Prepare your community: Community emergency plans

Why create a community emergency plan?

Community emergency planning helps groups give effective support in an emergency.

The emergency services need to go to those in the greatest danger first. If you prepare for an emergency as a community, you can:

• be more resilient as a group
• ensure that the emergency services can go to those with the greatest need first
• help us and the emergency services coordinate the response on a wider scale
• complement our work and the work of emergency services  
• reduce the impact of an emergency on your community both in the short and long term

How to develop a community emergency plan

GOV.UK has put together a toolkit to help communities prepare for an emergency and think about the risks you face. The toolkit includes:

• Strategic national framework on community resilience
• Preparing for emergencies: guide for communities
• Community emergency plan toolkit
• Community emergency plan template

Your community emergency plan should list:

• safe places to use as short term rest centres for people evacuated from their homes
• how to open these rest centres at short notice at any time
• people that are able and willing to help in an emergency
• equipment that might be useful for self help in an emergency
• vulnerable or potentially vulnerable people in the community
• useful contacts for use in an emergency

Your community emergency plan should be a general plan for any emergency. But it may useful to include specific risks that your community might face, such as flooding or being cut off in a snow storm.