Lesson 1 – Building resilient communities

Communities across Scotland have faced and recovered from various emergency situations. A common lesson from these events is that when people pull together to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies it helps everyone to cope better. There are many things that make a community resilient, and the needs, priorities and solutions vary across the diverse communities of Scotland.

Consider an emergency that your community has faced in the past and the impact this has had.

Examples could include:

• severe weather – this can cause widespread disruption, ranging from flooding to wildfires, and particularly affects people in the community who may need extra help
• loss of electricity – this has many possible repercussions including a shortage of food and water, loss of communications and cold temperatures in homes
• the coronavirus (COVID‑19) pandemic – this has impacted every community across Scotland, causing a serious danger to health as well as wider impacts on our way of life and the economy

How communities face and recover from these incidents depends on the way that existing skills, knowledge and resources are used. Resilient communities in Scotland have strong and proactive connections with local emergency responders and work together to find solutions quickly.

Emergency responders

As we saw in our first module, 'The foundations of emergency management in scotland', emergency responders are organisations categorised under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004) with a number of specific legal duties.

Depending on the nature of the emergency, responders could include:

• Police Scotland
• The Scottish Fire and Rescue Service
• Scottish Ambulance Service
• Health Boards, Local Authorities
• Integration Joint Boards (Health Boards and Local Authorities working together)
• The Scottish Environment Protection Agency
• The Maritime and Coastguard Agency

Resilience partnerships

Working together, these organisations form a ‘Resilience Partnership’ to help coordinate, collaborate and share information quickly and effectively in a fast‑moving and pressurised situation. Partnerships can also include organisations involved in the provision of energy, telecoms, transport, the water sector, and local or national volunteer groups.

More information on who these responder organisations are and what they do can be found within our ‘Foundations of Emergency Management in Scotland’ learning module.

Members of communities who work together to respond to local emergency situations are also mentioned in the Civil Contingencies Act under the term ‘volunteers’. These individuals are not legally obliged to help to deal with an incident but any assistance they do provide can be invaluable.