Spotlight on Wiltshire Councils Emergency Preparedness

The Emergency Planning Team in Wiltshire Council are responsible for the ongoing coordination of Council’s response to incidents and working collaboratively with multi-agency partners. We’re probably one of the only teams in the Council who works across the whole organisation almost on a daily basis, through our Business Continuity programme. We in particular work with our social care colleagues and those in our Highways Teams, as we all come together in response regularly. 

Although we aren’t a blue light responder, we are a Category 1 responder under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and have a duty to respond to emergencies in support of those blue light colleagues to support the welfare of the public. 

We also support Parish and Town Councils in their local planning for emergencies in their areas through community resilience planning. We provide templates and advice to help them complete a comprehensive plan which will be used in response to incident like severe snow, flooding and fires. 

We recently worked collaboratively with Swindon Borough Council and the Category A reservoir undertakers within Wiltshire to make sure that the Local Resilience Forum Reservoir Plan was fit for purpose by undertaking a site visit to the Swindon Reservoirs and carrying out an exercise to work through the most likely outcomes to result from a reservoir breach. This was a great day where a lot of preparatory work was done in making both Councils more prepared for a reservoir breach.