We have plans in place to support our response to a range of incidents that could affect Fife's communities. These plans help to reduce the impacts of an incident on your community, the environment, economy, and infrastructure, and ensure we meet our duties under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.
The Emergency Resilience Team (ERT) write and review these plans with input from other Council Services and external partners, such as the emergency services and utility companies.
Our Team also supports Council Services with business continuity planning, supporting the continued delivery of services during an incident.
Our Resilience Policy and Framework links to our duties within the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. We must prepare for, respond to and recover from any incident impacting on Fife’s communities. This document provides a framework for ensuring resilience is embedded across all council services.
View a PDF version of our Resilience Policy and Framework Plan
This plan outlines how a Fife Council response to an incident will be coordinated. It provides an overview of key Council Service roles and responsibilities.
The plan can be applied to a range of scenarios.
This plan sets out the arrangements in place for a multi-agency response to a major accident in Fife. The aim is to reduce the impact on Fife’s communities.
A major accident is defined as:
"an incident which results from an uncontrolled development at a facility falling under the following regulations which leads to serious danger to human health or the environment and involves one or more dangerous substances."
These regulations include:
- the Control of Major Accident Hazard Regulations (2015)
- the Defence Major Accident Control Regulations (2019)
- the Pipeline Safety Regulations (1996)
The facilities in Fife that fall under these regulations are listed within this plan.
This plan aims to make sure we can respond quickly to a significant pollution incident. This involves chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear substances. By following this plan, we can reduce the impact on Fife’s communities.
A significant pollution incident is something that a service can't manage as part of their daily tasks. It includes:
- oil spills
- chemical spills and/or leaks
- smoke plumes
- dust
This Plan details the specific arrangements on how Fife Council will effectively respond to, recover from and mitigate the impact of a large-scale communicable disease impacting on the communities in Fife. For this plan, we use the definition of communicable disease as an illness that can be easily transferred from human to human and / or from animal to human. Some examples include COVID-19, pandemic influenza, ebola, and SARS.
It will support the integrated emergency management arrangements to ensure the welfare of the Fife public, particularly young, elderly and vulnerable people al the way into the long-term rehabilitation and recovery of the community.
The plan dovetails with NHS Fife’s Pandemic Influenza Plan, and Fife Council’s Business Continuity Plans, while being in line with the World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised phases of a global pandemic influenza outbreak
This is an event-specific contingency plan which identifies how Fife Council will focus on the continuity of business as normal and in providing support in anticipated areas of additional demand such as community and social care and dealing with excess deaths.
This plan details our role in responding to and recovering from an animal disease outbreak. We are here to support the Scottish Government and the Animal and Plant Health Agency if it'll impact on Fife’s communities.
It focuses on the specific arrangements, as well as those detailed in our Incident Management Plan.
Examples of notifiable animal diseases include avian influenza, foot and mouth and rabies.
This plan looks at the specific arrangements we have to lessen the impact of a potential or actual shortage of fuel. This affects both transport and heating fuel. This can have a devastating impact on Fife's communities.
It will also deal with what happens when local fuel supplies are disrupted. This is before or after an activation of the National Emergency Plan for Fuel. In this case, a UK-wide disruption is likely.
These arrangements detail Fife Council’s response to severe weather events impacting Fife’s communities, in line with the aim of the Incident Management Plan, to ensure Fife Council effectively responds to and recovers from any weather-related event.
This plan delineates the council's preparedness, response and recovery actions and, like all our plans, it encompasses resilience and collaborative working with partners and all categories of responders.
For more information, please contact the Emergency Resilience Team by emailing emergency.planning@fife.gov.uk
