We often hear about community resilience, but what does that actually look like in practice?
Over the next year, we’ll follow the journey of the Croydon emergency planning team, to share a live, realistic look at what it takes to build strong and effective resilience from the ground up. We’ll explore what’s working, the challenges they’re facing, and how they’re adapting along the way.
The Croydon emergency management team acts as the strategic backbone for the borough’s resilience by uniting blue-light services, health partners, and communities in line with the Civil Contingencies Act, and ensuring cohesive response to crises while maintaining the essential council services that residents depend on. From executing high-level risk assessments to managing rest centres, the Croydon Resilience teams deliver the 24/7 readiness and coordination vital for a borough to endure, recover, and thrive during any disruption. The team also acts as a point of contact for community members in all matters related to emergencies.
In this first blog, we spoke with Andrea Allegra, Resilience Officer, to understand more about the role of the Croydon emergency planning team and their goals for the year ahead.
Croydon emergency planning team’s role in local resilience
Croydon have bold ambitions to be a leading example of best practice in community resilience.
“For Croydon Borough to be more resilient we all need as a community to come together and recognise our individual strengths and weaknesses and offer to support each other so that we are all able to face the challenges we face daily and the more infrequent ones. My ambition is to integrate community into the heart of Croydon Borough Resilience, to foster clearer understanding and stronger preparedness and response.”
Richard Hood
To deepen local resilience, Croydon’s emergency planning team focuses on building strong working relationships with community groups, and creating better coordination across the emergency cycle, including response and recovery. A key focus is to make sure that there is shared understanding and alignment across the board.
Andrea explains that they want to avoid issues experienced in previous emergencies such as Grenfell, where donations were uncoordinated and created additional challenges. By bringing together resources, people, and capabilities, they aim to create a more joined-up and effective approach.
There is already a strong sense of resilience within Croydon, it is a diverse, multi-ethnic area with active community groups that play an important role.
For Croydon’s Emergency Planning team, effective resilience means supporting what is already there. While they may not be able to provide funding, they do offer support through signposting and by aligning themselves with local realities.
The focus is mainly on local community partnerships, working with existing neighbourhood structures. This includes connecting with representatives and key stakeholders at a community level, to support more effective and meaningful engagement.
The Croydon Emergency Planning team is engaging with multiple local organisations that are crucial in supporting local communities. In particular, the team is now involved in local Community partnership meetings across the borough and their resource fairs, a dynamic environment where local organisations (Neighbourhood watch, Family Hub, Croydon Healthy Homes) exchange information and best practices. Through these meetings, the emergency planning team is laying the groundwork for lasting relationships with local communities, leading to the co-design and development of tabletop exercises, community resilience plans, and the identification of additional local resilience capabilities.
In the past, limited resources have made this difficult for the resilience team. Now, there is a stronger focus on coordinating internally so they can better connect with voluntary and community groups and build a shared awareness of what is happening locally.
Croydon isn’t starting from scratch. Alongside an active voluntary and community sector, there have been pan-London initiatives in the borough, such as the community resilience fund which they can build upon.
During a recent fire in Croydon, British Red Cross advised that a small number of local volunteers were needed at the rest centre. Croydon Voluntary Action, a local infrastructure organisation in the borough, were able to deploy a volunteer within an hour (a second volunteer was stood down due to low need). Croydon Voluntary Action have played an active part in previous emergencies and are the community resilience fund recipient in Croydon, well connected with the emergency planning team. The volunteer they deployed was able to provide light touch support during the fire, such as assisting a resident with loading belongings into a taxi. This is a brilliant example of the system in action.
Of course, this work isn’t without its challenges. One of the main challenges is the complexity of Croydon along with limited resources. Andrea explains that coming from a previous role working with parishes, this urban environment feels very different. The diversity of the area is much more visible, and there is a need to really understand the community at a local level- what matters to people, and how that can vary across the different community groups.
As national standards and legal responsibilities (such as pandemic readiness and new anti-terror laws) grow, local authority funding is still facing significant strain. This results in a ‘resilience gap’ where teams are required to accomplish more with fewer resources, transferring the responsibility of preparedness from the government to communities that might already be dealing with ‘crisis fatigue’ due to prolonged economic and social challenges.
Success over the next 12 months will be defined by steady progress in strengthening local resilience, specifically through the distribution of material on Priority Service Register sign-ups, flood alerts, UKHSA warnings, grab-bag preparation, and wildfire and flood prevention, while simultaneously deepening strategic relationships with community and faith leaders.
