Preparing your community

Community resilience

At the very beginning of an emergency, communities may have to cope on their own until help arrives.

Community emergency planning and resilience is about empowering communities, businesses and individuals to use local people, resources and knowledge to help themselves and communities during an emergency.

This could be before, during or after the emergency services arrive.

Resilience is about being aware of risks that might impact the community, individual, or business and planning and preparing for them, to minimise the impact and disruption.

Many communities spontaneously help one another in times of need and communities who have prepared in advance are able to cope better and recover faster.

We understand the importance for communities to be able to respond to, withstand and recover from adverse incidents and held a community forum to support town and parish councils and key interested parties in planning how to help their communities become more resilient.

See the Community resilience (PDF, 15 MB) presentation.

How to prepare

There are many ways you can help prepare for an emergency response so that you are:

aware of the risks which may affect your community and what the impact would be
able to assist and complement the work of local emergency services
able to use your existing skills, knowledge and resources to provide support to others

See further useful information on preparing for emergencies.

Community plan

A community plan helps identify the local risks that may affect the community and the skills and resources available to prepare for, respond to and recover for an adverse incident.

It will help all volunteers know their roles when there's an emergency and can be shared with emergency services and us so that everyone can work together. There are lots of places to get advice on developing your community plan including this Community Emergency Plan Template (Word doc, 1 MB).

Emergency Planning - Useful Information

	Agency	Telephone	Website
Electricity - updates	SSEN		https://powertrack.ssen.co.uk/powertrack
Electricity - priority service	SSEN	0800 2943259	Priority services - SSEN
Emergency Planning	HCC	0845 6035638
Emergency Planning	NFDC
Fire	Hampshire Fire and Rescue	02380 644000
Flood - rivers/seas	EA	800807060
Flood - updates	Floodline	0345 9881188
Flood - who to contact	HCC		https://documents.hants.gov.uk/flood-water-management/managing-risk/report-a-flood-A4-digital.pdf
Flood - reporting	HCC		https://www.hants.gov.uk/landplanningandenvironment/environment/flooding/reportingflooding
Flood - after	Gov.UK		https://www.gov.uk/after-flood
Flood - checking flood risk	Gov.UK		Check the long term flood risk for an area in England - GOV.UK
Flood - warnings	Gov.UK		Sign up for flood warnings - GOV.UK
Medical Advice/Assistance	NHS	111
Police	Hampshire Constabulary	101
Power cut	Emergency Number	105	UK Power Cut? Call 105 For Free \| Find Your Electricity Provider
Radio - frequencies 96.1 and 103.8FM	BBC Radio Solent		www.bbc.co.uk/solent
Risk to Life - immediate	Emergency Services	999
Water - priority service	Bournemouth Water	0344 346 2020	Priority services \| Bournemouth Water
Water - priority service	Southern Water	01822 851370	Southern Water's Priority Services Register - Rural Services Network
Water - report a problem	Southern Water	0330 3030223	Report A Problem - Southern Water
Weather - updates	Met office		https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/forecast
Weather ready?	Met Office		WeatherReady - Met Office
Weather warnings	Met office		UK weather warnings - Met Office
Weather - Heat Health Alerts	Met office/ UKHSA		Heat-health Alert service - Met Office

Contact us

You can contact us at eandr@nfdc.gov.uk, or telephone: 023 8028 5411.