Accidents, whether human or natural, occur from time to time. They will often be managed by the emergency services alone, but on occasions the emergency may be either too large in scale or too complex for the emergency services to deal with unassisted. During these circumstances, a major incident may be declared and assistance sought from a wide range of professional partners. Shropshire Council is one of the agencies that would respond to this type of emergency in supporting the emergency services and the community to deal with the effects of the major incident.
The aim of the Emergency Planning Unit is to identify the threats and risks in Shropshire and plan for the response and recovery should an incident occur. The ultimate objective is to minimise the impact of disaster on the day-to-day lives of the community and the environment, and to assist in the return to normality. Emergency planners, working with a wide range of other agencies, prepare contingency plans and organise major incident training and major incident exercises to prepare for all types of emergencies, just in case. Whatever the incident, the role of Shropshire Council is always to provide support and care to the community, and to get things back to a sense of normality as soon as possible.
The types of activities we undertake to prepare the council to respond to emergencies are:
- To develop the council's response strategy to a major incident
- To prepare and plan for natural or man-made disasters
- To develop plans for the evacuation of an area or community
- To develop plans for the management of widespread animal diseases
- To develop plans for chemical, biological or radiological incidents
- To prepare and plan for flooding incidents
- To prepare and plan for severe weather
- To provide advice for public events on how to prepare contingency plans to deal with emergencies
- The development of Business Continuity arrangements to ensure that we are able to continue to deliver critical services in the event of an emergency affecting the Council directly .