Scrutiny Management Committee

 

29th April 2025

 

Report of the Director of Environment, Transport and Planning

 

Emergency Planning

Summary

1.   The Chair of the Scrutiny Management Committee has requested information on how we prepare for common emergencies and what we have in place to prepare for less common emergencies.

a.   Common emergencies: Flood, public information and guidance and impact of major schemes.

b.   Less common: Food insecurity, novel disease outbreaks, major drought, heatwaves and wildfires.

        Background

Legislation

2.   The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA) defines City of York Council (CYC) as a Category 1 organisation and has enhanced responsibilities as a result.

3.   The CCA is the driver for how agencies prepare and plan for emergencies, working nationally, locally and co-operatively to ensure civil protection in the UK.

4.   The Act places a statutory duty on the CYC to:

·        Assess the risk of emergencies occurring and use this to inform contingency planning;

·        Put in place emergency plans.

·        Put in place Business Continuity Management arrangements.

·        Put in place arrangements to make information available to the public about civil protection matters and maintain arrangements to warn, inform and advise the public in the event of an emergency.

·        Share information with other local responders to enhance co-ordination.

·        Co-operate with other local responders to enhance co-ordination and efficiency; and

·        Provide advice and assistance to businesses and voluntary organisations about business continuity management (Local Authorities only).

 

5.   Emergency Planning and Community Resilience should aim where possible to prevent emergencies occurring, and when they do occur, good planning should reduce, control or mitigate the effects of the emergency. It is a systematic and ongoing process which should evolve as lessons are learnt and circumstances change

City of York Emergency Planning

6.   The City of York council Emergency Planning function sits in the Directorate of Environment, Transport and Planning under a Director who is a trained Multi Agency Gold Incident Commander (MAGIC) and responsible for ensuring the organisation fulfils its statutory responsibilities.

7.   Planning, preparedness and response is provided by a shared service collaboration with North Yorkshire Council, the York work plan  overseen by the City of York Resilience and Contingencies Manager, this includes the out of hours on call provision, engaging with all City of York service providers such as Highways, Adult and Children Social Care, Public Health, Housing, Building Control and Communications and Engagement etc. to provide our local response to incidents and escalation protocols.  The Council has a Director on Call Rota some services also have out of hours arrangements according to the risks.

8.   Officers engaged in emergency incident response are required to complete corporate training, attending events and exercises as required for continued personal professional development.

9.   The service is audited regularly at local level by Veritau and has a separate assurance process for the LRF

City of York partners

10.                Local engagement with other responder organisations is provided formally at the Water Safety Group, Flood Group, Protect Group, Safety Advisory Groups and feed into the  Integrated Emergency Management Group, identified risks or issues escalated into the York Corporate Emergency Planning Group, Corporate Management Team and if multi agency response is required the  Local Resilience  Forum  Emergency Planning and Risk Groups.

Elected Members       

11.                Elected Members induction includes an introduction to Civil Contingencies and members responsibilities during emergencies and this can be further developed by Members attending future induction sessions and using the training available on MyLo “NYLRF How we respond to Incidents” modules 1 and 2  NYLRF how we respond to incidents.

12.                Elected Members are then asked to provide ongoing leadership and support within York and their own ward to:

·        Support communication of community risks

·        Provide leadership and guidance in developing community resilience

·        Work with local resilience groups to identify funding resource opportunity

·        Identify mitigation and resilience measures to prevent emergencies occurring

Local Resilience Forum (LRF)

13.                The Chief Operating   is a member of the York and North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum Executive Board and responsible for developing the LRF strategy for 2025 to 2030. The secretariat function is provided by North Yorkshire Council with funding provided by partner agencies.

14.                Six themes have been taken directly from the UK Resilience Framework that have been determined to be important for York and North Yorkshires Resilience

·        Risk: NYLRF will continue to make effective risk assessment the foundation of our resilience activity. We will make the best possible use of available information and expertise when seeking to understand the risks we face and take steps to improve our collective understanding of local and regional resilience capabilities.

·        Responsibility and accountability: NYLRF will facilitate effective leadership within and across organisations and will be responsible and accountable to partners and communities within York and North Yorkshire for providing an effective framework for emergency management.

·        Partnerships: NYLRF will build cohesive, healthy and resilient partnerships with new and existing entities that support more effective emergency management and enable us to capitalise on new technology and the wealth of expertise in the county

·        Communities: NYLRF will build cohesive, healthy and resilient communities who are ready to respond together and recover well from adverse events

·        Investment: NYLRF will seek opportunities for investment to support and strengthen York and North Yorkshire in preventing, preparing for, responding to and recovering from major incidents and emergencies.

·        Skills: NYLRF will ensure that we have the right people with the right skills to support this strategy.

For more information on the LRF strategy please use this link North Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum Strategy - Ready Together 2025 to 2030

Conclusion

15.                The assessment of Risk by the Council is both top up and bottom down.  The National Risk Register is considered at a regional level by the NYLRF, Services feed into Directorate Risk Registers.  Together those risks should meet in the Key Corporate Risk Register. 

16.                In response to these risks’ emergency plans are in place, some are national, some are regional, and some are local.  For instance, York has a local Flood Plan and a City Centre Evacuation Plan as well as plans for Rest Centres which feed into the LRF flood plan.  There are national plans for example National pandemic influenza, National power/utility outage and National fuel Disruption, The Local resilience Forum organises and coordinates partner involvement in National exercises. Several service areas are involved across York as we commit to maximise development and learning opportunity for officers.

2023 – Counter Terrorism Exercise (Ex Spring Resolve)

2024 – National Flood response exercise (ex Tempest)

2025 -  Human Infectious Disease  (ex solaris April Ex Pegasus Sept, Oct, Nov)

17.                In addition, the Council exercise some plans locally and exercised a few weeks ago about the cross-council response to unexploded ordnance if discovered in a major project.

18.                Each Directorate is responsible for preparing business continuity plans about how a service would respond and ensure it could continue to provide essential service in a range of circumstances.  These are reported to Corporate Management Team on a quarterly basis.  The Council also supports businesses who require support with this.

19.                A key role the Council has in times of emergency is to ward an inform the public, this is both reactive in times of emergency and the Councils communications team is key to fulfilling this, it is subtly different though as the speed of communication is key at times of emergency.

20.                The council’s participation in the NYLRF is the way that we share information with other local responders to enhance co-ordination. The NYLRF has well developed ways of informing other agencies of incidents and requests for information or support.

Consultation

21.                We engage with the Local Resilience Forum and partner organisations across all work themes and continually assess risks which includes emerging risks as advised from Governments departments using the Cabinet Office forward look and National Risk Register

22.                The Local Resilience Forum and all partner agencies apply the National Resilience Standards and National Occupational Standards alongside the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles to coordinate emergency response and apply Learning and development to current risk e.g. Martyn’s Law and Grenfell

23.                The LRF Community Resilience Group, chaired by the York Resilience and Contingency manager, successfully applied for Cabinet Office innovation funding 2023, the following 2 years saw York and North Yorkshire lead a Yorkshire and Humber wide project providing research data and guidance on how we work and engage  with residents, communities and businesses to provide information on risk and resilience, the project has now delivered a free interactive website and conversation text platform engagement tool to provide access to guidance and resilience to emergencies. Home - Yorkshire Ready Together

 

Risk Management

 

24.                Emergency Planning report regularly to Corporate Management Team and risks identified and engage with the Key Corporate risk lead officer to ensure a common understanding and shared situational awareness of risks is applied across York.

25.                The Local Resilience Forum risk group are advised of local risks that require escalation to LRF partners and into Government structures via MHCLG and Cabinet Office

 

        Recommendations

26.                            Members are asked to

1)   note the information.

Reason: Provide reassurance to scrutiny committee members

2)   requested to maximise the opportunity to increase knowledge relating to emergency preparedness and emergency responders by visiting MyLo how we respond to incidents and promote attendance at future induction sessions for elected members.

3)   requested to promote resilience within local communities and maximise engagement opportunities to resilient platforms for advice.

Reason: allow individuals communities and businesses to be informed on local risks allowing them to plan and prepare for emergency response.

 

 

 

Contact Details

 

Author

 

Chief Officer Responsible for the report: James Gilchrist

Director of Environment, Transport and Planning

 

 

Author’s name

Title

Dept Name

 

 

Steve Ball

Resilience and Contingencies Manager

Emergency Planning

Environment Transport and Planning

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Report Approved

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Date

15/04/2025

 

 

 

 

 

Wards Affected:  List wards or tick box to indicate all

All

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For further information please contact the author of the report

Steve Ball

Resilience and Contingencies Manager

 

 

Abbreviations

 

LRF –        Local Resilience Forum

NYLRF –  North Yorkshire Resilience Forum

IEMG –    Integrated Emergency Management Group

CEPG -   Corporate Emergency Planning Group

CMT –    Corporate Management Team

MyLo-    ‘My learning’ corporate learning opportunity platform