Warwickshire Prepared

Preparing for Emergencies in Warwickshire – a guide to help you

We have created a colourful and interesting guide to help you prepare yourselves for responding to a major emergency such as a large fire or flooding. It sets out:

• Which major emergencies are most likely to happen
• How you can prepare yourself to deal with them
• How you can respond to emergencies
• What the emergency services and other response agencies do to reduce the likelihood the emergencies will happen and how we will respond if they do
• Where you can find out more information about the risks
• Advice on how to make a ‘grab bag’ and what to include in it.

What is risk assessment and why is it important

Risk assessment is the first step in the emergency planning process and aims to identify those risks which could result in a major emergency in Warwickshire. Each risk once identified is then quantified on its likelihood to occur and the probable adverse conditions/impacts which could result. Risk assessment is important as it enables us to ensure that our plans are sound and proportionate to the risks that exist in the Warwickshire area, and enable us to take preventative action where appropriate. The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 places a statutory obligation on all Category 1 responders to carry out risk assessments and to maintain a ‘community risk register’ (i.e. a register of assessments carried out). The Warwickshire Local Resilience Forum has adopted a multi-agency approach for this work and has engaged a wide range of stakeholders and partner organisations in the process.

Community Risk Register - how it was developed

The generation of the community risk register has been subject to a six-stage process as recommended in the document Emergency Preparedness (guidance document produced by central Government to support Part 1 of the Civil Contingencies Act). Briefly, this process consists of the following steps:

• Contextualisation - (i.e. defining how the process will be undertaken)
• Hazard Review and Allocation for Assessment
• Risk Analysis
• Risk Evaluation
• Risk Treatment
• Monitoring and Review.

The Government have published a National Risk Register which sets out our assessment of the likelihood and potential impact of a range of different risks that may directly affect the UK on a national scale. The National Risk Register is designed to increase awareness of the kinds of risks the UK faces, and encourage individuals and organisations to think about their own preparedness. The register also includes details of what the Government and emergency services are doing to prepare for emergencies.

Warwickshire Local Resilience Forum risk profile

Warwickshire is a landlocked county covering 1,975km² and bordering seven other counties. According to mid-2003 estimates, the county had a population of 519,800 and a diverse local economy including manufacturing, tourism, retail & distribution, social care and professional services. The county also has an extensive transport infrastructure serving the heart of the country, featuring five major motorways, is a key link in much of the countries rail network and in recent years has seen increases in air traffic across its skies from Birmingham and Coventry airports.

Warwickshire Local Resilience Forum risk scenarios

As part of the hazard review process, a range of natural and man-made scenarios have been considered which have then been assessed for both the likelihood of them occurring and the impact that would result if they were to happen. The inclusion of these hazards or particular scenarios (the outcome description) do not, however, mean that the LRF believes the risk will materialise, or that if it were to do so, it would be of that scale. The risk scenarios are reasonable worst-case scenario assumptions upon which we have based our risk assessment work. All of the scenarios have one thing in common in that they are incidents that would occur as a result of an accident rather than deliberate or malicious action, for example, terrorism. Despite this however malicious scenarios have also been subject to further consideration for example:

• Conventional explosions
• Chemical / Biological / Radiological attacks
• Transport incidents
• Electronic attacks – such as affecting utilities, communications or other services.

Given the sensitivity of the information supporting these risk assessments and the potential for use by terrorist organisations, specific details will not be made available via this website, however, we wanted to highlight that both non-malicious and malicious incidents have been considered as part of the risk assessment duty.

Review

This work is an ongoing process and the timescales involved in the production of the final community risk register (a template for which can be found in annexe 4E of the Emergency Preparedness cannot be underestimated. The work to date is however provided here to illustrate the assessment work that has been completed so far, and it is our intention to make further details of all the hazards identified available via this website as and when it is practical to do so. Please refer back to this page regularly to keep up to date with our progress. Risk assessment is by no means a static process and is subject to constant review as local and national circumstances dictate, though we do intend to undertake a formal review of our risk assessment work every four years.