Emergency planning

What is an emergency?

An emergency 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."

Every day the emergency services are called to deal with circumstances which require the use of their knowledge and skills to safeguard life and property. Occasionally an incident occurs that, by its nature and size, will need the additional specialist services of other agencies including the County and District Councils, the Health Authorities and voluntary organisations, to tackle and resolve the incident.

Emergencies leading to a major incident can occur in a number of ways, some of the more common being:

• severe weather
• natural disaster
• industrial accidents
• transport accidents
• terrorism

What is emergency planning?
Emergency Planning is one of the key local authority functions which prepares and plans for a managed response to a major emergency through the following 6 stages:

• anticipation
• assessment
• prevention
• preparation
• response
• recovery management

Hampshire and Isle of Wight Local Resilience partnership

This partnership is made up of local authorities, emergency services, non-emergency services, Government departments and voluntary organisations who work together in responding to emergencies, working under a formal framework of mutual support, information sharing and communicating brought about through the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA).