National Recovery Guidance - Generic Issues - Training and exercising

Background and Context

Emergency Preparedness makes clear the need for training key staff to obtain the necessary competence (which is a combination of knowledge, skills, and attitudes) as well as running exercises to test the robustness of plans. The distinction lies in differentiating between the competence of responders and the effectiveness of the plan so that these can be assessed.

Training for the recovery phase and validating the arrangements through exercises is less developed than our ability to train and exercise for the response phase of an emergency. However many of the processes are the same, it is just that the context is different, often delivered over a much longer time line, and involves a wider group of stakeholders.

National Occupational Standards (NOS)

National Occupational Standards (NOS) describe competent performance in terms of outcomes of an individual’s work and the knowledge and skills they need to perform effectively.  The NOS for Civil Contingencies allow a clear assessment of competence against nationally agreed standards of performance, across a range of workplace circumstances for those involved in resilience and civil protection. For further information, please visit www.skillsforjustice.com/civilnos

Core Competences Project

The Core Competences Project was initiated as a joint venture between the Cabinet Office Emergency Planning College and the Emergency Planning Society. One year into the Project it was announced that the Sector Skills Council for Justice would be leading a project to develop National Occupational Standards (NOS) in Civil Contingencies. Consequently, it was agreed that Skills for Justice would work in partnership with the Project and as a result the NOS for Civil Contingencies form the foundation of the Core Competencies Framework.

The resulting Framework has been designed to cover those areas that are considered to be essential to the practice of emergency management. The eight technical areas of the NOS for Civil Contingencies which form the foundation for the Framework have been extended to include four further areas of competence:

  • Theories and Concepts in Emergency Management
  • Acting Effectively Across your Organisation
  • Debriefing After and Emergency, Exercise or Other Activity
  • Managing Computer Generated Data to Support Decision Making 

Policy and Guidance

England

Firstly, to clarify the distinction between training and exercising - Emergency Preparedness suggests:

Training, as such, as distinct from exercises, is broadly about raising the awareness of the participants (who are those named in the plan or mobilised by it) about what the emergency is that they may face and giving them confidence in the procedures and their ability to carry them out successfully. It is particularly important that participants in training understand the objectives of the plan and their part in achieving them. [Paragraph 5.134 of Emergency Preparedness]

Generally, participants in exercises should have an awareness of their roles and be reasonably comfortable with them, before they are subjected to the stresses of an exercise. Exercising is not to catch people out. It tests procedures, not people. [Paragraph 5.143]

Having made the distinction above, there is an overlap between the two:

Exercises have three main purposes:

  • to revalidate plans (revalidation)
  • to develop staff competencies and give them practice in carrying out their roles in plans (training); and
  • to test well established procedures (testing).

Most exercises will have some elements of all three. [Paragraph 5.144]

Training

In order to develop a Recovery capability, it is essential that roles, responsibilities and procedures have been identified and that the people involved have the necessary competence. Competence can be defined as having the appropriate knowledge, skills, and attitudes (KSA). The level of competence needed has to be defined, then an assessment carried out of what level of competence the people responsible for delivering the capability currently have. This process is called a Training Needs Analysis, and should follow the same approach as that which is used to identify training needs for the response phase.

The stages involved in a Training Needs Analysis are:

  1. Detail what is needed to deliver the capability.
  2. Detail who is responsible for delivering the Recovery capability in terms of organisations and positions / roles within it. This should flow from the multi-agency Recovery Plan and include Category 1 & 2 responders, plus anyone else needed to deliver the capability including members of the voluntary and private sectors.
  3. Detail what competences (KSA) these different people need in order to deliver the different elements of the capability including planning for and implementing the Recovery plan. Also include the competences they need at the individual, team and multi-agency level.
  4. Assess current competences and current training provision (including exercising, guidance, literature, etc. and training providers). Having completed stages 1 – 3 above, what competences are needed and by whom should be apparent. This will enable questions to be designed to assess current competence in the areas required. Current competences and current training provision can be identified through a number of methodologies such as:
    • Questionnaire – sent to people involved in preparing for and delivering the capability
    • Focus groups (facilitated sessions using people from different levels and different organisations)
    • Structured interviews (1 to 1) with policy leads and / or operational staff
    • Unstructured interviews with experienced personnel to gather more thoughts / suggestions / clarification.

The competences required during the recovery phase are more likely to be aligned to the day-to-day role of responding staff. For example, in dealing with people made homeless during an emergency, it is expected that local authorities will primarily use staff that deal with homelessness issues on a daily basis – albeit maybe not to the scale or in the timescales expected following an emergency. This approach to allocating people to tasks not only effectively builds on their existing knowledge of the subject area, but also enables them to use their probably well developed network of contacts both within the local authority area and further afield, which may be particularly helpful if mutual aid is required.

Exercises

Whilst there is generic guidance in Emergency Preparedness and the Home Office Exercise Planning Guide on designing and running exercises, there is no specific guidance on exercising the recovery phase.

The Civil Contingencies Secretariat is currently developing and bringing together a range of exercises, guidance and support tools [‘tools’ here is meant in the broadest sense, meaning specific tools and techniques and more general frameworks and guidance] which could be used to assist organisations in exercising recovery and which may then be used to inform planning for recovery.

The tools are designed to provide support and accompanying materials to facilitators in exercising recovery. Completed documents and tools can be found below.

The tools here form part of a planned wider package which will be used to provide further guidance on exercising recovery. Further tools will be added to this site. These will include, amongst others, suggested injects and scenarios for a recovery exercise, and decision tools.

These tools have been developed by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, with the assistance of the Recovery Exercising Advisory Group (REAG). REAG consists of representatives from:

  • Communities and Local Government
  • Coventry City Council
  • Emergency Planning College
  • Environment Agency
  • Essex Fire and Rescue Service
  • Food Standards Agency
  • Government Decontamination Service
  • Government Office North West
  • Health Protection Agency
  • Lancaster University
  • Local Government Association
  • North Wales Resilience Forum

If you wish to be involved in this Group or for more information on this work, please contact recovery@cabinet-office.x.gsi.gov.uk

Many organisations have run recovery exercises. Case studies from recovery-related exercises can be found at the bottom of this page. The learning from these has shown that:

  • In light of the cross-cutting nature of recovery, as wide a range of participants as possible should be involved in recovery exercises. This will go beyond the usual ‘resilience family’, and may include bodies such as Local Enterprise Partnerships (LEPs), Tourist Boards, Chambers of Commerce, Natural England, or English Heritage (and devolved equivalents in devolved areas), as well as community groups and faith leaders, and possibly even individual businesses. Similarly, other wider representatives from Category 1 and 2 organisations, such as Social Services and Elected Members from local authorities, should also be encouraged to attend. Invitation lists can be compiled based on those organisations detailed in the Recovery Plan. It is important that exercises are written to cover issues relevant to all organisations present, or else attendees may feel they have not benefited from attendance, and it may be difficult to obtain their input at future events.
  • It is difficult to reflect the true nature of recovery in an exercise, as exercises normally only last for a day or two, whereas the recovery phase itself can of course last for one or two years. There are a number of ways in which this can be overcome, for example:
    • by holding a number of exercises to represent various stages of the recovery phase. These may be split by time (eg. starting at day 5 after the emergency has occurred, then jumping to 2 weeks after the emergency, then 2 months, and so on), or by key milestones (eg. prior to clean-up, once clean-up is complete, etc).
    • by running one exercise but using ‘time-lapse’ at points during the day. Again, the exercise can be split by time or key milestones.
  • Whatever approach is used, there needs to be comprehensive pre-start briefing which summarises the scenario to date and the decisions that have been made in the response phase. This will help ensure that people do not become focussed on response issues during an exercise that is supposed to be focussed on recovery. Consideration should therefore be given to running recovery exercises on the back of response exercises to avoid this tendency taking place.
  • There is considerable benefit in exercising the handover phase from response (Strategic Co-ordinating Group) to recovery (Recovery Co-ordinating Group) so that the criteria that would be used to determine the right time for handover to take place and the handover processes themselves can be tested. This aspect can clearly be covered in both response and recovery exercises.
  • As with response exercises, the scenarios used in recovery exercises should be prioritised in line with the key risks in the Community Risk Register. However, Local Resilience Forums may wish to ‘tweak’ scenarios to ensure they test out those particular aspects of recovery which have been found to be weak / a gap in incidents and exercises elsewhere.
  • The use of scenarios that result in recovery co-ordination being required across local authority / LRF boundaries are encouraged in order to test out the effectiveness of cross-boundary recovery structures and processes.
  • Testing mutual aid arrangements, particularly between local authorities, is beneficial.
  • Issues identified in recovery exercise debrief reports that would be of interest to partners outside of the LRF area should be shared with Regional Resilience Teams (or devolved equivalents) for wider dissemination.

Wales

The Wales Resilience Forum is overseeing the development of a Wales exercise and training programme through its multi-agency Wales Training and Exercising Group. A central training fund has been established for pan-Wales training and exercising which is managed by the group.

All four Local Resilience Forums in Wales have exercised their recovery plans in recent years all of which have used a flooding scenario: Exercise Rufus (Dyfed-Powys), Exercise Rufus II (South Wales), Exercise Watertight (North Wales) and Exercise Ursula (Gwent).

Scotland

At a national level, the Scottish Resilience Development Service of the Civil Contingencies Unit is responsible for civil contingencies training and exercising. The Service has produced Scottish Exercising Guidance – July 2009 which provides generic guidance on exercise management and which aims to set out good practice for all forms of civil protection exercises in Scotland, including those that deal with recovery issues.

The Service has developed a system for exercise management, including a database of exercises available to registered users. For further information, see https://scords.gov.uk/

Individual training for recovery management is primarily a matter for mainstream learning providers. For example, those carrying out environmental protection activities during the recovery process should develop their competence through mainstream environmental management training and development.

Collective training may be needed to ensure that teams are able to put their skills into practice in an emergency. Organisations that are members of Civil Contingencies Strategic Co-ordinating Groups are responsible for making sure team members are aware of their role throughout an emergency and have the opportunity to try out their skills, for example through exercises. Responder agencies may also use exercises to both evaluate arrangements and performance. Such exercises should follow normal good practice.

Northern Ireland

No differences for Northern Ireland.

Roles and Responsibilities

Local and Regional

Training of key staff is the responsibility of their respective organisations, although there is merit in considering the use of multi-agency training events to cover the various aspects of recovery.

Local authorities will usually lead on the development, implementation and debrief of recovery exercises, but this should be with the full support of all Local Resilience Forum members and wider partners.

Lead Government Department

Cabinet Office co-ordinate the cross-government exercise programme.

The Emergency Planning College – part of the Cabinet Office – run training events on recovery.

Other Government Involvement

Many departments who have a Lead Government Department role for particular capabilities / scenarios run national exercises. These have tended in the past to focus on the response phase of incidents, but departments have run some specific recovery exercises and the recovery phase can be built in to response exercises.

Regional Resilience Teams co-ordinate a regional exercise calendar. Recovery training and exercises should be fed into these programmes, as with all other Local Resilience Forum events, to avoid diary clashes and facilitate the identification of possible cross-LRF training and exercising opportunities.

Devolved Administrations

Wales

The Wales Resilience Forum oversees the development of a Wales exercise and training programme through its multi-agency Wales Training and Exercising Group.

Scotland

No difference

Northern Ireland

The Emergency Planning College has a new prospectus for Northern Ireland. The training is delivered locally by Emergency Planning Solutions who are accredited by the college to deliver EPC training within the Province.

Funding

The funding for any training is expected to be absorbed internally within the relevant organisation.

Recovery exercises are usually funded by the local authority, but contributions may be sought from all participating organisations.

Devolved Administrations

Wales

Funding of exercises at the local level in Wales is generally handled through the Local Resilience Forums. A central training fund has been established for pan-Wales training and exercising which is managed by the Wales Training and Exercising Group.

Scotland

[TBC]

Northern Ireland

[TBC]

Links to Other Topic Sheets

Case Studies (Incidents and Exercises)

Other useful documents

  • UK Financial Sector’s market-wide exercise 2009 final communiqué 4  

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