Our Resilience Team

Sandwell Council's Resilience Team works with a wide range of agencies and organisations to prepare for and respond to events as and when they occur.

Please feel free to contact us with any questions or requests for information.

Email emergency_planning@sandwell.gov.uk

For general advice regarding emergencies and emergency preparedness, please visit the Emergency Planning page.

Who we work with

Our partners include the police, the fire and rescue service, the ambulance service, surrounding councils, utility companies, voluntary organisations and many others. The group that links everyone together is the West Midlands Local Resilience Forum.

West Midlands Local Resilience Forum (WMC LRF)

The West Midlands Local Resilience Forum (LRF) is a partnership of member agencies, including those defined under the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004 by responder 'categories':

  • Category 1 responders are organisations that are directly involved in the response to an emergency. These responders are subject to a number of civil protection obligations.
  • Category 2 responders are those who have a role to play in response but are less directly involved. The Act does not place such stringent duties on these responders but does require that they share information appropriate to managing emergencies and cooperate fully with the LRF.

Sandwell Council is a member of the West Midlands LRF and we are proud to work together with partner agencies to ensure that if, and when, an emergency occurs, we are prepared to respond together and minimise any impact.

In the event of an incident, the partnership agencies that form the LRF join forces to:

  • Consider the hazards that feature in the West Midlands, assessing the impacts of the risk and providing this information to the public in a Community Risk Register.
  • Create plans to help make the risks safer, setting out how we will come together to respond should an emergency happen, and how we can help people get back to normal afterwards.
  • Ensure our response is coordinated when things do go wrong.
  • Carry out training and testing to make sure we are ready.
  • Identify lessons from incidents and exercises, learning as we go along to improve how we respond in the future.

Community Risk Register

Every Resilience Forum has a Community Risk Register (CRR) which describes risks for the community and assesses how likely they are to lead to an emergency and the potential impact they would have. The register is created through a risk assessment, and the information is used by the LRF to plan and prepare for emergencies that may occur.

The CRR focuses on serious risks that could result in an emergency, defined as (Source: Civil Contingencies Act (2004):

  • An event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare in a place in the United Kingdom.
  • An event or situation which threatens serious damage to the environment of a place in the United Kingdom.
  • War or terrorism which threatens serious damage to the security of the United Kingdom.

The West Midlands CRR puts the national risks in a local context and whilst it doesn’t describe all risk it highlights those which could affect our routine day-to-day lives.

You can view the West Midlands Community Risk Register.

The potential for national emergencies is determined by Government in its National Risk Register. 

Other councils

We work with the following councils to provide Emergency Planning and Response across the West Midlands region:

Voluntary organisations

Major emergencies can put a strain on resources of the local authority and the emergency services. During such times additional support from voluntary organisations can be invaluable.

If you are interested in becoming part of the voluntary sector's response to emergencies then there are many local voluntary groups that you can contact for further information: