Emergency Planning - What EHDC does

The Role of the Local Authority

• maintaining statutory services at an appropriate level;
• supporting the emergency services and other organisations involved in the immediate response;
• providing support services for the community and others affected by the incident;
• enabling the community to recover and return to normality as fast as possible;
• providing 'mutual aid' to other local authorities as requested. 

Purpose of Emergency Planning

Emergency planning in East Hampshire is to provide the district council's staff with suitable plans, procedures and information necessary to enable them to mitigate the effects of any major incident, whilst allowing departments to continue to provide, as far as possible, their usual day-to-day services.

The Council Responsibilities

The primary function of the Local Authority throughout the initial stages of an incident is to maintain the normal council services but also provide support to the responding emergency services. The Council can be flexible in the support function depending on the scale of the incident and the available resources.  Generally the Local Authority will first become involved in an incident when they are alerted by the initiating emergency service. As the incident develops and moves towards the recovery phase the Local Authority will begin to take the lead role from the emergency services. The hand over will take place when the immediate threat to human welfare, the environment or property has decreased.

The Local Authority will be involved in an incident in a number of different ways:

• Rehabilitation of the Community
• Social care and support
• Welfare and counselling support
• Emergency finance
• Emergency housing
• Emergency feeding
• The provision of specialist equipment and staff
• Provision of premises for temporary mortuaries and rest centres
  

As well as providing social support, the Local Authority will also provide technical support, such as:

• Technical advice and resources
• Environmental Health Management
• Logistical support
• Long term management for restoration of normality

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