Emergency services should embrace the voluntary sector, says charity chief

The new government has already said it will review resilience arrangements and is majoring on cooperation between agencies which creates the ideal conditions for the emergency services to work more closely with the voluntary and community sector. Robyn Knox, Director of the VCS Emergencies Partnership talks to me about why this matters and how Covid was a catalyst for change when it comes to building strong relationships with blue light partners.

It took just two weeks in office for the new government to promise a Cabinet Office led review of national resilience with a dedicated Cabinet committee to oversee the work. Resilience Minister Pat McFadden said that resilience is too important for division to get in the way, “Instead, it has to be about cooperative strength.”

He was responding to the publication in July of the first module of the UK Covid-19 inquiry, which examined the resilience and preparedness of the United Kingdom between 2009 and early 2020. Its author, Baroness Hallett, said there had been “a failure to learn sufficiently from past civil emergency exercises and outbreaks of disease.”

Failure to learn from exercises and from incidents is not a new observation as Robyn knows all too well. The Emergencies Partnership was set up in 2018 in response to a series of major emergencies the previous year, including terror attacks in London and Manchester, and the Grenfell Tower fire.  

In a bid to understand and support people better, it was agreed there was a need to involve voluntary and community organisations more fully in emergency planning, response and recovery. The Emergencies Partnership was set up to create space for that collaboration between the VCS, emergency services, local councils and other important partners, to take place.

Robyn says she’s proud of the forum the partnership has created, but there’s still work to do to turn lessons learned into action.

“We are really good at writing reports and a lot of the time, the learnings are similar or the same as ones from before.”

She says that “we” are very good at identifying what has gone wrong but not so good at doing something about it. “The practical change is hard and takes time and so that’s what we are pushing for with voluntary and community sector (VCS) organisations.” She is keen to emphasise the expertise and experience of VCS organisations that are ready and capable of taking on that learning.

Robyn took on leadership of the VCS Emergencies Partnership (EP) during Covid. In common with several other staff at the EP, she is seconded from the British Red Cross, but the partnership team also contains people who have previously worked at other VCS organisations like REACT and has just welcomed someone from community organisation Communities 1^st, on a secondment.

The EP is not a stand-alone organisation, but a programme of work with ring fenced cash from government. The aim is for greater national resilience and a better experience for those impacted by emergencies.

The partnership is described by Robyn as a ‘’network of networks’’, now standing at more than 300 organisations including many that are well known: the Salvation Army, St John Ambulance, Victim Support, MIND, Barnardos and RNIB. Robyn says the mix of large and smaller organisations works well, although, “the voluntary sector exists on a shoestring. We want to build a network of strength and understanding.”

Links with the emergency services

I’m interested in the link between the VCS and the statutory bodies like police, fire and ambulance who have distinct roles in legislation. The terms Cat 1 and Cat 2 responder as well as references to Local Resilience Forums (LRF) are common parlance in the resilience world, but Robyn says they are often lost on organisations whose interests are often hyper local and well removed from the day-to-day business of the emergency services.

This is where the EP comes in, to provide a bridge between the two worlds: they are the translator of the formal to the informal, says Robyn, adding that they must both be curious. “The two worlds need to be more interested in each other at all stages from planning to recovery.”

She expands on this point, adding that there must be simple ways to co-exist with a curiosity and awareness of one another. “I think the pandemic really forced that. I’ve seen pockets of activity where that has worked.”

“I recognise that for some involved with emergency response, the perception of the voluntary sector is busy bodies getting under peoples’ feet with cups of tea.

“I also know that the VCS is bigger than just a volunteers’ ‘subs bench.’ There is so much expertise, and so many resources and assets that are hugely powerful for the blue lights where their capability ends – particularly in the recovery space.

“I think there is an appetite for the relationship to get better, but it is patchy and based on experience and relationships built up over a long time.”

We talk about the relationship building when the situation is not acute, where activity can be more prevention focused. Thinking about the community risk planning that fire and rescue services do on a regular basis, to what extent do volunteer organisations factor in that process? Robyn says it does happen but not everywhere. The process of consultation may be too rigid to get the kind of cooperative effort that the Minister refers to in his statement to the House.

“I think it is about who in the community is connected,” she suggests. We talk about co-design with communities and the move away from tick box consultation exercises. “More time and space needs to be allocated to co-production,” she adds. This isn’t just an issue when it comes to consultation with the public but also training and exercising.

Robyn welcomes the new Resilience Directorate in the Cabinet Office, responsible for the National Exercising Programme. “There is more to be done in and with communities to shape how exercises work – their structure and language – so they’re more accessible to regular people.”

Future for cooperation between sectors

As we conclude our conversation, I ask Robyn what the EP should look like in five years’ time. She is clear in her vision.

“I want us to have helped the VCS be seen as a real leader in the resilience and emergency space. They are a player now but in five years’ time there’s a real opportunity to lean into its strategic role as a leader and adviser on behalf of communities. They are an enabler for those who work in the resilience space to reach the people who need it most.

“There should be a shift to embed a risk and rights approach to emergency planning.”

She explains that there should be more consideration of risks alongside who will be impacted and the rights of people who might be affected if that risk is realised. “That shifts the focus to the people who are made the most vulnerable in an emergency, to allow them to be front and centre in the way we plan.” She says that planning focuses on the majority but “everybody has the same rights to recover and thrive again. No risk affects people equally.”

“It is critical to work alongside the emergency services,” she concludes, adding a takeaway for us all: “if you’re not embracing the VCS, you are missing a huge opportunity.”

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