About West Mercia Local Resilience Forum
What is a Local Resilience Forum?
The formation of Local Resilience Forums (or LRFs) is designed to help prepare for, respond to, and recover from major emergencies or incidents that may occur across the United Kingdom.
LRFs exist across the entire country and comprise expert partner organisations working together from the public or private sectors within defined regions aligned with police force areas. West Mercia Local Resilience Forum (LRF)’s boundary of responsibility covers 2,486 square miles and has a population of 1.19 million.
How LRF partners work together
The close collaboration of LRF partners is not limited to responding to emergencies, and dealing with the aftermath. It also includes a continuous programme of behind-the-scenes activity in planning, preparation and development of response strategies for potential emergency risks across the three counties.
LRF partners work together to ensure the necessary plans are in place and regularly test and prove the plans to ensure every organisation can respond as quickly and effectively as possible as part of the wider multi-agency partnership response.
LRF activities continually improve the ability of institutions and communities to work together to prevent, deal with, recover and learn and adapt from the disruption to create positive change.
- Connecting organisations, communities and individuals to help protect Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire's future prosperity in relation to the risks it faces.
- Providing a cohesive approach across partner organisations to address issues of resilience.
- Ensuring the most effective use of partners’ combined resources.
- Assessing local risks and their associated impacts.
- Collectively developing capabilities to offer the best possible outcomes in an emergency.
- Communicating the local risks, so people are aware of them and understand what they can do individually, or as part of their business or community to prepare for them.
- Prepare for and address the chronic (long-term) stresses likely to impact the three counties in the future.
Prepare, respond and recover
The West Mercia Local Resilience Forum is a partnership made up of all the organisations needed to prepare for and respond to any major emergency in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.
Agencies that work through the LRF develop, implement and co-ordinate multi-agency responses and action plans focussed on:
- Saving lives
- Relieving suffering
- Protecting property
- Preventing further damage to the environment
- Preventing the impacts of a disaster getting worse
- Restoring normality as quickly as possible
Stay informed
West Mercia Local Resilience Forum aims to inform all persons, communities and businesses on how to prepare themselves for large-scale, major emergencies in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire.
Continually developing
our resilience
The structure of the LRF is in the image below. A 'Strategic' Group sets the overall direction of the LRF and ensure it is aligned to the government’s national approach to resilience.
A ‘Tactical’ Group ensures objectives set at strategic level are implemented at the operational level.
‘Working Groups’ exist to carry out the specific work activities needed to fulfil the strategic direction. For example, the Risk Assessment Working Group assesses risks in Herefordshire, Shropshire and Worcestershire, from which we plan, train, and exercise.
The LRF works collaboratively with a range of other local, regional and national resilience groups, to ensure we take a collective approach to building resilience in our three counties.
A Secretariat Team co-ordinates and manages the daily workings of the LRF.
