The Local Resilience Forum

I understand that your authority is the lead body for the Local Resilience Forum for your area and therefore holds or has access to relevant emergency preparedness information. I have kept this request as narrow as possible to minimise the burden on your authority.

Please provide the following information regarding emergency power supply arrangements within your Local Resilience Forum area:

1) Whether mobile or stationary emergency power supply is available, and if so, the approximate power output in kilowatts

2) The categories of location or facility that would be prioritised for emergency power in the event of a prolonged outage (e.g. hospitals, care centres, schools)

3) Whether there are plans to increase emergency power capacity in the next two years

Where information is held centrally by the Local Resilience Forum rather than directly by your authority, please either make this clear in your response or advise me of the appropriate body to approach.

Note that I am not requesting information that would identify specific security vulnerabilities or the precise locations of infrastructure that could present a security risk.
Please send the information in electronic format, ideally as a spreadsheet in csv or xls format rather than a pdf.

The Local Resilience Forum is not a legal entity/body corporate, it is simply the collection of those agencies identified under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 as Responder Agencies. Whilst Lincolnshire County Council (LCC) is indeed a Category One Responder under the Act, this is alongside the emergency services, other local authorities and other health and government agencies. Within the LRF structure, the LCC Emergency Planning Team performs the administrative/secretariat for the LRF. So whilst this team does coordinate the initial activation of the LRF structure in an emergency/major incident and maintains the multi-agency plans, no one agency is the lead body for the LRF.

Answers to questions:

1. The LRF is not required to, nor does it, provide any power supplies other than those which each individual agency has access to in order to maintain their own business continuity arrangements. The requirement for business continuity arrangements is outlined in Part 1 of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and is for individual agencies to fulfil/promote.

Under some LRF plans, such as for widespread power loss, and the loss of fuel plan, a record is maintained of which agencies have power at which premises, but not to the extent of knowing what the power output at each premises is.

2. As above, individual locations and agencies are required, or recommended (depending on responder category), to ensure their own business continuity arrangements, which will include plans in the event of a loss of power. Thus hospitals will have some back-up power capability tom maintain lifesaving activities, but other premises, including schools, may not, as a norm, have such capability.
3. This will be down to individual agencies to determine given the assessed risk to their agency and their own business continuity risk assessments and plans.

Better Prepared | Lincolnshire Resilience Forum