Coordinating the response and working with other delivery partners

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Single Point of Reference for Preparation and Coordination

The purpose of the Team is to provide a single point of reference for preparation and caring for people affected by emergencies within the affected area. It will care for people before, during and after emergencies by establishing and sustaining formal partnerships to co-ordinate its joint activity. It will ensure that its members own and maintain their arrangements and are fully prepared to respond to emergencies at all times.

The Team will:

Establishing a Care for People Team

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Multi-agency Team

Preparing Scotland recommends establishing a number of specialist sub-groups to drive forward work in particular areas of emergency planning.

The Care for People Team is a multi-agency functional team that is active at the tactical level in preparation, response and longer-term recovery. It is one of a number of functional groups which should be established at the tactical level (for example, a Public Communications Group and a Scientific and Technical Advice Cell).

Range of Incidents and those affected

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In order to develop effective plans Care for People Teams should identify the range of incident to prepare for and the range of people likely to be affected.

Range of Incidents

Care for People arrangements should follow the Integrated Emergency Management Principles outlined in the Preparing Scotland suite of guidance and focus on consequences not causes.

Care for people affected by emergencies

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Checklist for Senior Managers Responsible for Caring for People

If an emergency was to happen today:

4 Promoting Business Resilience

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Local authorities are required to take appropriate steps to provide advice and assistance to businesses and other organisations about the continuance of their activities¹⁹, including organisations within the commercial and voluntary sectors in their areas. Although this duty is placed uniquely on local authorities, other Category 1 responders are required to cooperate with them in their delivery of this duty.

5 Annexes

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Annex 1: The Legislative Context

The statutory duties concerning:

3 Having Business Resilience

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The Civil Contingencies Act places a duty on Category 1 responders to plan to continue to perform their functions in the event of an emergency¹². This guidance recommends that this is achieved by applying the principles of Integrated Emergency Management¹³ to develop Business Resilience.

2 What is Business Resilience?

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The term ‘resilience’ is used in Preparing Scotland core document to mean ‘the capacity of an individual, community or system to adapt in order to sustain an acceptable level of function, structure and identity’. Business Resilience is this capacity or attribute of a business or other organisation. Category 1 responders that are sufficiently resilient in this sense will therefore be fulfilling their duties under the Civil Contingencies Act and Regulations to be able to ‘continue to perform his or its functions’.

1 Introduction and Context

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Resilience, as described and promoted in Preparing Scotland¹, has many different but interconnected elements. In an organisational or business context, this manifests as the practical ability to avoid disruptions to normal activity, to keep the things that matter most going and, if disruptions occur, to get back to a desired state of operation quickly – not by good fortune, but by design.

Questions to Ask

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Disruptions can affect any part of your day to day business, and often affect several aspects at once. How would the following affect your organisation’s ability to carry out its statutory duties and achieve its strategic objectives?

Loss of Access to Premises

Days of severe weather have made some important parts of your property unsafe for use and damaged the facilities and resources it contains; they have also caused a sharp increase in demand for your services.