Communities and Local Government

• Fire and resilience
• Resilience and response to emergencies
• Regional resilience
• Resilience work across Government

Fire and resilience

Resilience work across Government

Developing capabilities

There is much work going on across government to support resilience and counter terrorism activities. The Home Office holds lead responsibility for co-ordinating the response to the terrorist threat within the UK. Meanwhile, the Cabinet Office oversees the cross departmental Capabilities Programme which is the core framework through which the Government is seeking to build resilience across all parts of the United Kingdom.

The aim of the Capabilities Programme is to ensure that a robust infrastructure is in place to deal rapidly, effectively and flexibly with the consequences of conventional or non-conventional disruptive activity. The programme intends to identify and develop the capabilities necessary to build resilience across the UK.

The Capabilities Programme is intended to cover the whole of the United Kingdom, including Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland where work is being taken forward by the corresponding devolved administrations.

The programme consists of a total of 19 capability workstreams. These fall into three groups:

• three workstreams which are essentially structural, dealing respectively with the central (national), regional and local response capabilities
• five which are concerned with the maintenance of essential services: food and water; transport; health services; financial services; and utilities
• eleven functional workstreams, dealing respectively with the assessment of risks and consequences; chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear (CBRN) resilience; site clearance; infecious diseases (human); infectious diseases (animal and plant); mass casualties; evacuation and shelter; warning and informing the public; mass fatalities; humanitarian assistance, flooding and recovery.

Communities and Local Government contributes to the capabilities programme in a number of ways. We lead on two workstreams; site clearance and regional response; and have considerable involvement in the Home Office led CBRN resilience workstream. Communities and Local Government also contributes to improving resilience capability within the fire and rescue service and has committed substantial investment to achieve this. We do this primarily through the Fire and Resilience Programme which includes New Dimension, Firelink and FiReControl.

In this section

• Resilience legislation
• Site clearance

Related publications

• Faith Communities and Pandemic Flu: Guidance for Faith Communities and Local Influenza Pandemic Committees

  • Published: 17 June 2008
  • Site: Communities and neighbourhoods

• Key Communities, Key Resources: Engaging the capacity and capabilities of faith communities in Civil Resilience

  • Published: 17 June 2008
  • Site: Communities and neighbourhoods

• Strategic National Guidance: the decontamination of buildings and infrastructure exposed to CBRN substances or material

  • Published: N/A
  • Site: Fire and resilience

• Precautions to minimise effects of a Chemical, Biological, Radiological or Nuclear Event on Buildings and Infrastructure

  • Published: 14 May 2004
  • Site: Fire and resilience