Introduction to Emergency Planning
World events of a natural kind or man made over recent years such as severe weather conditions, major accidents or terrorist atrocity have drawn attention to the need to be prepared for any type of major incident.
Until now there has been no legal requirement for Local Authorities to plan for emergencies, although chief executives have been responsible for providing resources in the event of an emergency incident occurring.
The Civil Contingencies Act, 2004 and its associated guidance documents gives the meaning of an emergency and obligates the emergency services and other organisations, including Local Authorities, to have formal coordinated plans in place to enable them to respond and deal with emergency incidents.
The UK has been broken into a number of ‘Local Resilience Areas’. We are part of the Sussex Local Resilience Area. Each Local Resilience Forum is responsible for creating and maintaining a Community Risk Register. The Community Risk Register identifies possible emergency situations specific to their Local Resilience Area, and the possible actions needed to deal with each risk. The latest version of the 
Sussex Local Resilience Forum Community Risk Register is available to view.