Our role in an emergency

An emergency is defined as an event or situation that threatens serious damage to human welfare in a place in the UK, the environment of a place in the UK, or war or terrorism that threatens serious damage to the security of the UK.

Emergencies can happen to anyone, anywhere, at any time, and may be caused by natural events such as weather conditions or unfortunately caused by human action.

What emergency planning is

Emergency planning includes making sure that we are prepared to respond appropriately to a major emergency (such as a major flood, loss of power regionally or the consequences of terrorist actions) as well as being adequately prepared for a disaster that affects our capability to provide services (such as a fire at the office or a failure of IT systems).​

Our role

We have a responsibility to ensure that the district is prepared and able to respond to any emergency in the area.

Whilst the emergency services routinely deal with incidents such as traffic accidents, fires, medical emergencies or incidents at sea, when a significant event occurs which is beyond the capacity of the emergency services to deal with unaided, we will provide a co-ordinated response, assisting the emergency services and supporting the needs of people and communities affected by the incident.

To help us, we have emergency plans which explain how we will respond to emergencies which are often unpredictable and vary in scale and nature. We prepare these plans as part of our role as a category 1 responder under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

We provide a number of services which may be required to help during an incident, such as waste and street scene, environmental health, housing, communications and will also work closely with Hampshire County Council Emergency Planning, public utilities and voluntary organisations. 

During an emergency incident, you may have to evacuate your property or an area, and we can help by setting up a rest centre to support communities or finding temporary accommodation.

We also have a role helping communities with recovery following an emergency incident.  

Useful emergency situation contacts

In an emergency dial 999 for police, fire, ambulance or coastguard.

• Police - call 101 to report non emergency community safety issues including non-emergency crime, policing and antisocial behaviour.
• Water - Southern Water or call 0330 303 0368
• Water - Bournemouth Water or call 01202 590059
• Report a power cut - Power Cut 105
• Gas - Gas emergencies service
• Flooding - Call the Environment Agency Floodline 0345 988 1188, or Gov.UK Flooding
• Hampshire County Council Emergency Planning  01962 846846, or epoffice@hants.gov.uk