Preparing for emergencies

An Emergency Planning Service for the Council is provided by the District Emergency Planning Officer, who is part of the Suffolk Joint Emergency Planning Unit.

This service enables the Council to react effectively to infrequent Major Emergencies, in partnership with other agencies, as required by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and is not associated with planning for building development or the response to day-to-day emergencies. The latter are dealt with by the relevant Council services as part of their normal response.

The Council's response to Emergencies is initially co-ordinated by its Duty Manager, who will be alerted through agreed multi-agency procedures.

Following the introduction of the 2004 Civil Contingencies Act, local councils became known as Category One responders, alongside the emergency services such as the Police, Fire Service and Ambulance Service.

The Category One responder duties require us to extend the emergency planning functions we performed previously, and have also created new duties for us to undertake.

These new duties for local councils are:  

• To complete a risk assessment for hazards that may pose a threat to the particular area;
• To maintain business continuity management plans to ensure the council can function in the event of an emergency;
• To maintain plans to prevent, reduce, control or mitigate the effects of emergencies and the response to emergencies. 

General information on the multi-agency response to Emergencies and available plans are to be found on the Suffolk Resilience website at http://www.suffolkresilience.com