Town and parish councils in Wiltshire and Swindon have taken part in an event with emergency responders and volunteer agencies to help local communities prepare to act when needed in an emergency.

The event took place in Tidworth and was hosted by Wiltshire and Swindon Prepared, a multi-agency partnership between Wiltshire Council, Swindon Borough Council, emergency responders, the health sector, utility providers and voluntary agencies.

One of the partnership’s main roles is to work with communities to coordinate planning and preparation for incidents and catastrophic emergencies.

The day featured an exercise based on severe weather to test the effectiveness of local community emergency plans which over 200 people took part in.

There were also presentations from utility providers and stands and demonstrations from partners including building a sandbag wall and preparing for utility outages.

Cllr Ashley O’Neill, Wiltshire Council Cabinet Member for Communities, said: “This event was a good opportunity to build on the great work already being done in our communities and share best practice across a large network of local organisations involved in responding to an emergency. The knowledge gained and connections made will enable communities to respond early to emergencies and work with the council and emergency services.

“The Wiltshire and Swindon Prepared partnership enables us to work better across organisations and with communities to prepare and respond to emergencies. It also follows our business plan guiding themes of prevention and early intervention, understanding communities and working together.”

Wiltshire and Swindon Prepared is the public-facing brand of the Wiltshire and Swindon Local Resilience Forum.

Local resilience forums are multi-agency partnerships made up of representatives from local public services, including the emergency services, local authorities, the NHS, the Environment Agency and others.

LRFs aim to plan and prepare for localised incidents and catastrophic emergencies.

They work to identify potential risks and produce emergency plans to either prevent or mitigate the impact of any incident in their local communities.