Would your community know what to do in an emergency? If you want to find out more about helping your neighbourhood cope in a crisis, Gloucestershire County Council can help.

During the devastating floods of July 2007, some of Gloucestershire’s towns and villages became isolated, delaying the emergency response. There were many people and groups wanting to offer support, but they didn’t know what they should or could be doing to help.

Since that summer, the county council’s Emergency Management Service (EMS), along with the district councils, have been working with communities across Gloucestershire to help them plan for any future emergencies, such as severe flooding, heavy snow or a long time without water or power.

A step by step podcast that will help you create a community emergency plan has now been developed and you can listen to it at www.gloucestershire.gov.uk/communityresilience. As well as giving advice on how to prepare and produce a plan, there’s lots of other helpful information and pre-prepared templates that individuals or communities can download and use.

Community groups can also get advice and assistance with training to help them organise real-life exercises that will test their completed plans. You can get further information on this by contacting EMS or your local district council.

Iain Bryson from Gloucestershire County Council’s Emergency Management Service, said: “These community resilience plans help ensure that the most vulnerable people within communities are looked after in an emergency. They can save lives, and this new podcast will show communities that it’s not difficult to put their own individual plans in place.

“During an emergency, communities can play a really important role in providing information to the emergency services, local authorities, voluntary organisations and utility companies on the current situation in their area, helping us to respond more quickly to the areas of greatest need.”

The first stage of the plan is to appoint a Community Response Team (CRT) led by a co-ordinator. Together, this team coordinates the community’s response to an emergency to ensure that people provide support to each other. It also promotes self-help to householders and is responsible for keeping the plan up to date and communicating messages to local people.

The plans include identifying potential risks to the community and relevant responses, vulnerable people and groups in the community and resources available to assist during an emergency. It is also vital to put together a list of contacts for the Community Response Team, the Emergency Services and Local Authorities.

Cllr Will Windsor-Clive, Gloucestershire County Council Cabinet Member for Community Safety and Youth, said: “The idea behind these community resilience plans is not for communities to carry out the role of any of the emergency services but to help them look after the welfare of local people and their area’s infrastructure if support from the emergency responders is not immediately available.

“The county and the district councils have worked very hard to help ensure that Gloucestershire is well prepared if an emergency like the 2007 floods happened again and that work continues. Helping communities to help themselves in a crisis is a big part of that. These plans could prove crucial to providing a co-ordinated response.”