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You are here: Home > Community and living > Safer Borough > Emergency Planning > How Emergency Planning works in Surrey

How Emergency Planning works in Surrey

This page describes how Emergency Planning works in Surrey

Emergency Planning in Surrey is coordinated by the Surrey Local Resilience Forum (SLRF).

The forerunner to the SLRF (SESMIC) was set up in 1992 to coordinate the response of Surrey’s emergency services and local authorities to major incidents.

The SLRF consists of the chief officers from the key organisations that will respond to a disaster in Surrey: the Chief Constable of Surrey Police, the Chief Executive of Surrey County Council, the County Fire Officer, the Chief Executive of Surrey Ambulance Service, a Chief Executive representative of the Primary Health Care Trusts, a representative of Surrey Borough and District Chief Executives and the Commander of Deepcut Garrison.

The committee produces the Surrey Major Incident Plan (SMIP). 

This plan details all the roles and responsibilities of the responding organisations. 

From this plan all other plans designed to deal with major incidents are formulated.

What is the role of Reigate & Banstead

Reigate & Banstead are the same as any other Local Authority and are given statutory responsibilities to respond to major incidents these responsibilities are shared between Surrey County Council and the Borough and District Councils of Surrey.

The main roles are:

• Support the emergency services
• Assistance to people in distress
• Coordinate the activities of their various departments and other agencies
• Release information that has been agreed by the Police to the media and give advice to the public
• Keep local Authority services going in a normal a way as possible, and
• Restore stability with the aim of restoring normality   

In order to carry out these roles it is necessary for the Council to have in place a robust set of plans.

Emergency Plans

Reigate & Banstead have created a set of plans in order to be able to respond to any incident it may be called upon to assist in. 

These have been broken down into five sections:

The Master Plan

The aim of this plan is to provide guidance for the deployment and coordination of the Borough’s services and resources in the event of a major incident.

Control Centre Handbook

The purpose of this plan is to provide the necessary information to an incident and set-up an operational control centre.

The Welfare Plan

The welfare plan is issued to provide information, guidance and appropriate actions on the setting up and running of a Rest Centre, Survivor Reception Centre, or a Friends and Relatives Reception Centre.

It also provides possible centres and their locations and layouts.

Operations Plan

The Operations plan sets out the roles of staff in responding to flooding or other adverse weather conditions, Environmental incidents such as chemical spillages, CBRN (Chemical Biological Radioactive or Nuclear) incidents and dangerous structures.

Finance Plan

This covers the financial procedures to be followed in an emergency.

The Local authority is planning to respond to any incidents of:

• Flooding
• Major accidents
• Fire/explosions/bombing
• Civil Riot
• Foot & Mouth
• Chemical or nuclear attack
• Environmental sabotage
• Terrorism   

In response to these events the Council could be asked to provide a variety of services as well as general advice to the public.

What does the Council provide?

The Council can provide assistance in a number of ways depending on the nature of the incident.

The Council can provide:

A Rest Centre to provide temporary accommodation for people evacuated from a specific area. 

These are normally set up with the assistance of other voluntary agencies to give support to those affected by the incident offering food and counselling.

If an incident requires people to be evacuated from their home for a prolonged period of time the Council can also assist in finding alternative accommodation.

A Survivor Reception Centre, which is a secure area where uninjured survivors involved in a major incident, can be taken for shelter.

There may also be a case for setting up a Friends & Relatives Reception Centre for use by friends and relatives arriving at a scene of a major incident.

Additional plant equipment staffing in the event of a flooding incident

Advice, guidance, monitoring with regard to any environmental aspects of the incident.

Advice on dangerous structures

Information to the general public

A control centre to coordinate the response to reduce the impact as much as possible of the event.

In the event of a major incident the response would be coordinated from a control room, where communications links would have been established with all other category one responders, via SurreyAlert. 

SurreyAlert is a central logging system based on a secure extranet, for Local Authorities and the emergency services.    

There is also a public information site, where press releases will be published updating the public on the situation and providing advice and information on what to do, in these specific incidents. 

The site can be accessed by www.surreyalert.info (external site) SurreyAlert will play a key part in the dissemination of information during an incident.