An Emergency Planning Profession?

Professor David Alexander of University College London (UCL) is the doyen of disaster studies in the UK.  His books and papers are perceptive and insightful.  This week he wrote a piece for the Guardian in which he asks the question “Britain is in a state of emergency.  So where are its emergency planners”?  He makes the case for involving experienced planners as part of the national level response and in doing so he provides an observation on emergency planning that will resurface many times in the future (indeed it could form the basis of many an undergraduate essay title):

“Emergency Planning isn’t rocket science, but it’s distinctly challenging on many levels, involving intellectual, scientific and practical decisions. Wherever an event can be foreseen, the plans should be based on a range of scenarios. Planning scenarios aren’t predictions of the future but rather systematic explorations of hypothetical situations, answering the question: “What if…?” (Guardian Tue 5^th May 2020).

It is rare for an article on emergency planning to generate as much interest as this one did.  It is after all a fairly rarified arena and its practitioners tend to be a close knit group who rejoice in their knowledge of their arcane trade.  A friend once described emergency planners as having an outlook which is a cross between that possessed by ARP Wardens and that of train spotters.  Possibly he was just referring to me as I was an emergency planner at the time, but it would be fair to say that emergency planners are a dedicated and specialist group whose work mostly goes unnoticed.  Being unnoticed often means being unappreciated and this is perhaps demonstrated by the cuts made to the ranks of planners during the austerity spree of the last decade.

The modern world of emergency planning is a changing one, gone are the train spotting wardens.  When I first joined the Institute of Civil Defence (as it then was) most planners were either ex-military personnel or retired (and sometimes serving) members of the emergency services.  These groups are still to be found in large numbers but there are many more individuals who hold specialist degrees in related subjects and forge a career that is marked by a requirement for CPD and a willingness to step away from abstract planning into the world of emergency management itself.  It is no wonder that the Emergency Planning Society has this week formally called upon the government to use the skills to be found  in the ranks of its members.  I have not seen a response but if one appears I am sure that it will be sincerely appreciative of all the work being done at a local level whilst finding it impossible to admit that the government has done anything other than excel in its own planning.

There is, however, a problem.  I am not sure what an ‘emergency planner’ is.  Is it the same as a ‘contingency planner’, or a resilience planner’, or a civil protection officer or an ‘emergency manager’, or a ‘business continuity specialist’?  The words in these titles mean different things but I have seen these labels used interchangeably in organisations across the UK for groups of employees whose job descriptions are very similar.  Where there is a distinction it is often one that is self assigned.  Some business continuity specialists seem to believe that their role extends to managing the crisis itself while some emergency managers would say that their task is only to provide advice to decision makers.  We have an Institute of Civil Protection and Emergency Management and a Civil Contingencies Secretariat.  An Emergency Planning Society and a Business Continuity Institute.  A Resilience Association and an Emergency Planning College.  Such a confused nomenclature creates a barrier to the establishment of a proper emergency (inset chosen description…) profession.  Only in the Health sector does this seem to have been (almost) resolved.  Titles matter as much as job descriptions. 

A post pandemic review would be a good time to sort this out.  Emergency planning should be done by Emergency Planners (who may contribute to building resilient organisations etc etc).  These individuals need to be properly trained and recognised for their skills and knowledge. Eventually they should be part of a chartered or registered profession.  Part of their training and their job description should make it clear what their role is in ‘wartime’.  They need to have the authority to give unwelcome advice to senior members of their organisations and for that advice to be recorded and, wherever possible, be available to the general public.

This might not seem like a big issue, but it is reflective of a wider matrix of problems in the world of emergency preparedness. There is too much in the way of fuzziness and confusion.  There is a willingness to muddle through and to see muddling through as an acceptable policy.  Everybody doing their best is not enough.  There needs to be a real structure, a proper national system, a framework for meaningful risk assessments and an acknowledgement that planning for emergencies is a form of investment in the future.  Modern Emergency Planners are a professional bunch – we should now create a profession in which they can operate.  Hopefully this will mean that Professor Alexander’s question will never again need to be asked.

Philip Trendall

7^th May 2020

admin@scott-trendall.co.uk

Note:  The views expressed in this blog are those of the author and do not purport to represent the views of any client of Scott Trendall Ltd.