Emergency planning for communities
Your community can work together to plan for, prepare for, and respond to emergencies.
Your community can:
- check where you are vulnerable
- use your existing skills, strengths and resources to respond to an emergency
- support local emergency responders, such as the police and the council
Training is available to help you prepare. You may be able to get community group funding.
Planning for emergencies
When planning for an emergency, you should:
- assess any risks to your community – do a community risk assessment, and include information from your Community Risk Register on the Fire Scotland website and the National Risk Register on GOV.UK
- identify what assets your community has – such as messaging apps, volunteers, community buildings, grit bins or defibrillators
- reduce the impact of emergencies – for example, by encouraging others to have a household emergency plan
- decide how your community could safely respond to and recover from an emergency
Get detailed information on how to create a community emergency plan.
Preparing for emergencies
To help you respond in an emergency:
- plan with your local council’s emergency planning team to help you work well together
- contact other local community groups and plan how to work with them
- support others in the community to prepare – for example, by helping them to install household flood protection
- practice with your community volunteers how they will respond safely to local challenges
- decide how you will communicate – for example, by using community meeting places, instant messaging groups or social media
Funding for community groups
You can apply for grants or raise money to support emergency planning.
Find grants on:
Get advice on how to secure funding from the Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations.
Check how to fundraise for your community.
Training resources for community groups
Ready Scotland Learn has learning resources for community groups. It covers preparing for, responding to and recovering from different emergencies. It includes information on how to work with emergency responders.
Communities Channel Scotland has resources for community groups, including examples of good practice.