Emergency preparedness, resilience and response (EPRR)

What is Emergency Planning?

Emergencies can take place anywhere and at any time. They might be the result of incidents caused by natural events (such as, hurricanes, flooding and heatwaves), or by human action (whether it’s deliberate or accidental) or disruptive events which interrupts planned activities, operations or functions, whether anticipated or unanticipated.

There are a range of events and situations which pose serious consequences and require special arrangements from the UK government’s crisis management systems to deliver a response at any level.

Having effective risk identification and assessment processes is essential for informing proportionate planning and preparedness, and our ability to mitigate and prevent crises. Based on those risk assessments, UHCW have developed a suite of generic and threat-specific emergency response and recovery plans that align to the national and regional guidance, and are supported by an ongoing programme of training, testing and exercising.

For UHCW, emergency planning starts with understanding the risks which might impact on our ability to deliver the best care for our communities. We work with different partners across the health sector and wider, including Local Authorities, Emergency Services and Central Government, and together we use tools such as the National and Community Risk Registers to help us identify and mitigate relevant risks. You can learn more about our local risks via the West Midlands Resilience Forum - Risks page.

While on one hand emergency planning is focussed on keeping people and assets safe in the event of an emergency, our business continuity arrangements focus on maintaining service delivery across the organisation.

A business continuity incident is an event or occurrence that disrupts, or has the potential to disrupt, the Trust’s normal delivery of services below acceptable predefined levels. Where the Trust cannot prevent a disruptive event, it must be able to respond, quickly and effectively, to

minimise the impact it has on our patients, service users and staff; and to return services to an acceptable level.

Examples of business continuity incidents the Trust may experience include utility failures, surges in demand that requiring the temporary re-deployment of resources within the organisation, significant levels of staff absence (e.g. illness or sustained vacancies). There may also be impacts from wider issues such as supply chain disruption or provider failure.

When the level of disruption results in the organisation temporarily or permanently losing its ability to deliver critical services; or where patients and staff may be at risk of harm, a Critical Incident declaration will be made, as we might require special measures and support from other agencies, to restore normal operating functions.

UHCW is dedicated to maintaining robust business continuity arrangements in place at all levels of the organisation which are routinely tested and exercised.

The Trust's Accountable Emergency Officer (AEO) is responsible for ensuring the Trust is prepared to respond to incidents and emergencies. They are supported by a dedicated Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPPR) Team which is responsible for producing and maintaining the Trust's EPRR risk assessment, incident response and threat specific plans, business continuity and the continuous improvement of those arrangements though training and exercising, as well as implementing learning from incidents.

The EPRR Team consists of specialist staff trained in emergency planning, business continuity and incident response. Alongside maintaining oversight of the Trust's EPRR Programme, the Team is also responsible for coordinating the Trust's 24/7 incident response and escalation process.

The West Midlands Conurbation Local Resilience Forum (LRF) is a multi-agency partnership made up of representatives from local public services, including emergency services, local authorities the NHS and others.

The LRF works to identify potential risks and produce plans to prevent or mitigate the impact on our local communities, train and exercise those arrangements together and jointly respond to incidents affecting our community.

University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust is a member of the West Midlands LRF and we are proud to work together with partner agencies to ensure that, if and when an emergency occurs, we are prepared to respond together and save lives.

All NHS-funded organisations must meet the requirements of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the NHS Act 2006, the Health and Care Act 2022, the NHS standard contract, the NHS Core Standards for EPRR and NHS England business continuity management framework.

To ensure that those requirements are met, an annual assurance process taken place and assesses our preparedness against common NHS EPRR core standards. As a Trust, we have achieved a “Substantially Complaint” position against the NHS EPRR Core Standards with a compliance rating of 95.2 per cent and a robust workplan has been developed to bring the Trust’s overall compliance closer to becoming ‘Fully Compliant’ with the Core Standards.

If you have any questions or suggestions about our Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response work, please get in touch at eprr@uhcw.nhs.uk