Part one: Preparedness, partnership and the system we have

Drawing on experience across policing, fire, local government and resilience, including leading roles during Covid-19 and the Grenfell response, Alex Woodman, Chief Fire Officer of Hertfordshire Fire and Rescue Service, reflects on the pressures facing Local Resilience Forums (LRFs).

As Chair of the Hertfordshire Local Resilience Forum and Chair of the LRF Chairs Network, as well as a National Fire Chiefs Council portfolio lead for Local Resilience and an Ambassador for the National Emergencies Trust, Woodman is clear that preparedness is less about plans on paper and more about how the system works when it is under strain.

This is part one of a two-part interview, focusing on preparedness and how the resilience system operates under pressure.

What does preparedness really mean in practice?

Preparedness is a word used a lot across resilience and emergency planning, but Woodman believes it is often misunderstood.

“The danger with terms like preparedness, resilience and business continuity is that they can sound like somebody else’s problem,” he says. “In reality, if you exist to serve communities, you have a responsibility to be prepared.”

For Woodman, that means being able to continue delivering a service under pressure – whether through increased demand, loss of capability or operating in very different conditions. But it also goes further than individual organisational performance.

“Preparedness is about whether you can work as part of the wider UK system,” he explains. “Public inquiries time and again come back to the same question: did organisations come together and work as one when people needed them most?”

He points to Covid-19 as a clear example. “When you look at inquiries, what you often hear isn’t about individual expertise, but about whether the system worked collectively. Preparedness, to me, is fundamentally about whether we can come together as a system and look after the people we’re here to serve.”

How Local Resilience Forums have evolved

Local Resilience Forums have changed significantly since the early days of the Civil Contingencies Act. Lessons from incidents such as the 2005 London bombings fed into developments like JESIP and improvements in multi-agency interoperability.

Since then, Woodman says the LRF system has been tested repeatedly in very different ways. “Grenfell was one kind of challenge. Covid-19 was completely different. Flooding, water supply failures, mass evacuations – each scenario brings its own dynamics. But the common thread is partnership.”

He believes LRFs have become a trusted local space. “When people come together under the LRF banner, behaviours change. Information is shared more openly, agency silos soften and there’s a shared focus on risk and readiness.”

Asking difficult questions is central to that.

“Are we ready for a flood? A mass evacuation? A mass fatality incident? These are uncomfortable questions, but people engage with them differently when they’re framed around collective responsibility.”

Culture as the unresolved challenge

Despite progress, Woodman believes some lessons from past crises remain difficult to embed locally – particularly around culture.

“Most leaders take preparedness seriously in principle, but the real challenge is whether that culture genuinely exists across an organisation,” he says.

In local government, preparedness has to sit across a wide range of responsibilities, from adult social care to public health and community protection. “It can’t be treated as a separate function,” Woodman argues. “Plans need to be tested, organisations need to know who their community and faith leaders are, and they need confidence that they can support people if residents are displaced overnight.”

He also challenges the idea of hierarchy within the response system. “I don’t like the language of Category 1 and Category 2 responders because it can imply that some roles matter more than others. In reality, during a crisis, local government, health, voluntary sector and emergency services are equally critical.”

“When something goes wrong, it’s usually because part of that system didn’t connect,” he adds. “Preparedness should always be driven by one question: what would our community expect us to do in that moment?”

Part two of this interview looks at emerging risks, system pressure points and what needs to change to strengthen preparedness.

To read similar articles, check our our Emerging Threats and Resilience section.