Skip to content
Feedback button

Recovering the community after an emergency


Recovery:

“The process of rebuilding, restoring and rehabilitating the community following an emergency”

Emergencies affect and disrupt communities in a wide variety of ways. Examples include failure of essential services, technological failures, extremes of nature, exotic diseases and acts of violence

The Local Authority lead on recovery within the community. Sometimes there are little or no significant impacts to warrant a formal Recovery Group to stand. At other times the recovery process could take months or years to complete.

The impact of emergencies goes well beyond those directly affected by an emergency. For example, emergencies can affect onlookers, family and friends of fatalities or survivors, response and recovery workers and the wider community. The economy and businesses, physical infrastructure and the environment can also be affected.

The nature of the impacts, and whether and at what level action needs to be taken, will depend in part on the nature, scale and severity of the emergency itself. There are four interlinked categories of impact that individuals and communities will need to recover from:

  • Economic
  • Infrastructure
  • Humanitarian (including health)
  • Environmental

Each of these categories will have a number of sub groups sat underneath them that are key to the communication with all affected parties. This will form the basis of a Recovery Coordinating Group (RCG).

An example of attendees include:

  • Blue light services
  • Environment Agency
  • Community Groups
  • Business Improvement Districts
  • Faith Groups
  • Animal and Plant Health Agency
  • Cabinet Office
  • DEFRA
  • Public Health
  • Insurance Industry
  • Town and Parish Councils
  • MET Office
  • National Health Service

Other relevant information that may be of interest

Need help?

Most issues can be resolved online, it's the quickest and most convenient way to get help.