Dudley Metropolitan Borough Council

Risk Assessment

Risk assessment is the first step in the emergency planning and Business Continuity planning process. It ensures responding organisations make plans that are sound and proportionate to the risks that exist within the West Midlands.

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 places a statutory obligation on all Category 1 responders (as defined under the Act) to carry out a risk assessment.

Methodology

The Risk Assessment work has been subject to a six stage process as recommended in the document Emergency Preparedness the guidance document that has been produced by Central Government to support Part 1 of the Civil Contingencies Act.

There is a duty on the Local Authority, as a Category 1 responder under the Act, to assess the risk of an emergency within or affecting the geographical are for which it has responsibility.

An emergency as defined within the Act is an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare or to the environment of a place within the United Kingdom, or war or terrorism which threatens serious damage to the security of the United Kingdom.

It must also be of sufficient scale and nature that it is likely to seriously obstruct a Category 1 responder in the performance of its functions.

The threat or hazard requires the Category 1 responder to exercise its functions and undertake a special mobilisation.

Very briefly this process consists of the following steps:

Contextualisation
Hazard Review and Allocation for Assessment
Risk Analysis
Risk Evaluation
Risk Treatment
Monitoring & Review

Further details of the methodology used can be found in Chapter 4 of the Civil Contingences Act Guidance

Dudley MBC Risk Assessment

Dudley Metropolitan Borough has undertaken an analysis of the risks withinin its geographical boundaries and produced its own Risk Assessment. This assessment has been discused with the other Category 1 responders locally.

The inclusion of these hazards or the particular scenario (i.e. the outcome description), does not mean that the Council believes the risk will materialise, or that if it were to do so, it would be at that scale. The risk scenarios are reasonable worse case scenario assumptions upon which we have based our risk assessment work.

A copy of this document can be seen below.

Review

Risk assessment is not a static process and is subject to constant review as local and national circumstances dictate. This information will therefore be updated as and when it is practical and sensible to do so.

The link to this Risk Assessment can be found at the end of the page.

The West Midlands Conurbation

Within the Civil Contingencies Act the Authority must also, join with those other Category 1 responders within the West Midlands Conurbation who form the Local Resilience Forum based on the West Midlands Conurbation.

In the West Midlands Conurbation Local Resilience Forum area a multi-agency approach has been adopted for the risk assessment work that has been undertaken and this process has engaged a wide range of stakeholders and partner organisations.

The West Midlands conurbation is made up on 7 metropolitan councils with a total population of over 2 million people, with nearly half being in Birmingham. It borders 3 counties Warwickshire, Staffordshire and Worcestershire.

The Community Risk Register for the West Midlands Conurbation Local Resilience Forum can be located at West Midlands Prepared website.