Emergency Planning
Resilience Unit
The main Civil Protection duties fall on the Category 1 responder (including the County Council) as follows:
- Risk assessment
- Business Continuity Management
- Emergency Planning
- Maintaining public awareness and arrangements to warn, inform and advise the public
- Provision of advice and assistance to the commercial sector and voluntary organisations
- Co-operation and information sharing.
The above duties are the responsibility of both the County and District Councils.
Cumbria County Council Resilience Team role enables the council to meet their statutory duties outlined under the Civil Contingencies Act.
The four principal areas of work that involve the Resilience Team are Assess, Plan, Respond and Recover.
Multi Agency Response in Cumbria to major incidents (PDF 673KB)
The purpose of an emergency plan is to inform staff within organisations engaged in a response, so they:
- know their role
- are competent to carry out the tasks assigned to them
- have access to available resources and facilities
- have confidence that their partners in response are similarly prepared.
Emergency Management works to identify training needs and deliver training to County Council staff who may be required to responding in an emergency. Where appropriate we also involve staff from other organisations.
We also work closely with our emergency response partners through the Cumbria Resilience Forum to provide and participate in multi-agency training activities.
Cumbria County Council is involved in a wide range of emergency exercises that are designed to test and validate our plans and procedures.
Cumbria County Council is involved in a wide range of emergency exercises that are designed to test and validate our plans and procedures.
Exercises have three main purposes:
- to validate plans (validation)
- to develop staff competencies and give them practice in carrying out their roles in the plans (training)
- to test well-established procedures (testing).
Most exercises will have some elements of these.
The purpose of the Unit's main general emergency plan is to provide vital information and supporting details that will enable teams to:
- make good, immediate decisions
- co-ordinate their efforts to be most effective.
The plan is not designed to specify what actions need to be taken when a crisis happens, but to provide the information that's essential to any emergency response.
Cumbria County Council also prepares specific plans for emergencies at certain sites or concerning certain risks. These cover, for instance, emergencies involving a nuclear site and pandemic influenza.
Yes, you can request public versions of sections of the Cumbria General Emergency Plan in PDF format by emailing emergency.planning@cumbria.gov.uk. Please specify which section you are interested in:.
Cumbria General Emergency Response Plan
- Coordination
- Countermeasures
- Public Communications
- Responder Communications
- Roles and Responsibilities
- Recovery
The Welfare Section is a very large section so has been broken down into smaller parts:
- Part A: Emergency Assistance Centres
- Part B: Animal Welfare
- Part D: Spontaneous Offers of Support
- Part: E: Welfare and Well Being
Please Note that Part C is not currently available as a public document as it contains details of Voluntary Agency capabilities and is awaiting approval from all partners. For more details on some of the Voluntary Agencies we work with please see our Partners Page.
The public versions of the Part 3 flood plans are available on request. They are split into 52 geographic regions covering Cumbria.