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Community Risk Register

Introduction:

The importance of risk assessment is emphasised by the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (CCA) which places a legal duty on those responding to an emergency to undertake risk assessments and maintain them in a Community Risk Register.

The Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Local Resilience Forum Community Risk Register is available to download as a .pdf document. Please click here

The main purpose of the Community Risk Register is for professionals to assess the risk to the community within Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and provide organisations that would respond to an emergency with a focus in order to develop contingency plans on a rational basis.

This register should be published all or in part in order to advise the public of perceived risks in the area. Risks in this context are those that could result in a major emergency. This Community Risk Register is the first step in the emergency planning process; it ensures that the plans that are developed are proportionate to the risk.

The register will also help identify emerging issues and indicate where the risk is increasing or decreasing over a period of time. It can also be a tool in identifying the gaps in organisations’ ability to respond to an emergency which will then result in plans and processes being provided to reduce the impact and give professional support to the community.

The Community Risk Register does not cover all eventualities, nor does it suggest that a particular scenario will occur; it does however provide a basis for our emergency planners to plan according to the risk. There is also no need to individually assess all the risks in the community and many of these are assessed on their impact across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. The aim of the Community Risk Register is to deliver an awareness of risk which will improve our ability to prevent it occurring if possible and plan for the emergency should it happen.

Planning and Response

The highest level of planning and response in Nottinghamshire is known as the Local Resilience Forum (LRF) and they have tasked a group known as the Risk Assessment Working Group (RAWG) to identify risks, assess them and develop a process for informing local emergency planners of the needs necessary to be prepared for the event.

The group consists of emergency planners from all Category 1 responders who are the professional services who respond to an emergency and includes the emergency services, Local Authorities, health professionals, and a number of Government Agencies. Also involved on a consultation basis are a number of Category 2 responders, such as utility companies and the Health and Safety Executive, who provide their support in producing the Community Risk Register.

The aim of the group is to analyse those risks facing Nottingham and Nottinghamshire. It does not cover exactly what the risks are relating to a particular address. For example, the group looks at the risk of major forest fire, widespread flooding or an epidemic of contagious disease across the county as a whole.

The complexity of the work and the timescales involved in developing a comprehensive Community Risk Register should not be underestimated. It should also be understood that risks change and a process of reviewing the register is also needed.  Consequently risk assessments are also subject to regular review to take account of any changes with the register being updated periodically.

The Government has published guidance in Part 1 of the Civil Contingencies Act entitled ‘Emergency Preparedness’; Chapter 4 of this guidance explains the risk assessment duty and processes. This can be located at  www.ukresilience.info.htm

There are many organisations involved with the process of producing this Community Risk Register however, for your convenience, please contact emergency.planning@nottscc.gov.uk or call 0115 977 3471 if you have any enquiries

Should you require the Community Risk Register in hard copy, large print, Braille or other languages, please contact emergency.planning@nottscc.gov.uk to indicate your requirements.