Emergencies happen frequently on the Island – traffic incidents, fires, etc – but the Emergency Planning Team aren’t necessarily always involved. We step in to assist, when events happen that are beyond the capacity of the emergency services to deal with unaided and we co-ordinate the local authority response. We can help with things like specialist equipment, evacuation, housing and emergency feeding, extra manpower. We can’t always provide the resource ourselves, but generally ‘we know someone who can’.

Emergency Planning is a means of assessing the threats and risks to the Island and putting plans in place to respond to an incident and assist in the recovery.

The success of the response will depend to a great degree on how we all work together at times of extreme pressure. We therefore need to form good relationships across the board and continually plan, train, exercise, consult and laise/network across both the Island and mainland, to ensure the most appropriate, co-ordinated and effective response to any incident is provided.

The Team provides a Duty Officer 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, who is responsible for activating key Council staff - advising them of appropriate measures to take, assisting throughout the incident and into the recovery phase.

Whatever the incident, the role of the Council is always to provide support and care to the Island community and the environment, and to get things back to normality as soon as possible.

We can do this in a variety of ways.

The Emergency Planning Team is a good information source and can offer a wide range of advice and guidance. We also have an extensive Resources Database containing information ranging from Air Transport to Weather.