National Consortium NCSR Plus 1 Local Resilience Capability User Guide

The University of Manchester
Alliance Manchester
Business School
User Guide

NCSR Plus 1 Local Resilience Capability

NATIONAL CONSORTIUM FOR SOCIETAL RESILIENCE [UK+] STRATEGY AND MANUAL TO CREATE A LOCAL RESILIENCE CAPABILITY
DUNCAN SHAW, DAVID POWELL, ANDREW MCCLELLAND, RÓISÍN JORDAN ALLIANCE MANCHESTER BUSINESS SCHOOL, UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER
23 AUGUST 2023

Introduction to this document
This document summarises the strategy developed by NCSR+1 to operationalise societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability.
The accompanying “Manual to create a Local Resilience Capability”describes the steps to deliver this strategy and should be read in conjunction.
What is described in this document is the creation of a proportionate capability which recognises the limited resources available within resilience partnerships. On reading this strategy and manual, if you get concerned about the size of the task, then please be assured that we have already proved that a strategy for societal resilience can be created by a resilience partnership with minimal resource. One case study partner, South Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum (LRF), worked with NCSR+ to design their strategy for Local Resilience Capability without any increase in resource. They have now appointed someone to help implement the strategy.
Societal resilience cannot be built on foundations of being ‘all thingsto all people’, nor assume resources that do not exist. It is possible to nudge a shift in societal resilience by better understanding: the contribution of existing initiatives, the actors involved, how to improve the current system, volunteer capacity and opportunities without duplicating wider activity – but the capability needs to be strategically owned and deployed. Societal resilience is not just an emergency management activity, but determining who leads and sets the direction requires local agreement.
Developing a Local Resilience Capability is one response from resilience partnerships to the UK Government’s whole-ofsociety approach to resilience.
The NCSR+ approach is to develop a proportionate, strategic capability that integrates into the structures of local resilience.
A Local Resilience Capability seeks to enhance the resilience of individuals, groups, organisations, and networks. It does this by prioritising the needs of the most vulnerable in our society by discovering what those needs are for key risks and developing capabilities to address them in advance of an incident and as needs change during an incident. Those less vulnerable are supported through providing information on how to activate their own resilience, and how to support others who are less resilient. This can prioritise providing support to vulnerable people, the services they rely on, and organisations that provide those services.
For many resilience partnerships, enhancing societal resilience has been a challenge for decades. So building a Local Resilience Capability cannot be done by operational staff alone. Strategic support is essential to ensure the alignment of partners, commitment to deliver the ambition, and to integrate the capabilityinto the resilience partnership. This integration requires Local Resilience Capability to have systems to gather intelligence about needs so that it can prioritise its provision of support and identify  those who require support from professional partners. Also, Local Resilience Capability cannot be created effectively when there is competition among those who seek to deliver it.
If your organisation aims to develop a Local Resilience Capability then this document provides guidance on the ambition and a stepby-step approach to develop societal resilience. The strategy and manual can be used by an organisation to commissionwork.

Developing this document
The contents of the strategy and manual were developed over 18 months work (February 2022 to July 2023) with the National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+] (NCSR+). This involved the NCSR+ team from The University of Manchester running a series of activities to design, from first principles, the strategy and manual. These activities involved reflection and feedback activities, including, discussion groups on key principles and feedback sessions on written versions of the documents. Our learning from
numerous case studies have heavily informed the contents of the strategy and manual, most notably our extensive work with South Yorkshire LRF and Greater Manchester LRF.
South Yorkshire LRF began its thinking on societal resilience from a clean sheet and was keen to develop its own approach to tackle this challenging area of work. Through working closely with NCSR+, the LRF has designed and approved its own strategy which is based on these NCSR+ documents. The LRF is now engaged in the delivery of that strategy in one flood risk location.
Greater Manchester LRF has worked on the topic of the resilience of older people to heat events in one location in Manchester. The LRF has used the approach in these documents to develop a new capability which is to be trialled in a tabletop exercise. It will look to broaden its Local Resilience Capability to other parts of society, in other places, and to other incidents.
The NCSR+ team have been asked to support several LRFs in designing their strategy for societal resilience to create a Local Resilience Capability in response to the UK Government Resilience Framework which calls for a whole of society approach to resilience.
Maintaining momentum behind the approach advocated is critical to its success. The NCSR+ team invite other resilience partnerships to get in touch to discuss how best to support implementation of the strategy and manual beyond the initial case studies.

More information
For more information on NCSR+ Strategy and Manual to create a Local Resilience Capability, please contact Prof Duncan Shaw (duncan.shaw-2@manchester.ac.uk).

1. The National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+], abbreviated to NCSR+, is a collaboration between 62 partners involved in societal resilience. Through its local resilience partnerships alone, NCSR+ covers 98% of the population of the UK and its Crown Dependencies. NCSR+ includes key sector partners from the voluntary, business, government, and research sectors. www.ambs.ac.uk/ncsr
2. Resilience partnerships include: Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) in England and Wales, Emergency Preparedness Groups (EPGs) in Northern Ireland, Local/Regional Resilience Partnerships (LRPs/RRPs) in Scotland.

Acknowledgements
We thank all NCSR+ partners for engaging in this work.
We give special thanks to the following NCSR+ partners thaco-funded NCSR+ up to July 2023:
Local Resilience Forums in England
Cambridgeshire & Peterborough
Cleveland
Cumbria
Devon, Cornwall & Isle of Scilly
Dorset
Durham & Darlington
Essex
Gloucestershire
Greater Manchester
Hampshire & Isle of Wight
Humber
Kent
Lancashire
Merseyside
North Yorkshire
South Yorkshire
Staffordshire
Suffolk
Surrey
Thames Valley
Warwickshire
Wiltshire and Swindon
Emergency Preparedness Groups in Northern Ireland
Northern
Southern
Belfast
NCSR+ sector partners:
British Red Cross
Local Government Association
The University of Manchester
Funding councils:
Economic and Social Research Council
UK Research and Innovation

i. Aim of this strategy
This document sets out our resilience partnership’s strategy to operationalise societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability.
ii. Introduction and context

Resilience as a societal endeavour is taking hold as a national ambition. The UK Government Resilience Framework (2022) and the Integrated Review of Security and Defence (2021 and the 2023 refresh) commit to a whole-of-society approach to resilience.
This moves the nature of resilience partnerships from response to resilience, requiring additional relationships and capabilities to enhance the resilience of our society. Local partnerships are already reaching into wider aspects of societal resilience through
supporting agendas of other agencies (e.g. providing public health services, supporting people in need, enhancing social cohesion) butthere is more we want to do to integrate this ‘system of resilience’ to make everyone more resilient.
Most in society are already quite resilient and can prepare for a disruption, or self-help if it happens. But, society is diverse, and some parts are less resilient to disruption, suffer more from its impacts, and have diverse needs for support that they cannot resolve themselves. These are ‘priority groups’ for additional support and include those individuals, groups, organisations, and networks in society that are most at-risk, vulnerable, not prepared, unaware, or unable to leverage their agency to self-determine their own resilience to disruption. Some parts of society may be hardly reached or suspicious of government intervention, so we need to take a different approach to supporting them through the partners that they trust. Priority groups are identified using the community/
local risk register as requiring extra help in a disruption. We will enhance societal resilience in general that will encourage self-help and helping others in a disruption, and we will better understand the changing needs in priority groups to better pinpoint our
services.

This will involve working in new, ambitious, non-competitive ways with organisations that are well placed to connect with parts our local society that our partners struggle to reach. Some of this will involve partners that operate at the national level, for example,
where there are specialist skills that do not depend on local context (e.g. translation services). But, because having hyper-local touch points to local context is so important to supporting vulnerable people, we will reaffirm our approaches to working with hyper-local civil society, voluntary, and business sectors.
Societal resilience is enhanced by hyper-local systems to help people and places to adapt and advance in a changing environment.Our resilience partnership is a key component of that system, prioritising our support to those most in need, and maintaining local essential services and their infrastructure. But some disruptions are so big that the volume of needs they create outstripwhat we can, alone, support. So, society has a crucial role to bolster the support so emergency responders can focus on those most in need. Our resilience partnership can help society to channel their effort before, during and after a disruption. To accomplish this, we will develop a system to operationalise societal resilience as a capability that we can activate when additional support is required.
Local Resilience Capability is the system we will create to operationalise societal resilience to deliver functions to society and priority groups. The capability will be designed to identify needs in society and develop systems to address those needs.
These systems can be activated by the resilience partnership to gather local intelligence, pinpoint and prioritise need, and deploy professional responders and/or Local Resilience Capability to address needs. This includes needs when:

• preparing for a disruption – by encouraging/coordinating selfhelp and helping others
• responding to a disruption – by coordinating requests for help and offers of support from individuals, groups, organisations, and networks and by monitoring changing needs
• recovering from a disruption – by supporting society in the aftermath

This document describes our strategy to deliver a Local Resilience Capability, its importance, principles, risks, opportunities, and the eight steps through which it will be created.
iii. Our vision for societal resilience
To create a Local Resilience Capability for our resilience partnership that will enhance our approach to societal resilience, so that our individuals, groups, organisations, and networks can all play a meaningful part in building the resilience of our society.
iv. Aims and objectives to deliver this vision
To deliver this vision, our aims focus on enabling society to support those priority groups that are most in need. Each of these aims map onto six consistent objectives:

Aims – and rationale:

1. To support society to improve their own resilience – because self-determination is at the core of co-production
2. To activate the preparedness of those most in need – because better preparedness will lower demand, reduce diversity of need, and pre-position support for priority groups
3. To reduce local risk and vulnerability of those most in need – because reducing risk and vulnerability will allow Local Resilience Capability to focus on the priority groups most in need
4. To unite different parts of the system that work with priority groups or on resilience – so that our collaboration can benefit from system-wide additionality

Objectives:
For each aim:

1. Determine current performance
2. Determine gaps and where more work is required to enhance performance
3. Form meaningful collaborations to enhance performance
4. Design intervention to enhance performance
5. Implement intervention to enhance performance
6. Determine how local intelligence is acquired and used to enhance performance

v. Principles underpinning the aims and objectives
Our top three principles when delivering our aims and objectives are:

1. Work with society to co-produce a Local Resilience Capability – that aligns to risk, is activated by existing structures, is valued by society, and is sustained by available resources
2. Focus on priority groups that are most in need and those that support them – and work with partners to understand changing needs and gain access to priority groups
3. Start simple and grow – for example, prioritise one priority group at a time, build momentum, learn from experience, and create spill-over opportunities to grow the coverage

vi. Why achieving these aims is important
Delivering these aims and objectives will:

1. Prioritise support to those in society who are most in need from disruptions and those who maintain local critical services and their infrastructure
   To achieve this, Local Resilience Capability will enable our resilience partnership to:

2. Support society to improve their own resilience to disruption

3. Activate those in society who can help themselves or help others

4. Reduce demand, risk and vulnerability so we can prioritise resources onto those most in need

vii. Opportunities and risk
The top three opportunities from delivering Local Resilience Capability are:

• Identify and access hardly-reached parts of society (of place and of type) that are most in need during disruption
• Activate through the resilience partnership the provision of support from the voluntary sector, broader partners (e.g. health, social care), and spontaneous individuals and businesses
• Support the majority in society as they self-help in a disruption, but focus mainly on those who cannot self-help

The top three risks to be managed are:

• Individuals, groups, organisations, and networks that may have needs during disruptions remain unaware and uninterested in building resilience – so we need to communicate our compelling case for collaboration to leaders who can affect change
• Those involved in Local Resilience Capability lose interest because of insufficient activations – so we will design this as resilience and not only emergency response
• Local Resilience Capability does not have the desired impact on addressing need – so we need to assess its impact and adjust to create additional value

viii. Pace and resource to implement Local Resilience Capability
Creating a Local Resilience Capability takes ongoing commitment, starting small, and growing as funding and enthusiasm allows. The pace of development will depend on resources available.
ix. Eight steps to create Local Resilience Capability
Local Resilience Capability will be delivered through eight steps:

Agree the ambition on societal resilience

1. ALIGN| Align the people and the politics behind the ambition for LRC
Design the Local Resilience Capability
2. WHO| Build the team, identify existing partnerships, take stock of existing LRC
3. WHY| Agree the business case to enhance LRC
4. WHAT| Co-produce activities to deliver LRC
Implement the Local Resilience Capability
5. WHO| Develop instrumental collaborations to enhance LRC
6. HOW| Manage LRC
7. DO| Deliver value to society through LRC
Continually improve the Local Resilience Capability
8. EVALUATE| Assess system feedback to continually
improve the LRC

Step 1 is critical to agree the local ambition and institutional commitment to working together.
Steps 2 and 3 can be completed relatively quickly by partners engaged in societal resilience.
Step 4 requires involvement of wider partners such as the voluntary sector and businesses.
Steps 5, 6, and 7 are implementation where interventions start small, prove value, and roll-out wider. For example, Step 7 will develop capabilities to deliver value to society which may consider: working with community hubs to develop resilience hubs; working more closely with local voluntary and business sectors; involving the public through spontaneous volunteering.
Step 8 is an ongoing process that evaluates the performance of the system to enhance societal resilience.

INTRODUCTION

This manual describes how to implement the strategy outlined in “NCSR+ Strategy for Societal Resilience”. Before reading this manual, please read that strategy as it covers:

• What is societal resilience
• Why is societal resilience important
• Why should we operationalise societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability
• What is a Local Resilience Capability
• The vision, aims, and objectives for a Local Resilience Capability
• Why achieving these aims is important
• The principles for operationalising as a Local Resilience Capability
• Opportunities and risks
• Pace and resource
• Eight steps to create a Local Resilience Capability

The manual supports organisations to take a strategic approach to operationalising societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability. Advance investment in Local Resilience Capability serves many purposes for resilience partnerships, including value for money
of reducing demand to prioritise resources onto those most in need during disruptions. As the strategy outlines, Local Resilience Capability is the system “to operationalise societal resilience to deliver a range of functions to society and priority groups”, including:

• preparing for a disruption – by encouraging self-help and helping others and by integrating that capability into the resilience partnership
• responding to a disruption – by coordinating requests for help and offers of support from individuals, groups, organisations, and networks, and by monitoring changing local needs
• recovering from a disruption – by supporting society as it deals with the aftermath

This manual details the eight steps to create a Local Resilience Capability – one step to align partners on the ambition, three steps to design a Local Resilience Capability, three steps that will implement and run the Local Response Capability, and one step tocontinually improve performance:

AMBITIO N

Step 1| ALIGN| Align the people and the  olitics
behind the ambition for LRC| Step 1 is crucial to agree the ambition on
societal resilience and the support for LRC
DESIGN
Step 2| WHO| Establish the team for LLRC and assess current performance| Steps 2 and 3 can be completed relatively quickly by statutory partners already engaged in societal resilience activities Step 4 is based on a co-production approach with wider partners such as the voluntary sector and businesses
Step 3| WHY| Agree the business case for
LRC
Step 4| WHAT| Co-produce activities to deliver LRC
IMPLEMENT
Step 5| WHO| Develop instrumental collaborations for LRC| Steps 5, 6, & 7 are a cycle of growth
Step 6| HOW| Manage LRC
Step 7| DO| Deliver value to society through
LRC
CONTINUALLY IMPROVE
Step 8| EVALUATE| Assess system feedback to
continually improve the LRC| Step 8 is an ongoing process to assess the
performance of the system to enhance societal
resilience

Steps 1-4 can be done across a couple of carefully designed workshops i.e. they do not need to take a disproportionate amount of time. Delivering Steps 5-8 will depend on the coproduced activities but cannot be overly lengthy or it will fail to be practically useful.
Building a smallcapability first, and then growingit strategically, aims to ensure quick impact, scalable to ongoing ambitions and opportunities.
This manual details each of these steps in terms of:

• What does the step involve
• Why is the step important
• How is the step delivered
• What advanced practices are there for this step
• Questions to consider to progress this step
• A generic case study for the step

The eight steps to create a Local Resilience Capability concern an ongoing and dynamic rather than a linear process. Feedback loops will be needed throughout for partners to debrief, assess progress, and adjust as required.
This manual aligns to the guidance contained in:

• Cabinet Office (2008) Identifying people who are vulnerable in a crisis: Guidance for emergency planners and responders.
  February 2008.

• Cabinet Office (2019) Community Resilience Development
  Framework. HM Government. June 2019.

• Cabinet Office (2019) Planning the coordination of spontaneous
  volunteers. June 2019.

• Cabinet Office (2020) National Resilience Standards for Local
  Resilience Forums – Standard #5: Community Resilience
  Development. HM Government. Version 3.0. August 2020.

• Cabinet Office (2022) UK Government Resilience Framework. HM
  Government. December 2022.

• Executive Office (2021) The Northern Ireland Civil Contingencies
  Framework. The Executive Office. August 2021.

• ISO 22319:2017. Guidelines for planning the involvement of spontaneous volunteers. Geneva, Switzerland.

• ISO 22395:2018. Guidelines for supporting vulnerable persons in an emergency. Geneva, Switzerland.

• ISO22392:2020. Guidelines for conducting peer reviews.
  Geneva, Switzerland.

KEY TERMS AND DEFINITIONS FOR THIS MANUAL

■ marginalised groups (e.g. residents of informal settlements)
■ unregistered people (e.g. undocumented migrants)
■ under-represented interests (e.g. persons with disabilities,
refugees)
■ minority groups (e.g. homelessness)
instrumental collaboration| partnership working that efficiently and
effectively has the expected value on enhancing resilience| ■ provider of preparedness training
■ advocate that provides ground intelligence from hardly-
reached groups
■ community group that supports the recovery effort
capability| demonstrable ability to prepare for, respond to, and recover from a © University of Manchester, 2023 particular threat or hazard| ■ can be planned (e.g. collaborations across community groups, businesses, Voluntary, Community and Social Enterprise, local government)
■ can be spontaneous (e.g. crowd-funding, spontaneous
volunteering)
Local Resilience Capability| system to operationalise societal resilience to deliver a range of functions to society and our priority groups who may be individuals, groups, organisations, or networks| ■ preparing for a disruption – by encouraging self-help and
helping others and by integrating that capability into the
resilience partnership as the coordinating body
■ responding to a disruption – by coordinating requests for
help and offers of support, and by monitoring changing local
needs
■ recovering from a disruption – by supporting society as it
deals with the aftermath
[need1]| demand for support before, during, or
after a disruption| Requests from those who/that are:
■ at-risk
■ vulnerable
■ not prepared
■ unaware
■ unable to self-determine their future resilience
resilience partnership| multi-agency group that is charged with progressing the ability of an area to prepare for, respond to, and recover from disruptions| In the UK+, examples include:
■ local resilience forum in England and Wales
■ emergency preparedness group in Northern Ireland
■ local/regional resilience partnerships in Scotland
self-determine| power and knowledge to act to reduce [need]| ■ knows who/how to get support
■ translates advice into action
Societal Resilience Working Group (SWRG)| team that oversees the delivery of the eight steps to create Local Resilience Capability| Formed of:
■ strategic champion
■ tactical leadership
■ working group members
■ secretariat
priority group| parts of society that Local Resilience Capability aim to engage more with to support their [needs]| Prioritised using the community/local risk register, may include:
■ individuals (e.g. hardly-reached citizens, workers in
precarious employment, visitors)
■ groups (e.g. hyper-local groups, communities of place and of
type including at-risk locations)
■ organisations (e.g. small/medium/large businesses and
voluntary organisations that provide essential services and
their infrastructure in at-risk locations)
■ networks (e.g. local community, faith, business and voluntary
associations)

1 Individuals/households, groups, organisations, and networks may be more interested in their own needs and what can be done to address those needs i.e. needs may be a more positive, personal, engaging, and popular topic that is easier to understand. So, Local Resilience Capability is set-up to focus on ‘need’ – and this manual uses that construct.
We recognise that ‘risk’ is the more familiar construct for resilience partnerships but, in many parts of the UK+, risks are less visible. So, it is possible that risk is a more negative, harder, and abstract construct for some parts of society to engage with and galvanise around.

STEP 1: Align the people and the politics behind the ambition for Local

Resilience Capability

What does this step involve?
The resilience partnership should:

• Identify organisations in the resilience partnership or other relevant organisations that should jointly scope the shared ambition on societal resilience
• Align partners’ ambition and strategic priorities to operationalise societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability
• Adapt the ambition using new information
• Discuss the need for societal resilience to be cooperative and collaborative rather than competitive

Why is this step important?

• To highlight to strategic leaders:
  o the national momentum on a whole-of-society approach to resilience that sits alongside a decades-long challenge to create community resilience at scale
  o that societal resilience can reduce risk and vulnerability by building capability to address [need]

• To set the ambition for innovation on societal resilience with strategic and ongoing institutional support (not just personal interest)

• To embed the foundational blocks (institutional backing, strategy, short-term funding) before identifying staffing requirements

• To avoid the distractions of competing with each other for attention or funding

How do we deliver this step?
The first activity is to:

• Identify why a new ambition on societal resilience is desired, for example:
  o national legal, political, and policy frameworks for resilience
  o broader strategies that complement societal resilience e.g. climate adaptation, social cohesion, public safety, health and well-being, business continuity

• Identify partner organisations for societal resilience and their strategic ambition

• Agree the partnership’s ambition for Local Resilience Capability and begin to explore the:
  o scale of initial investment, and desired outcomes
  o governance structures to deliver the shared ambition
  o strategic lead who will chair the Societal Resilience Working Group

• Hold a Resilience Summit to galvanise strategic support for the ambition

What advanced practices are there for this step?
The resilience partnership should:

• Review how the shared ambition should adapt to realise more benefit from the Local Resilience Capability
• Broaden the strategic support for the ambition e.g. from community, voluntary, and business sectors
• Review the ambition e.g. to grow the Local Resilience Capability using results from pilot work

What questions should be considered to progress this step?
Questions to answer, include:

• What is the ambition for societal resilience? Does this support operationalising societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability?
• Is there institutional support to deliver the ambition on societal resilience? Where is that support thinnest, what are the risks of that, and how can those risks be managed?

Case study for Step 1
In response to our desire to make our society more resilient, our resilience partnership has:

• Discussed the need to do even better on societal resilience

• Honestly appraised and openly debated partners’ ambitions to enhance societal resilience, including resource constraints and governance complexities (e.g. in multi-tiered local government areas)

• Agreed a shared ambition and explored the commitment to operationalise societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability

• Identified a strategic lead to drive the ambition on behalf of the partnership. The lead:
  o has experience of community and place-based local democratic leadership
  o can gain institutional support across the resilience partnership

• Agreed that competition between partners is not always helpful for societal resilience so cooperation and collaboration may better serve our communities

• Agreed that, to achieve the ambition, it is necessary to start small on what will be done and carefully grow the Local Resilience Capability

• Committed to holding a half-day Resilience Summit to encourage wider commitment to the ambition and explore the opportunities with communities

Our shared ambition defines Local Resilience Capability as having five modules:

based networks e.g. Parish Councils,
neighbourhood wards, associations
Community hub| ormalised physical and virtual location for information and signposting to those with [needs] and offers of support
Organised volunteers| Volunteers from known partners such as voluntary sector organisations, businesses, higher and further education
Spontaneous volunteers| Members of the public who wish to help during an event and do not belong to a known partner
Local essential services| Continuity of local community infrastructure (e.g. voluntary, business that provides essential services)

Our Resilience Summit has been designed and includes:
Aims of the Resilience Summit includes:

• engage strategic leads from across the resilience partnership in a thoughtful and consultative approach to embrace the ambition for societal resilience
• align wider partners’ thinking around the agreed ambition, a shared narrative, and collective enthusiasm
• engage communities in the ambition to receive feedback and prepare them to help co-produce elements
• engage attendees in how they can actively support the ambition

Agenda of the Resilience Summit includes:

• contextualise societal resilience in:
  o the national endeavour and government’s frameworks
  o the context of other place-based agendas (e.g. climate adaptation, cohesion, public safety) to determine the strategic and political imperative

• explain current local initiatives that enhance societal resilience

• discuss the priority of local risks and vulnerabilities that local resilience capability could begin to address

• discuss the priority of local needs and capacities to address those needs

• agree supporting actions and what can be done together

The resilience partnership is expecting to revise the ambition in the light of performance improvements from the pilot case studies it commissions. This could include growing the Local Resilience Capability to include new capabilities to address the [needs] of new priority groups and offer new ways to involve society.

STEP 2: Establish the team for Local Resilience Capability and assess

current performance

What does this step involve?
The resilience partnership should:

• Establish the Societal Resilience Working Group as a team to co-produce and/or deliver the eight steps to create the Local Resilience Capability
  The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Work with partners to design and implement the Local Resilience Capability according to the shared ambition (from Step 1)

• Review societal resilience activity to baseline current performance and the investment that achieves it

Why is this step important?

• To appoint a motivated and knowledgeable team to co-produce the Local Resilience Capability
• To agree the details of the shared ambition for the Local Resilience Capability based on current performance and investment
• To inform subsequent steps that will develop the delivery plan

How do we deliver this step?
The first activity is to:

• Build a Societal Resilience Working Group that:
  o is a standing group in the resilience partnership to ensure that Local Resilience Capability is delivered as a strategic programme
  o has a strategic champion, a tactical leadership, working group members, a secretariat, Terms of Reference

The Societal Resilience Working Group should facilitate partners, collaborators, and representatives of society to:

• Identify the partners required to coordinate, design, and implement the Local Resilience Capability – especially that can reach those with [needs] and/or can provide support to those in [need]
• Review societal resilience activity to:
  o identify current activity
  o baseline its impact on enhancing societal resilience
  o identify different statutory roles and legislation relevant to societal resilience
  o evaluate the resources involved

What advanced practices are there for this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Review the performance of the team and partnerships to identify how they can strengthen their contributions – including that from broader networks, political figures, local personalities, and local services
• Invite review to challenge thinking on Local Resilience Capability (e.g. from political scrutiny, peer review)

What questions should be considered to progress this step?
Workshop questions to answer, include:

• What is our current level of achievement on societal resilience?
  Consider: societal risk, vulnerability, preparedness, awareness, self- determination; partnerships and instrumental collaborations; Individuals, groups, organisations, and networks; and non-emergency parts of local government

• What is your level of shared ambition?
  Consider: resilience partnership and broader partners; communities and organisations

• Who should be involved in co-producing Local Resilience Capability?
  Consider: those with non-emergency statutory duties, wider agendas, voluntary sector including representative bodies or umbrella groups

Case study for Step 2
Our Societal Resilience Working Group has been formally constituted by the resilience partnership and reports into the resilience partnership. The group’s membership includes:

executive from a relevant organisation such as local government
■ Figurehead to agree strategic aims and objectives, timeframes, secure resources,
describe what good looks like, lobby, unite broader representation, support
conflict resolution, political leadership into broader agendas (e.g. levelling up)
■ Accountable for delivery of the strategy
Tactical leadership| Name, job description,organisation| ■ Community engagement professional from local government or voluntary sector
■ Ensures strategic objectives are achieved
Working group members| Names, job description, organisation| People from the following groups who can mobilise the knowledge and power for
societal resilience:
■ Multi-agency resilience partners (Category 1/2, utilities, welfare professionals)
■ Place-shaping partners
■ Representatives of priority groups and communities
■ Representatives of voluntary and business sectors to bring different insights
from national to hyper-local interests
■ Community engagement professionals linked into local places
Secretariat| Name, job description,
organisation| ■ Resilience partnership representative or another suitable alternative
■ Guidance to ensures Local Resilience Capability integrates with resilience
partnership activities and can be activated by the resilience partnership when
required

The Terms of Reference for the Societal Resilience Working Group have been approved by the resilience partnership. They include:
Structure of the Terms of Reference

• Context of local resilience and partnerships for societal resilience
• Draft ambition including aims, objectives
• Constitution (e.g. a commissioning body or change agent)
• Legislation, duties and good practices from local, national, international (legislation, National Resilience Standards, National Resilience Strategy, Community Resilience Development Framework, Levelling up Strategy)
• Terms and definitions for societal resilience
• Governance including reporting structure and accountability, periodic review, internal communications, measures of effectiveness
• Structure including sub-groups, liaisons
• Timescales including pace/rhythm
• Funding arrangements
• Training requirements for the Societal Resilience Working Group to fulfil its duties
• Recommend societal resilience initiatives, their delivery, collaborations, resourcing, and funding opportunities
• Risks and challenges to societal resilience
• Ongoing strategies – aims, achievements, disruptions rectified, demands normalised

The Societal Resilience Working Group has identified the requirement for instrumental collaborations with the following partners and will prioritise these:

Partnerships that can initially coordinate and champion Local Resilience Capability
Resilience partnership|  ■ Expertise on wider resilience agendas
■ Networks of those already working in local resilience| resilience partnership Executive Group.
Working Groups on: Risk Assessment; Warning and Informing; Business Continuity Promotion; Human Aspects; Voluntary and Faith Sectors
Local government that already works on building local resilience
Place-shaping local
government and other
services running wider
initiatives on societal
resilience| ■ Their own statutory duties to support
priority groups
■ Access to, and knowledge of, priority
groups| Partners on: Place-shaping; Community Cohesion; Safer Neighbourhoods; Health and Wellbeing; Local Economic Partnerships; Fire Safety; Environmental Health; Community Planning
Place-based leaders| ■ Local voices, as democratically elected
leaders for place
■ Local concerns of locations at risk
■ Assurance and accountability| Locally-elected officials (Parish, Town, Mayor); Members of Parliament; Police Fire and Crime Commissioners
Local government senior
leaders| ■ Professional analysis of neighbourhoods,
parishes, local, regional, and national trends| Senior leaders in local government from placebased, people-based, and
executive roles
Community-centred partners that have [needs] and can connect with those in [need] and those who can provide support
Local community
emergency response groups| ■ Local experience, legitimacy, continuity
■ Present before/during/after an incident| Community Emergency Response Teams; Flood Wardens
National, local, and hyperlocal community groups| ■ Volunteers providing capacity
■ Network of local experience, legitimacy,
continuity
■ Trusted relationships with hardly-reached| Infrastructure organisations; Organised community volunteering groups (CVC); Organised and uniformed youth groups
Local providers of critical services and its infrastructure| ■ Access to hardly-reached groups
■ Data and knowledge
■ Reputation and legitimacy| Utilities; Community and Voluntary Services (CVS); national charities; faith networks; counselling services; local food banks
Community groups with
a low profile but can reach
those in [need]| ■ Connects with some of the most in [need] in society
■ Provides capacity| Hyper-local charities; hardly-reached, farming, homeless, and migrant communities
Community groups with a
high profile in supportingthose in [need]| ■ Local lobbying, influence, and changing
minds| Lobby groups; vaccine hesitancy groups; National Flood Forum; Strategic Migration Partnerships
Businesses that have [needs] and can provide support
Business networks| ■ Resources and local networks
■ Organised volunteers| Business networks (e.g. BiTC, Business Continuity Institute); Chamber of Commerce; Business Improvement Districts
Retail sector| ■ Connections, infrastructure
■ Trusted partners| Supermarkets; charity shops
Specialist advisors that have information of value to Local Resilience Capability
Expert advisors|  ■ Knowledge and networks
■ Trusted advisors| Directors of Public Health; consultants in flood defence, crowd dynamics
National groups supporting
societal resilience|  ■ Knowledge and networks
■ Learning opportunities and good practices| Communities Prepared National Group (CPNG); National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+] (NCSR+)
Influencers|  ■ Strong local voice to amplify messages to
their followers| Local personalities

The Societal Resilience Working Group has commissioned a light-touch review of societal resilience activity using the National Resilience Standard #5 on Community Resilience (Cabinet Office, 2020) which will:

• Baseline the current performance of Local Resilience Capability by reviewing information on:
  o the community risk register to identify known risks and vulnerabilities, and existing preparedness, response, resilience (and resource gaps)
  o the contributions of partners to societal resilience, their effectiveness, and available resources (including local government, voluntary sector, etc)
  o current/planned activities to determine executive and community alignment on societal resilience
  o planning assumptions made on preparedness and response behaviours e.g. Flood Warning Service sign up
  o learning from recent experiences of local response and recovery; exercises and training
  o the evaluation provided in the NCSR+ baseline survey
  o performance against standards and frameworks

• Identify what the future Local Resilience Capability may include by considering:
  o what risks we want people to be resilient to
  o appetite for resilience in leaders, elected members and other strategic partnerships
  o mandates for resilience in partners’ different statutory roles and legislations
  o boundary spanning roles and the capabilities required for those roles
  o philosophy of what capabilities to build into a Local Resilience Capability
  o shared objectives and desired outcomes
  o training and skills gaps

nitial thoughts from the SRWG are that we want to support the provision the following: of training package, videos, leaflets, website, in-person mentoring, live exercise, and tabletop exercises, guidance, resources, communications, equipment for societal resilience.
These provisions can cover topics such as: how to prepare your home for disruption; setting up your community resilience group; how your business can access different types of support during a disruption; voluntary sector working with resilience partnership;
elected members’ roles in a disruption; coordinating donations; spontaneous volunteering; cleaning up your community.

STEP 3: Agree the business case for Local Resilience Capability

What does this step involve?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Produce a scope of work for its societal resilience activity, including:
  o the ambition for Local Resilience Capability
  o high priority groups for Local Resilience Capability
  o the aims and objectives to operationalise societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability that resilience partnership can activate

• Identify the investment required (e.g. effort, knowledge, money), the timing to achieve these aims and objectives and justify the cost/benefit of that investment including the value for money in a business case, and performance criteria (e.g. outcomes/ benefits to achieve)

• Secure support for this work – by the business case passing through the resilience partnership’s approval procedure and engaging with funding opportunities

• Identify where different business cases are needed to justify action by individual partners

Why is this step important?

• To agree what is involved to operationalise societal resilience as a Local Resilience Capability
• To strengthen support for Local Resilience Capability
• To estimate and justify the initial/ongoing investment

How do we deliver this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should facilitate partners, collaborators, and representatives of society to:

• Consult on the scope of work, including: the ambition; aims and objectives; priority groups; cost/benefit including the value for money; timing
• Write a business case
• Gain approval for the business case

What advanced practices are there for this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Identify the cost/benefit of continued local investment and the type/scale/timing of investment required, including to expand and sustain the Local Resilience Capability
• Once Local Resilience Capability is up-and-running, identify the actual value it delivers, including the value for money, and compare that to the expected value described in the business case

What questions should be considered to progress this step?
Workshop questions to answer, include:

• What is the expected benefit of achieving the ambition?
• What resource, investment, commitment is required?

Case study for Step 3
Aims and objectives
By delivering our aims and objectives, our resilience partnership will improve performance on societal resilience to:

1. Prioritise support to those in society who are most in [need] in disruptions and those who maintain local business stheir infrastructure
   To achieve this, Local Resilience Capability will enable our resilience partnership to:

2. Support society to self-determine their future resilience to disruption (self-help)

3. Activate those in society who can help themselves or help others

4. Reduce demand to prioritise resources onto those most in [need]

5. Reduce risk and vulnerability to disruption

Local Resilience Capability will enableour resilience partnership to| This will help our resilience partnership to
---|---
Prioritise support to those in society who are most in [need] during disruptions| 1. Identify the changing [needs] of different people/places using local intelligence (e.g. residents, businesses, and those most in [need])
2. Challenge planning assumptions about who in society is in most [need] (e.g. likely behaviours)
3. Ensure continuity of essential business services for those most in [need] (e.g. healthcare, food supply) and of local essential infrastructure (e.g. utilities, transport, communication, flood defences)
4. Best deploy usual and surge capacity of volunteers, resources, specialists to those who are most in [need]
Support society to self-determine their future resilience to disruption (self- help)| 1. Increase local influence on mitigation, preparedness, response, recovery (e.g. place-based leaders, stakeholders, influencers)
2. Provide information to society so they can self-help in the right ways for chronic stresses and acute shocks
3. Enable representatives of society to co-produce local resilience by participating in planning, strategy, training, exercising and learning, including business continuity
Activate those in society who can help themselves or help others| 1. Increase self-reliance and self-help of priority groups
2. Increase the coverage of those that help each other (with or without resilience partnership support)
3. Focus strategic collaborations onto shared activity
4. Improve continuity plans in priority groups
5. Support and resource the provision of local mutual aid for priority groups and business continuity
6. Make volunteer onsite response quicker and safer (medical help, rescue,
Reduce demand to prioritise resources onto those most in [need]| 1. Increase preparedness and self-determination based on [need] (e.g. determine how to measure/quantify local resilience)
2. Integrate better information about [needs] from priority groups into emergency plans
3. Manage expectations of society on resilience partnership’s ability to meet all their demands without their support
4. Demonstrate value for money of reducing demand (e.g. the quantitative and qualitative assessment of the impact of investment in prevention and preparedness, including how has lessened the financial impact of disruption)
Reduce risk and vulnerability| 1. Better understand local risk and pinpoint vulnerability from different perspectives
2. Prioritise activities to reduce risk and vulnerability
3. Risk assessment for safer tasking (including accountability and liability)

Identified high priority groups
We have identified the location, characteristics, and partners that can connect with ten priority groups – three of which are highpriority for immediate effort based on the community risk register:

• a co-located community at risk of localised flooding (named “Flood V”)
• a co-located concentration of vulnerable residents and care homes near industrial site (named “Caravan site 1”)
• a dispersed collection of hardly-reached people who shared a characteristic (named “Community K”)

The [needs] of these priority groups inform initial design of the Local Resilience Capability.
Timing and commitment
Creating a Local Resilience Capability takes time and ongoing commitment. The Societal Resilience Working Group has a clear scope of funded work to prove Local Resilience Capability in the initial year. There is also a plan to expand Local Resilience Capability in subsequent years to different parts of society and follow on funding bids will support that endeavour. Sustaining the continuing development of the Local Resilience Capability is critical longer term as circumstances evolve and the [needs] of different people/
places change.

STEP 4: Co-produce activities to deliver Local Resilience Capability

What does this step involve?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should agree and document the:

• Vision for societal resilience (based on the shared ambition)
• Aims and objectives to deliver this vision
• Justification for why achieving these aims and objectives is important
• Principles for how the aims and objectives are achieved
• Opportunities and risks
• Pace to implement Local Resilience Capability

Why is this step important?

• To document agreements that form the basis for Local Resilience Capability
• To align the co-produced activities to the business case that has been approved
• To document how time, resources, and funding will be invested
• To ready partners for implementation by aligning on the co-produced activities

How do we deliver this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should facilitate partners, collaborators, and representatives of society to:

• Co-design the aims for Local Resilience Capability

• Consider how to deliver the aims through achieving the six objectives of:
  1. Determine current performance
  2. Determine gaps and where more work is required to enhance performance
  3. Form meaningful collaborations to enhance performance
  4. Design intervention to enhance performance
  5. Implement intervention to enhance performance
  6. Determine how local intelligence is acquired and used to enhance performance

• Consider opportunities and risks, including:
  o the location and type of [need] o the location and type of support available to those in [need]

What advanced practices are there for this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Review the vision, aims, and objectives to ensure they continue to provide direction to our ambition and activity to deliver the objectives
• Review other resilience partnership’s work on societal resilience
• Monitor delivery of the co-produced activities and review their content

What questions should be considered to progress this step?
Workshop questions to answer, include:

• What is the priority for action to deliver the ambition?

Case study for Step 4
Following our shared ambition, our resilience partnership’s vision for societal resilience is:
To create a Local Resilience Capability that will enhance our approach to societal resilience, so that our individuals, groups, organisations, and networks can all play a meaningful part in building the resilience of our society.
To deliver this vision, our three aims focus on enabling society to support those priority groups that are in [need]:

• To help priority groups self-determine their own resilience – because self-determination encourages self-help and is at the core of co-production
• To enhance local preparedness for disruption of priority groups – because better preparedness will lower demand, reduce diversity of [need], and pre-position support available for priority groups
• To reduce local risk and vulnerability of priority groups – because reducing risk and vulnerability will allow Local Resilience Capability to focus on priority groups that are most in [need]

To deliver these aims, our objectives map onto the six numbered objectives stated above:

| To help priority groups to tself-determine their own resilience| To enhance preparedness for disruption of priority
groups| To reduce the risk and vulnerability of priority
groups
---|---|---|---
1. Determine currentperformance| Identify priority groups by mapping the people, places, services, infrastructure that have least knowledge and strength to self-determine their own resilience to disruption| Identify priority groups by mapping the people, places services, infrastructure that are least prepared for disruption| Identify priority groups by mapping the people, places, services, infrastructure that are most at-risk or vulnerable to disruption
2. Determine gaps and where more work is required to enhance performance| Accumulate feedback to determine location/type of gaps in self-determination of priority groups| Accumulate feedback to determine location/type of gaps on preparedness of
priority groups| Accumulate feedback to determine location/type of gaps on understanding of risks and vulnerability of priority groups
3. Form meaningful collaborations to enhance performance| Involve existing/new collaborators that enhance knowledge and strength of priority groups to selfdetermine| Involve existing/new collaborators that enhance preparedness of priority groups| Involve existing/new collaborators that work to reduce risk and vulnerability of
priority groups (e.g. partners involved in place-shaping, health, economy, parishes)
4. Design intervention to enhance performance| Design complementary activities to enhance knowledge and strength of priority groups to selfdetermine (e.g.
information, training)| Design complementary activities to enhance the preparedness of priority
groups (e.g. wider roll-outs, exercising)| Design complementary activities to reduce risk or vulnerability of priority groups
5. Implement intervention to enhance performance| Project manage interventions and monitor change in selfdetermination of priority groups, gaining feedback to inform value for money arguments for
future expansion| Project manage interventions and monitor change in the preparedness of priority groups, gaining feedback to inform value for money arguments for future expansion| Project manage interventions and monitor change in risk or vulnerability of priority groups, gaining feedback to inform value for money arguments
for future expansion
6. Determine how local intelligence is acquired and used to enhance performance| Improve how local intelligence is acquired and used to
identify changing patterns of self-determination of priority groups| Improve how local intelligence is acquired and used to identify preparedness of priority groups| Improve how local intelligence is acquired and used to identify changes in risk and vulnerability of priority groups

Our principles when delivering our aims and objectives are:

Co-design a realistic scope of work
Can be delivered within resources| Because we wish to focus on priority groups, start one-at-a-time, and no try to focus on everybody, everywhere
Involves emergency and non-emergency partners| Because societal resilience is not only an emergency planning activity
Builds a capability that is connected to, and owned
by, local society| Because co-design and local connection is central to sustainability of strategic, long-term activity
Listen to the [needs] of, and support available to,different people, places, services, infrastructure| BecBecause the aim is to meet the [needs] of priority groups and maximise
coverageause the aim is to meet the [needs] of priority groups and maximise
Prioritise parts of society that are most in [need] or can provide support
Prioritise groups that are most in [need] (e.g.
geographic, types of [need], sectoral)| Because, while whole-of-society resilience may be the ambition, whole-ofsociety
does not focus effort consistently
Societal resilience requires partner involvement in priority groups| Because only working at arms-length will not bring about the change required
Start with the [needs] of priority groups| Because priority groups are those who are not able to self-determine their
resilience, are unprepared, unaware, vulnerable, at-risk
Understand [need]| Because this is (bottom-up) what Local Resilience Capability will address
Free resilience partnerships to focus on those most in [need]| Because this is where most suffering may occur
Start simple by working on high-priority objectives and priority groups
Identify one priority group where it may be easier to start| Because we wish to build some momentum, learn from that, and create spill over – and not all priority groups start from the same point with equal capacities
Roll-out learning to another priority group and continue to build iteratively| Because it is not a single creation from the outset
Focus on coverage, not size| Because Local Resilience Capability should be scaled to [need] – so not as
big as it can be

Our opportunities and risks of providing Local Resilience Capability are:

Businesses and
organisations| Access new [needs] from: VCSE; SMEs; essential business services| Don’t see value in building resilience to emergencies
Coordinate those who make support available to those in [need]:
Volunteers| Organised voluntary sector, spontaneous offers of help, individuals, businesses| Insufficient activity to keep them interested causing reputational damage
Donations managers| Financial and physical contributions from individuals
and businesses| Coordination does not have the desired impact
Individuals and community groups| Integrate into resilience partnership: pop- up resilience groups; emerging/existing resilience groups; non-emergency community groups| Legitimised by Local Resilience Capability but unwilling to support coordinated effort by integrating into the resilience
partnership
Local leaders and politicians| Neighbourhood, parish, local, regional
Communications specialists| Warning/informing, outreach

STEP 5: Develop instrumental collaborations for Local Resilience

Capability

What does this step involve?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Assess whether collaborations to build societal resilience before, during, and after a disruption are instrumental – in that they use resource efficiently and effectively to have the expected value in priority groups
• Gradually expand the range of instrumental collaborations to support resilience-building activities in priority groups

Why is this step important?

• To focus effort on instrumental collaborations that deliver important activities that have the expected value for priority groups
• To reset or replace collaborations that are not instrumental
• To ensure that work for each priority group is progressed by at least one meaningful collaboration

How do we deliver this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should facilitate partners, collaborators, and representatives of society to:

• Identify potential collaborators to enhance the resilience of each priority group
• Explore which partners are best placed to form an instrumental collaboration
• Agree the terms of a collaboration based on working towards shared objectives for the priority group
• Monitor the delivery of objectives to determine if collaborations are instrumental for their priority groups
• Prioritise collaboration gaps in delivering objectives and supporting priority groups

What advanced practices are there for this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Review the performance of instrumental collaborations
• Work to make instrumental collaborations even more efficient, effective, and impactful
• Expand the range of collaborations and make them instrumental for priority groups

What questions should be considered to progress this step?
Workshop questions to answer, include:

• With which partners do we have instrumental collaborations?
  What do these partners contribute?

• With which partners should we reset/replace the collaboration?
  What should these partners contribute?

Case study for Step 5
The Societal Resilience Working Group has:

• Developed instrumental collaborations, one-at-a-time based on prioritised objectives and priority groups

• Established instrumental collaborations to deliver every high-priority objective among our co-produced activities for 95% of high priority groups as determined from the community risk register

• Established collaborations that simultaneously support several objectives/priority groups, while others only support one objective/priority group

• This means that we have different collaborations to enhance societal resilience in different phases of disaster management:
  o before a disruption (e.g. preparedness training)
  o during a disruption (e.g. capturing intelligence from the ground)
  o after a disruption (e.g. supporting the community recovery effort)

• Begun work to monitor whether collaborations are instrumental

We will nurture collaborations that are not yet instrumental, but we will quickly stop collaborations that are not delivering their expected value.
As an update on delivering the actions to develop instrumental collaborations, our Societal Resilience Working Group has:

Identify potential collaborators to enhance the resilience of each priority group| For each priority group, we have identified organisations that:
■ Understand the priority group, can represent their perspective, have access to them, and are trusted by them
■ Already work with the priority group to enhance their resilience
■ Have statutory obligations or are subject to legislation to work with the priority group
■ Want to collaborate with Local Resilience Capability to deliver their own activities with that priority group
Explore which partners are best placed to form an instrumental collaboration| For each organisation, we have determined those that:
■ Share our priorities for societal resilience
■ Have resources with which to collaborate
■ Own community assets for societal resilience
■ Have a track record of successful working to enhance societal resilience
■ Have a track record of successful collaboration
Agree the terms of collaboration based on working towards shared objectives for the priority group| For each collaboration, we have agreed terms based on:
■ Overlap in the objectives we all want to achieve
■ Agreed expectations of all partners (e.g. timescales, success measures, investment)
■ Clear expectations of performance gains from collaborating
Monitor the delivery of objectives to determine if collaborations are instrumental for their priority groups| For each collaboration, we monitor delivery based on:
■ Project plans to deliver each objective
■ Clear criteria to manage expectations and assess value
■ Performance monitoring data on impact on priority group
Prioritise collaboration gaps in delivering objectives and supporting priority groups| We prioritise gaps in instrumental collaborations based on:
■ Cost/benefit in delivering objectives
■ Cost/benefit in supporting priority groups

Manage Local Resilience Capability

What does this step involve?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Create simple systems to manage Local Resilience Capability

Why is this step important?

• To provide helpful governance and assurance of Local Resilience Capability
• To ensure the system of Local Resilience Capability stays simple
• To monitor feedback on Local Resilience Capability and ensure deviations are resolved
• To ensure that leadership (Step 1), funding (Step 2), strategy (Step 3), intelligence via partners (Step 4) and delivery (Step 6) evolve to meet new [needs]

How do we deliver this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should facilitate partners, collaborators, and representatives of society to:

• Design and implement five simple systems to deliver Local
  Resilience Capability which balance:
  o strategy and leadership
  o intelligence gathering and analysis
  o management processes
  o coordination of society through two-way communication
  o delivery of support to those in [need]

• Monitor these systems and adjust activity to ensure Local
  Resilience Capability meets changing [needs]

What advanced practices are there for this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Review management systems to ensure they stay simple
• Review and adjust the management systems to align with performance feedback, peer reviews, and effective scrutiny

What questions should be considered to progress this step?
Workshop questions to answer, include:

• What systems are required to run Local Resilience Capability?
• How do we develop those systems?

Case study for Step 6
Our management system for Local Resilience Capability has been scaled to available resources. It involves the five straightforward systems of:

• Strategy and leadership
• Intelligence gathering and analysis
• Management processes
• Coordination of society through two-way communication
• Deliver support to those in [need] More details of these systems include:

Strategy and leadership
Through Steps 2, 3, and 4, the Societal Resilience Working Group has:

• Strategic oversight from the resilience partnership
• A strategic champion and a tactical lead
• An approved and resourced activity plan for societal resilience

Intelligence gathering and analysis
Through Step 5, the Societal Resilience Working Group has:

• Partners and access to provide information to:
  o understand unmet, emerging, and new [needs] o understand levels of resilience generally and in priority groups (e.g. sign-ups, surveys, behaviour research)
  o evaluate the state of Local Resilience Capability for surge and resilience activities

• A route to respond to information requests from our resilience partnership and provide information from Local Resilience Capability

Management processes
The Societal Resilience Working Group has:

• Reporting structures and governance arrangements (e.g. accountability, liability of volunteers)

• Updated the resilience partnership’s emergency management plans to activate and integrate Local Resilience Capability surge into tactical work during emergencies, for example:
  o communications [warning/informing, outreach] o volunteers [organised, spontaneous, individuals, businesses] o organisational support [VCSE, businesses] o involving community groups [new, existing] o managing donations [financial/physical from individuals/businesses] o behaviours for resilience [training, exercising]

• A system to monitor and enhance Local Resilience Capability delivery (e.g. planning operations, resource management, learning from feedback from incidents/exercises/training/reviews)

Deliver support to those in [need]
Through Step 7, the Societal Resilience Working Group has systems to deliver support to those in [need].

Deliver value to society through Local Resilience Capability

What does this step involve?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Have a variety of modular responses from Local Resilience Capability that deliver value to priority groups before, during, and after a disruption
• Have Local Resilience Capability modules that can be activated by the resilience partnership during disruption
• Have an activation protocol for Local Resilience Capability

Why is this step important?

• By focusing on value to society, Local Resilience Capability focuses on priority groups and their [needs]
• A variety of modular responses from Local Resilience Capability is required address the variety of priority groups and their [needs]
• Activation protocols will integrate modular responses with the resilience partnership

How do we deliver this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should facilitate partners, collaborators, and representatives of society to:

• Refine understanding demand/supply of type/scale of support  from Local Resilience Capability – and the difference in demand versus existing supply
• Develop modules to reduce demand and increase supply
• Plan to activate Local Resilience Capability before and during a disruption

What advanced practices are there for this step?

The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Identify how demand and supply of support can be better balanced
• Have a refined understanding of diverse needs and the likely demand under different scenarios

What questions should be considered to progress this step?
Workshop questions to answer, include:

• Who should be involved in delivering Local Resilience Capability?
• How do we evaluate the value from Local Resilience Capability?

Case study for Step 7
The Societal Resilience Working Group has:
Refined understanding of the priority groups and their type/scale of [needs] The Societal Resilience Working Group has:

• Identified priority groups based on risk, vulnerability, preparedness, awareness, agency to self-determine their future resilience
• Researched their type and scale of [needs]:

Priority group| Rationale for being a priority group| Type of [needs] for Local Resilience Capability| Scale of [needs] for Local Resilience Capability
---|---|---|---
Flood V| Flood risk|  ■ Prepare properties
■ Clean-up| 2,000 households
Caravan site 1| Concentration of vulnerable residents and care homes near industrial site|  ■ Prepare grab bags
■ Warning and informing
■ Evacuation support
■ Welfare| 500 medically vulnerable people
Community K| Concentration of hardly-reached people|  ■ Awareness raising
■ Information provision| 450 socially vulnerable people

Developed modules for Local Resilience Capability
We have locally-determined and sourced the following modular responses based on expected demand and supply:

materials
Voluntary and business sector working with resilience partnership| Live exercise, guidance
Spontaneous volunteering| Process, resources, website, communications
How to prepare your home for disruption| Training package, website, videos, leaflets
Setting up your community resilience group| Training package, website, videos, leaflets, in-person mentoring
How your organisation can access different types of support during a disruption| Training package, website, videos, leaflets
Elected members’ roles in a disruption| Table-top exercise, video, website
Coordinating donations| Process, resources, training, communications
Cleaning up your community| Process, equipment, guidance

Plan to activate Local Resilience Capability before a disruption
The Societal Resilience Working Group has worked to:

• Reduce demand for support during disruptions in priority groups (e.g. engage, raise awareness)

•  Create capacity to supply support (i.e. recruit and train communities/volunteers)
  Plan to activate Local Resilience Capability during a disruption
  The Societal Resilience Working Group has:

• Developed, tested, and exercised an activation protocol for each modular response to test operational plans

• Used the intelligence system (in Step 5) to understand when/what modular response should be activated by the resilience partnership

Assess system feedback to continually improve the Local Resilience

Capability

What does this step involve?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Monitor the internal readiness of the resilience partnership to activate the Local Resilience Capability
• Assess the external impact of Local Resilience Capability on societal resilience by reducing [need] in priority groups

Why is this step important?

• To ensure the resilience partnership is aware of its own level of internal readiness
• To ensure the effort devoted to Local Resilience Capability has the expected external impact
• To identify the improvements needed and evidence achievements including in relation to value for money
• To assess the impact of pilot capabilities to evidence the value to grow the Local Resilience Capability and sustain it longer-term

How do we deliver this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Design and apply Evaluation Methodology 1 to assess internal readiness
• Design and apply Evaluation Methodology 2 to monitor the value of Local Resilience Capability modules to addressing the changing [need] of priority groups
• Collect qualitative and quantitative evidence from the resilience partnership and society to inform Evaluation Methodologies 1 and 2

What advanced practices are there for this step?
The Societal Resilience Working Group should:

• Evidence trends of internal readiness and external impact
• Understand conditions that strengthen/undermine internal readiness and external impact
• Have an effective system to identify and embed learning to improve performance
• Commission a peer review of the internal readiness, external impact, and the evaluation methodologies
• Review the ambition for Local Resilience Capability to identify growth opportunities including the need for a new business case

What questions should be considered to progress this step?
Workshop questions to answer, include:

• What internal factors are needed to activate the Local Resilience Capability?
• What evidence shows that societal resilience is being strengthened?
• What information is available, and what needs to be collected, to inform the methodologies?

Case study for Step 8
Refined understanding of the priority groups and their type/scale of [needs] Our Societal Resilience Working Group has:

• Assessed its internal progress on:
  o the readiness/capacity of our resilience partnership to activate the Local Resilience Capability
  o achieving aims/objectives
  o success indicators from the business case including value for money
  o effectiveness of instrumental collaborations

• Assessed external impact on:
  o how effective the modular responses are to addressing [needs]

• Adjusted internal procedures and modules using learning from activations, exercises, peer review, etc

•  Refined expectations of Local Resilience Capability (e.g. speed/weight of response, readiness, asks)
  Assessing the external impact on priority groups is behind schedule as our methodology is under development.
  Our initial method to self-assess the performance of Local Resilience Capability evaluates delivery of Steps 1-8. To illustrate our method we include one example of our approach (where assessments in the red zone indicate lower than desirable performance):

For more information about this document contact:
Professor Duncan Shaw
Co-Chair National Consortium for Societal Resilience [UK+] Alliance Manchester Business School,
University of Manchester
duncan.shaw-2@manchester.ac.uk

Read User Manual Online (PDF format)

Read User Manual Online (PDF format)  >>

Download This Manual (PDF format)

Download this manual  >>