Concessions

Our role in emergency resilience is as a 'responder'. We need to make sure we can cope with incidents, with careful forward planning. We then respond to it and do what we can to ease the impact it has on us all. We work very closely with emergency services and other responders to make sure this happens. This includes voluntary organisations, local community groups and the Scottish Government.

What are we planning for?

We need to be ready for any incident that threatens serious damage to human welfare or the environment. Included in this is war or terrorism that threatens serious damage to the security of the UK.

Examples of this are:

  • severe weather
  • a fuel crisis
  • a flu pandemic
  • a gas leak/explosion
  • an IT/communications failure
  • a terrorist attack.

Legislation

Under the Civil Contingencies (2004) Act, we are legally required to work in partnership with other responders to make sure we have an emergency plan in place for an incident. We then look at how we recover from it.

The above Act defines the following organisations as either category 1, 2, or other responders in Scotland.

Category 1 responders:

  • Local councils
  • Police Scotland
  • Scottish Ambulance Service
  • Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
  • NHS Health Boards
  • Scottish Environment Protection Agency (SEPA)
  • Maritime and Coastguard Agency.

Category 2 responders:

  • Gas and electricity companies
  • rail and air transport operators
  • harbour authorities
  • telecommunications providers
  • Scottish Water
  • the Health and Safety Executive
  • NHS National Services Scotland.

Other organisations that could provide support in an incident include:

How does Fife Council meet this legal requirement?

Our Emergency Resilience Team (ERT) make sure Fife Council follows the Civil Contingencies (2004) Act. They cover the three stages of the emergency resilience process:

  1. Prepare
  2. Respond
  3. Recover

You can also find out more about emergency resilience on Ready Scotland. You can also visit the How Scotland Prepares page if you’d like to know more about the national emergency resilience structure.

For more information, please contact the Emergency Resilience Team by emailing emergency.planning@fife.gov.uk

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