Oxfordshire County Council has produced Community Emergency Planning guidance, together with a plan template and an example for guidance. More information here
Simple community emergency plans are designed to achieve the following:
Identification of safe places to use as a refuge for people displaced from their homes in the short term (hours) and how to open them at short notice at any time. These are known as ‘Survivor Reception Centre’s’ by emergency services and it would help if this terminology could be used in your plan.
Identification of people that can and are willing to help in an emergency.
Identification of equipment that might be useful for self-help in an emergency.
Identification of vulnerable or potentially vulnerable people in the community.
A list of useful contacts for use in a crisis.
A number of communities have already produced their own plans for specific emergencies; flood plans developed with the Environment Agency being the most notable example.
In most cases the information compiled in the development of these plans would be useful in a number of different emergency scenarios and we recommend that you consider the production of a general emergency plan.
Where communities have particular vulnerabilities, for example, flooding or are cut off in snow, additional information may be useful in the form of an annex to the plan.
Next steps
Hold a table-top exercise to validate the plan (the Emergency Planning Unit can help you).
Send a copy of your plan to the Emergency Planning Unit along with the emergency contact information form (doc format, 35Kb).
Parish and Town Clerks will receive an annual survey which provides an opportunity to update contact information and status of community emergency plans.
Community emergency planning guidance
Oxfordshire County Council follows the UK Government guidance, toolkit and templates for Community Emergency Plans, which can be found on gov.uk.