The Force Preparedness Team (FPT), led by Dr Helen Turner, works to ensure BTP’s compliance with the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) and statutory guidance regarding emergency planning and preparedness and the Government’s Counter-Terrorism strategy CONTEST.

This work is completed by three teams: Specialist Capabilities: Learning and Training (SCLT), Specialist Capabilities: Testing and Exercising (SCTE), and Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR).

The FPT assesses risk from a number of sources, including the National Security Risk Assessment (NSRA) by the EPRR team. This risk assessment drives the team’s work as the first stages of the Integrated Emergency Management (IEM) process. Across the three teams that make up FPT, planning takes place to ensure that BTP is well prepared to deal with this range of risks. 

EPRR are responsible for writing and updating all emergency plans within BTP. This includes:

• Plans driven through the need to mitigate against critical risks, such as Severe Weather.
• Plans to ensure BTP’s ability to maintain critical functions in times of emergency, such as Business Continuity Plans.
• Plans to ensure compliance with national legislation, such as the Operation Plato Plan.
• Plans to enable BTP to respond to large scale incidents, such as the Major Incident Plan.
• Plans to ensure BTP responds to incidents at certain locations, such as Station Emergency Plans

Through assessing and planning against different levels of risk, the EPRR team ensures BTP is prepared and able to respond to occurrences such as train derailments, CT and Business Continuity incidents, right through to natural events such as Severe Weather.

The EPRR team focus their emergency planning skills into a multi-agency environment, compliant with JESIP and the Civil Contingencies Act through their engagement at operational and tactical levels within the Local Resilience Forum (LRF) structure. This ensures that BTP are best prepared to deal with incidents across the three nations by building relationships with stakeholders and partners and ensuring that friendships are built before they are needed. The EPRR team also deliver a response functionality, through their training as Emergency Procedures Advisors (EPAs) and National Interagency Liaison Officers (NILOs) allowing them to act as advisors for BTP commanders at both pre-planned events and at rapidly evolving incidents. This builds upon the work done at LRFs to enable joint working within the response to incidents.