Community Resilience UK has announced plans to complement its services by campaigning for the protection and improvement of emergency preparedness and response and recovery capabilities.

Community Resilience UK (CRUK) told FIRE that its vision recognises the need to respond to budgetary constraints which may affect local authorities' emergency planning capacity and outlined its strategy to maintain effective representation of the sector with decision-makers.

They said CRUK will:

  • Carry out research into the level of spending by local authorities on emergency planning
  • Promote the accreditation of all civil contingencies professionals
  • Work to help establish a Chartered Institute of emergency planning and disaster management to support and develop professional standards
  • Campaign for independent assessments of Category 1 Responders' plans and Local Resilience Forum (LRF) community risk registers
  • Raise the profile of emergency planning among MPs and peers
  • Investigate the application of community budgets to LRFs.

George Cook, CEO of CRUK, said: "Local authority budgets are being further cut by 25% before 2015 and emergency planning officers will be some of the first to go. This is a crisis in civil protection capability and CRUK cannot stand by and watch so much good work and so many good people thrown away. Many will not find alternative employment and losing the capability they provide reduces our ability to protect ourselves as a nation."

Mr Cook said CRUK will also survey emergency planning officers and LRFs to assess the views of those working at the front line and will undertake this while expanding its current range of services - from rest centre directory management to emergency storage - and developing its network of partnerships.

 

For further information visit www.communityresilience.cc 

 

Posted April 18th, 2012 at 0900 by Andrew. Comment by emailing: andrew.lynch@pavpub.com