community, faith or neighbourhood group looking for ways you and your community can be better prepared for emergencies, we’re here to help you develop your own, bespoke Community Response Plan (CRP).
Emergencies happen every day in the UK and across the world. They can be caused by severe weather or other natural hazards, by deliberate actions, accidents or infrastructure failure.
These events can happen suddenly and may be over in a few hours or, on occasion, they can continue for days, months, or even longer. These emergencies or major events can happen anywhere and without warning. Even with advance notice, they may still cause disruption to the daily lives of you and your community.
Resilient communities can respond and recover more quickly from emergencies or major incidents, limiting the disruption to individuals.
Having a Community Response Plan for your community could help to keep everyone safe and informed during an emergency or major incident. Being prepared will enable your community to respond and recover from these incidents much quicker and make you less reliant on the Local Authority and emergency services.
Won’t the emergency services just come to help?
Rest assured, the blue light services and local authorities will be working together to support your community and provide help as quickly as possible. However, if the emergency is widespread – such as flooding, heavy snow, or a power outage – priority will be given to the most vulnerable, so there may be a delay in support reaching your community.
By being prepared and creating a CRP, your community will be able to support each other while help from the emergency services and local authorities makes its way to you. Having a Community Response Plan will help you and your group work through some key questions, such as:
Where would you go if you were required to evacuate your property?
What facilities would be available / toilets / Is there somewhere warm and dry?
What would you do about food and drink?
What would you do with pets if required to evacuate?
How would you know when it was safe to return?
Further tools for building a resilient community
We have created a number of resources you may find helpful when working with your community group to build community resilience and preparedness.
There is a presentation (click on the image below to download), which can be used to give your community group an overview of West Yorkshire Prepared and provide more detail on what a Community Response Plan entails, why your community needs one and the things you need to consider when completing it. It has been written so it can be shared with your group without the need for an official presenter.
We have also developed a guidance leaflet, providing information on more ways to improve community resilience. We would always recommend developing a Community Response Plan as a first step, but this guidance will provide some additional information and advice. Download a copy here.
If you are part of a community group – or looking to establish one – and would like to develop a Community Response Plan, please click on the link below, fill in your contact details, and our Community Resilience Officer will send you a plan to fill in, in your own time.
