North Northamptonshire Safety and Resilience Partnership In association with Zurich Municipal Emergency Plan for Kettering, Corby and East Northamptonshire Councils Document Control Title Emergency Plan for Kettering, Corby and East Northamptonshire Councils Type of Document Procedure Related documents Annex A – Emergency Control Centre procedures Annex B – Emergency Contacts List Annex C – Incident & Decision Log Author Paul Howard Owner North Northamptonshire Safety & Resilience Partnership Protective marking Unprotected Intended audience All staff, partner agencies and general public Next Review Date: July 2014 History Version Date Details / summary of changes Action owner 1.0 1/7/13 Issued following a consultation period between Paul Howard February and June 2013 Consultees Internal: External Peer review by Safety & Resilience Team Peer review by emergency planning colleagues on County team Safety & Resilience Partnership Board Head of County Emergency Planning Team Corporate Management Teams in each Local Resilience Forum Coordinator authority Previous plan holders in Corby Borough Council Distribution List Internal: External No hard copies issued – available via each No hard copies issued – available through authorities’ intranet and electronic file link on external website of each authority system– see ‘footer’ on subsequent pages Available through Local Resilience Forum for file path of master document website Contents Section 1 Information 1.1 Requirement for plan 1 1.1.1 Definition of responders 1 1.1.2 Duties required by the Civil Contingencies Act 1 1.2 The role of the local authority 2 1.3 Purpose of plan 3 1.4 Relationship with other emergency planning arrangements 3 1.5 The context of an emergency plan 3 1.6 The need for a flexible approach 4 1.7 Risk based approach 4 1.8 Definition of emergency 4 1.9 Determination of an emergency 4 1.10 Test for response 5 1.11 Definition of major incident 5 Section 2 Alerting and activation 2.1 Responsibilities for issuing alert 6 2.2 Initial situational awareness 6 2.3 Record keeping 7 2.4 SAD CHALETS (a prompt for collecting information) 7 2.5 Activation 7 Figure 1 Flow chart of alert and activation process 8 2.6 Priorities in response – some considerations 9 2.6.1 The vulnerable 9 2.6.2 Common objectives 9 Section 3 Management, control and coordination 3.1 Role of NCC Emergency Planning Duty Officer 10-11 3.2 Duty Resilience Officer 11 3.3 Emergency Control Operator 11 3.4 Incident Liaison Officer 12 3.5 Silver Commander 12 3.6 Gold Commander 12 3.7 Emergency Control Centre 13 3.8 Control Team 13 3.9 Emergency Management Team 13 3.10 Elected members 14 3.11 Welfare of responders 14 3.12 Equal opportunities 14 3.13 Stand down 14 Section 4 Administration 4.1 Incident debriefing 15 4.2 Plan management 15 4.3 Plan validation 15 Figure 2 Training, testing and exercise programme 16-18 4.4 Glossary of terminology likely to be used 19 Annexes A Emergency Control Centre procedures B Emergency Contacts List C Incident & Decision Log Emergency Plan for Kettering, Corby & East Northamptonshire Councils K:\Emergency Planning\1 Current Plan and annexes\pdf material\Emergency Plan final v1.0.doc 1 Information 1.1 The requirement for this plan The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA) seeks to establish a consistent level of civil protection activity across the UK. Consistency is also sought in the way the function is carried out between the local Category 1 and 2 responders (as partners covered by the Act), and in different parts of the country. In Northamptonshire, the Local Resilience Forum (LRF) which is based on the geographic area covered by Northamptonshire Police provides the framework for such consistency and cooperation. The chief requirement of the Act in respect of Emergency Planning is to maintain plans to ensure that, if an emergency occurs or is likely to occur, each Category 1 responder body can deliver its functions so far as necessary or desirable for the purpose of: • preventing the emergency; • reducing, controlling or mitigating its effects, or; • taking other action in connection with it. The Act provides a basic framework defining what tasks should be performed and how cooperation should be conducted. 1.1.1 Definition of responders Responders are defined in two categories: Category One (Core responders), typically: • Emergency services (Police, Fire, Ambulance) • Local authorities • Health bodies (NHS Commissioning Board, Public Health England, Directors of Public Health, and the majority of NHS provider organisations) • Government agencies (Environment Agency) Category Two (Cooperating responders), typically: • Utilities • Transport • Health bodies (Clinical Commissioning Groups) • Government agencies (Health & Safety Executive) 1.1.2 Duties required by the Act The duties that responders are required to perform can be summarised under the following headings. Category Two Responders are only required to satisfy points 6 and 7 below: 1. Risk assessment; 5. Provision of advice and assistance 2. Business continuity management; to the commercial sector and voluntary organisations. (Local 3. Emergency planning; and authorities only) 4. Maintaining public awareness and 6. Cooperation; and arrangements to warn inform and advise the public. 7. Information sharing. Source: Emergency Preparedness Chapter 1 paragraph 1.29 – 1.31 Emergency Plan for Kettering, Corby & East Northamptonshire Councils K:\Emergency Planning\1 Current Plan and annexes\pdf 1 material\Emergency Plan final v1.0.doc 1.2 The role of the local authority Local authorities are one of the main bodies representing the community and their role in emergency response and recovery largely reflects this. They have a wide range of functions that are likely to be called upon in support of the emergency services during emergency response and recovery. The local authority will play an enabling role in close collaboration with a wide range of bodies who are not routinely involved in emergency response. In particular, the local authority will work with partners to: a) provide immediate shelter and welfare for survivors not requiring medical support and their families and friends via evacuation, rest, humanitarian and other centres to meet their immediate to short term needs; b) provide medium to longer-term welfare of survivors (e.g. social services support and financial assistance which may be generated from appeal funds and also provide help-lines which should answer the public’s questions as a one stop shop). Local authorities play a large part in addressing community needs via drop-in centres and organising anniversaries and memorials as part of the recovery effort; c) provide Investigating and Enforcement Officers under the provision of the Food and Environment Protection Act 1985 as requested by Defra; d) facilitate the inspection of dangerous structures to ensure that they are safe for emergency personnel to enter; e) clean up of pollution and facilitate the making good and reoccupation of sites or areas affected by an emergency; f) liaise with the coroner’s office to provide emergency mortuary capacity in the event that existing mortuary provision is exceeded; g) co-ordinate the activities of the various voluntary sector agencies involved and spontaneous volunteers; h) where necessary provide catering facilities, toilets and rest rooms for use by all agencies in one place, for the welfare of emergency response personnel in the event of a protracted emergency. This will depend on the circumstances and available premises; i) lead the recovery effort, which is likely to carry on for a considerable time and is likely to involve many organisations who are not ordinarily involved in, or used to the speed and scale of the recovery effort. It is important that our roles are understood and established prior to an emergency, experience has shown that when these have been exceeded or disregarded, the local authority’s position is undermined. Source: Emergency Response and Recovery (paragraphs 3.2.30 to 3.2.33) Emergency Plan for Kettering, Corby & East Northamptonshire Councils K:\Emergency Planning\1 Current Plan and annexes\pdf 2 material\Emergency Plan final v1.0.doc 1.3 The purpose of the plan The purpose of an emergency plan is to serve organisations engaged in response and recovery, within the locality at the time of an emergency. Its aim is to increase multi-agency and community resilience by ensuring that all those charged with tackling the emergency on behalf of the community: • Know their role; • Are competent to carry out the tasks assigned to them; • Have access to available resources and facilities; and • Have confidence that their partners in response are similarly prepared. Source: Emergency Preparedness Chapter 5 paragraph 5.51 1.4 Relationship with other emergency planning arrangements This plan should be read and used in conjunction with: • Northamptonshire Major Incident Manual – this is the core manual describing the way all emergencies are managed by the responder agencies in Northamptonshire. It also provides detail on many of the principles for the response, including command and control, scene management, roles and responsibilities, evacuation and warning and informing. This document can be found on the secure (Responder) part of the Local Resilience Forum site hosted by Northamptonshire Police at: http://www.northants.police.uk/lrf/ The user name and password will be found in the emergency contacts list (ECL) • Emergency Control Centre plan – Annex A - this provides an outline of the process and procedures involved in controlling and coordinating the local authority response to an emergency. • The Emergency contact list – Annex B - a composite of all those with a generic or specialist role in an emergency in each of the three authorities. It also provides details of facilities and resources. This is a protected document available only to those with a role in the emergency plan. It’s updated every three months and is available through controlled access on the internal electronic file system in each authority.