Resilience and Emergencies National Occupational Standards launched

A new set of National Occupational Standards (NOS) for Resilience and Emergencies have been published by standard setting organisation The Workforce Development Trust, as an initiative of the UK’s Cabinet Office.

NOS are definitions of the core and transferable skills utilised by employers and qualifications bodies to support competency and capacity building in a range of different areas.

Aligned with the launch of the UK Resilience Academy (UKRA), the NOS for Resilience and Emergencies have been developed to strengthen organisational and societal resilience to known and unknown threats, such as climate change or a COVID-19-style pandemic for example, and enable business, government and civil society to better withstand and quickly recover from a crisis.

Experts in resilience and emergency planning and preparedness from across central and local government, civil society, the NHS and operators of key strategic infrastructure led the project to design the NOS. Now published, it is intended that the NOS for Resilience and Emergencies will guide recruitment, training and skills needs analysis and performance management activities in organisations with statutory and non-statutory responsibilities for emergency planning and disaster preparedness.

Alex Stafford is North Somerset Council’s Emergency and Business Continuity Manager and is responsible for co-ordinating the local authority’s resilience, emergency preparedness and response via the Avon & Somerset local resilience forum. He comments:

“The Resilience and Emergencies NOS will help to strengthen skills and workforce development and support the standardisation of local authority approaches when responding to major incidents.

“NOS ensure that category one and two responders receive the same standard of training as those in local authorities, ensuring a common language and approach to what skills and knowledge professionals need in order to support the work of the individual agencies and local resilience forum.

“In practice this means that wherever you are in the country, if you’re affected by a major incident, whether that’s a flood, fire or industrial accident you’ll effectively get the same response regardless of local authority area.

“The NOS will strengthen professionalism across the resilience sector and in turn that’s going to lead to improved standards in terms of training and ultimately lead to greater societal resilience overall.”

Dave Walton is Deputy Chief Fire Officer at West Yorkshire Fire & Rescue Service, Co-Chair of the West Yorkshire Local Resilience Forum and leads on resilience and emergency preparedness for the NFCC. He comments:

“Resilience is vitally important to fire & rescue services because we have to plan and train for emergencies and be able to respond 24/7, 365 days a year.

“What resilience looks like is different for every organisation, however, meaning that the NOS gives everyone a baseline to work from in terms of ensuring emergency response is as effective as it possibly can be.

“The Resilience and Emergencies NOS will therefore be vital for supporting interoperability and intraoperability in fire and rescue and the wider emergency services, providing recognised standards we can all train our staff towards.

“Society presents us with dynamic and complex challenges, some are predictable, some are less so, which is why effective emergency response is an integral part of strengthening our resilience overall.”

Aaron Gracey is Network Rail’s Head of Emergency Management, Route Crime, BTP Liaison and Operational Security. He adds:

“Operational resilience brings together the multiple relevant business disciplines, including business continuity, incident management, emergency exercising, lesson learning and relevant competencies to more effectively and efficiently understand, prepare and protect the organisation for or respond, recover and learn from disruptive events impacting the nation’s railways.

“I am very proud to have been involved in the review of the National Occupational Standards. They will help influence this change, supporting the development of standardised operational resilience capabilities and delivery, supporting the overall strengthening of UK Operational Resilience, to which Network Rail is a key contributor.”

Hamish Cormack, Head of UK Resilience Academy, comments:

“NOS provide an employer-led, multi-sector definition of competence, setting the standards which govern and quality assure skills and skills development across the UK.

“The NOS for Resilience and Emergencies are a significant step forward in terms of supporting a UK-wide approach to resilience and emergency preparedness, providing the foundations for building skills capacity across our nations and regions to mitigate the risks posed by a range of disruptive challenges.”

John Rogers is Chief Executive of The Workforce Development Trust – a charity and standard setting organisation that is responsible for the development and review of the NOS for Resilience and Emergencies. He comments:

“In a complex and uncertain world, it is paramount that society as a collective takes action to strengthen the nation’s resilience to new and emerging threats, protecting the health and security of our communities.

“Strengthening our resilience requires business, government and civil society to work together to develop the shared capabilities and capacity to re-think, re-adjust and re-align in the face of rapid change.

“Skills and skills development are integral to this, and so the NOS for Resilience and Emergencies provide an overarching framework and common language to support employers and qualifications bodies to work in alignment with one another to achieve this goal.”

The NOS for Resilience and Emergencies contain 11 separate standards, which can be used alongside a series of generic NOS supporting areas such as management, project management, governance and IT. Together, the standards are intended to be used for developing skills and knowledge via direct transfer into vocational and other qualifications, as a framework for training programmes and job descriptions and as measures of workplace competence.