Emergency services planning protocol
Essex covers an area of 1,400 square miles and a population of over 1.8 million. It is one of the fifth most populated counties in England.
The housing needs of Essex are anticipated to increase with the county's growing population. It is projected that by 2040, 187,331 more homes will be needed for the predicted additional 447,907 people who will be living in Essex.
Emergency services, local authorities, developers, and infrastructure providers will work together to deliver safe, secure, and sustainable developments.
Together, we have created this protocol with the following goals and commitments. These are our objectives.
Working together
Essex Police is the largest non-metropolitan police force in the UK. We have more than six thousand police officers, staff, and volunteers. We work together to help people, keep people safe and catch criminals.
We receive more than 1,000 999 calls every day from people in Essex, needing our help.
We focus on supporting victims of crime and tackling violence in all its forms. We support vulnerable people across Essex and work hard to be visible to our communities.
We are committed to working with other emergency services, local authorities, planning teams and developers to make sure we provide the best service for our communities.
We provide a 24 hour, 365 days a year emergency and urgent care ambulance service. From life-threatening conditions and illnesses, through to minor injuries. We help people across six counties, including Essex.
Every year, we receive over 1.3 million 999 calls from people who need our help. And we care for over half a million unwell people too.
We are committed to working with our emergency service partners and developers to ensure we can get to those who need our help as quickly as possible.
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We are one of the largest fire and rescue services in the country. We provide prevention, protection, and emergency response services from 50 fire stations across Essex.
Our priority is to protect businesses, people, the local economy and the environment from fire and wider community-related risks.
We are committed to working with developers, building control professionals, building owners, businesses and planning teams to identify and reduce risk.
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Our goals
- Work with those involved in the planning of a development to ensure a safe environment. This includes reducing the fear of crime, fires and accidents that need an emergency response.
- Make sure the correct infrastructure is in place for when an emergency response is needed.
- Utilise existing legislation and agreements to meet the potential emergency service needs of the community.
Existing planning agreements include:
• Planning Performance Agreements (PPAs),
• Community Infrastructure Levy’s (CILs),
• Section 106 agreements.Section 106 agreements are legal agreements between local authorities and developers. They relate to planning permissions and are also known as planning obligations. The obligations can vary and often depend on the size and nature of the development proposed.
The purpose of the agreement is to reduce the impact of the development on the local community. This could include improvements to infrastructure and local services.
Our commitments
1. Safety and prevention
Engage with developers and local planning authorities to allow early identification and resolution of key issues.
We commit to supporting developers and local planning authorities with information and guidance on relevant building legislation for the safety and prevention of crime, fire, and other emergency incidents.
By incorporating prevention measures into infrastructure design at the earliest possible planning stage we can provide a built environment which is safer, more secure, and healthier for its community.
We believe that through supporting the integration of risk prevention measures within the design and layout of buildings, and associated infrastructure, developers will realise efficiency savings, attract new residents and business engagement.
Early coordination between emergency services and developers with the introduction of safety and preventative measures will enable the co-ordinated integration of community engagement teams.
2. Education and communication
Engage with developers and local planning authorities to raise awareness of emergency service requirements in infrastructure developments. Providing education for future generations to embed these practices into their work.
We commit to involve developers and local planning authorities in understanding the needs of the emergency services. Providing increased opportunities for engagement through briefing, educational courses, and emergency services advice.
High quality and consistent advice will be provided from each emergency service, with guidance on national and local policies to ensure safety and prevention measures are considered during the submission of a formal planning application.
Developers will be able to engage positively and directly with key officers from each emergency service via a dedicated email address.
3. Response
Engage with developers and local planning authorities to create building and infrastructure design that supports each emergency service achieve national response standard.
We commit to working with developers and local planning authorities to ensure new infrastructure and building developments are suitably designed to enable an efficient and effective emergency response.
Increase our collaborative work with developers to improve sharing of changes to the built environment allowing emergency services to assess the risks to properly resource their response.
Incorporation of emergency service response requirements in infrastructure design.