How one LRF is building resilience from the ground up

Lincolnshire Resilience Forum is working at a hyper local level to collectively build knowledge, plans, and confidence within its communities to stand strong together to respond to risks from flooding and severe weather to power outages.

We are helping our communities prepare by encouraging parishes and towns to set up Community Emergency Response Teams (CERTs). We are building on the JESIP principles and METHANE framework, shifting the mindset to look not just at the emergency services, but at what extra resources can be integrated into this response structure. The answer lies within the communities themselves.

As the Community Resilience Officer managing this across the county, I’ve spent the last year doing the groundwork. Building trust, forming relationships, and crucially, making resilience accessible and fun. If it isn’t engaging, it doesn’t stick.

I make sure nobody has the daunting task of starting from scratch. We provide ready-made Community Emergency Plan templates, guidebooks, and run interactive introduction sessions. The video below showcases how our local communities already pull together during major incidents.

A CERT simply ensures locals know who to contact, how to share reliable information, and where to coordinate essential support like welfare checks or setting up places of safety. We want people to know they don’t need specialist skills, just a commitment to supporting their neighbours when it matters most. With our training and guidance, they play a crucial role.

Resilient communiities

Through the Resilient Communities Programme, we are actively training our volunteers to connect directly with us via our 24/7 Emergency Planning Duty Officer. We have already seen this extra resource work successfully in practice. For example, during a recent incident involving an evacuation cordon in Wainfleet, we contacted the CERT volunteers to activate.

They supported us by opening up their pre-planned place of safety at a local hall, managing to get it up and running within just 15 minutes. There, they managed welfare checks, provided shelter, and looked after displaced, uninjured residents. This, in turn, freed up front-line, blue-light responders to focus 100% of their operational capacity on the job at hand: life safety and the most vulnerable.

Furthermore, because CERT members are locals, they bring invaluable hyper-local situational awareness to the table. During the incident, they were able to flag misinformation appearing on local social media channels in real time. This meant we could immediately target our Warning & Informing (W&I) response and ensure accurate, trusted communication cascaded through the community.

No two communities in Lincolnshire are the same, but for me, that is where the joy lies. By investing the time to build relationships and conduct tabletop exercises, we are turning local knowledge into an operational capability. We are only at the beginning of this journey, but seeing how these communities are already developing, connecting, and growing ready for anything is incredibly exciting.

I hope sharing our approach inspires other areas to look at community resilience through a lens of collaboration, trust, and shared strength. Find our more on the Lincolnshire Resilience Forum website.

To learn more about resilience activities across the country, be sure to attend The Emergency Services Show on 16 and 17 September at the NEC in Birmingham. Register for your free ticket here.