Emergency shelters

I understand that your authority serves as the lead body for the Local Resilience Forum for this area and accordingly 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.



I request the following information about emergency shelters

1. The total number of official emergency shelters currently designated for public use

2. The total number of members of the public those shelters can accommodate

3. The types of emergency for which those shelters are designated (e.g. flooding, heat, power outage, other)

4. The types of buildings used (e.g. public buildings like libraries or schools, sports centres, or dedicated shelters).

5. Whether these buildings are publicly or privately owned and if the latter, then by whom.

6. How members of the public are informed of the location of emergency shelters (e.g. website, app, signage, media)

7. If any further shelters are planned and the timeline for opening
 

For clarity, the Local Resilience Forum is not actually a legal entity or corporate body and is instead a collection of agencies identified under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 as Responder Agencies. The LCC is a Category 1 Responder Agency under the definitions in the Act, alongside the emergency services, local authorities and other government and health agencies. Within the structure of the LRF, the LCC’s Emergency Planning and Business Continuity Team performs the administrative/secretariat function for the LRF. While the team does coordinate the activation of the LRF in an emergency or major incident and maintains the multi-agency plans, there is no one body that acts as the lead for the LRF. To answer your questions below:

1. We do not have any official emergency shelters. We use a range of public buildings in the event we need to open a shelter (rest centre)

2. The shelters we use are community buildings that vary in size based on their normal function.

3. Evacuations due to a number of types of emergencies, ie) gas leaks, flooding

4. Village and Town Halls, Sports complexes, Churches, Social and Community Centres.

5. This varies as we use both private and public facilities. The contact details for the facilities owner's are found online and are in the public domain.

6. If a centre is opened, then information would be given through the LRF's Warning and Informing protocols. These currently include: Social media messaging, updates from the LRF's website, in person visits/door knocking and reaching out to the resilient community groups in the area to spread word amongst their communities.

7. We are not currently planning any further shelters and therefore cannot offer a timeline.