Know your risks
What is an emergency?
For purposes of Local Resilience Forums (LRF’s), the types of risks and emergencies we plan for and usually respond to are defined in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 as: a severe event or situation, with a range of significant impacts, which required special arrangements to be implemented by one or more emergency responder organisations.
Simply, an emergency is an event that can:
- Result in the loss of life
- Cause injury to people
- Damage property, environment and security arrangements for the UK
- Significantly disrupt daily life.
National Risks
The National Risk Register of Civil Emergencies 2020 edition provides an updated government assessment of the likelihood and potential impact of a range of different civil emergency risks (including naturally and accidentally occurring hazards and malicious threats) that may directly affect the UK over the next 5 years.
In addition to providing information on how the UK government and local responders manage these emergencies, the National Risk Register also signposts advice and guidance on what members of the public can do to prepare for these events.
Local risks
Under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) the Norfolk Resilience Forum (NRF) is required to identify risks that may impact the County and include them in a Community Risk Register.
Members of the NRF come together, using the National Security Risk Assessment we identify which risks would have an impact on Norfolk; for those risks where we can put in place local mitigations we develop a local risk assessment; for those we are not able to put in place local mitigations we adopt the national risk assessment. The Community Risk Register matrix shows which risks we have assessed locally and their rating, further information on the national risks can be found in the latest version of the National Risk Register.
We’re working on bringing you some more advice on how to prepare for specific types of emergencies, keep checking back!
How are the risks assessed?
The risks we plan for are wide ranging, so a common approach has been adopted by all Local Resilience Forums. Our risk assessment process examines the likelihood of risks occurring in Norfolk, the impact they would have if they did occur looking at factors such as economy, psychological, health and environment. This results in the overall rating we give and the one you’ll see in the Community Risk Register matrix.
Plans
We develop a range of different emergency response plans that help us to respond to the bigger risks within the County; those identified within the Norfolk Community Risk Register. A number of these plans contain sensitive information, however the ones we are able to share with you are listed below.
