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Developing Community
Resilience Strategies
with Kate Cochrane
and Helen Hinds
PEOPLE who specialise in resilience
planning may not be widely known to
the public outside of the establishments
they work in, but they are essential to
public safety. Two of those individuals,
working in resilience planning for the
city of Newcastle in the UK are Kate
Cochrane, Resilience and Business
Continuity Officer, and Helen Hinds,
Head of Resilience Planning. They share
some of their insights into community
resilience, better preparing for disasters
and how academic research can inform
resilience planning.
What is the biggest risk that the city
of Newcastle faces at the moment?
HH: Newcastle has produced its own
risk register and at the top is actually
pandemic flu. This is based on the
impact it could make. It’s also one
of the ‘highest priority risks’ on the
UK’s National Risk Register for Civil
Emergencies. If you’re looking at it
based on process, that’s our biggest risk.
What planning is the city doing right
now for pandemic flu and other
emerging risks?
HH: We did a lot of pandemic flu
planning when we actually had swine
flu. Most of our pandemic flu planning
would be dealt through business
continuity planning, because it’s about
knowing what critical services are,
identifying them and making sure you
can keep those going in an event of
pandemic flu.
KC: It’s about working with colleagues
across the organisation, identifying
what functions within the council that,
if we didn’t do [them], would increase
people’s likelihood of harm. Identifying
critical services and working with them
to find out how long those services can
be down before the risk to the people
they support increases. Do I have to
get a service back up and running in
12 hours? In five days? Can it wait
longer? It’s about developing those
prioritisation scales, working out risks
the council faces if we stop doing some
bits. Pandemic flu and fuel shortage are
the two hazards that stretch business
continuity to its fullest extent.
What are you doing for community
resilience at the moment?
KC: The very beginning of what we hope
is a holistic approach to developing
resilience within the city. Nationally,
community resilience has been driven
by communities coming together to
write a plan. Now this is great if you’ve
got communities that have a natural
understanding of their risk environment.
If you’re a parish council that has
seen and experienced flooding there’s
probably a driver to write a flood plan
for your village. If you’re a community
that’s living in a city centre particularly
Newcastle, when we have flooding
it tends to be surface water flooding
instead of large floods so the risk