Community Resilience

Improve communications with public transport operators to enable them to better plan adjustments to their services and to issue travel warnings.

Work with schools across Calderdale to provide evacuation and invacuation training to support school emergency plans.

Review the resilience and business continuity of essential emergency and community services such as fire, police stations and community facilities, including schools.

Review business continuity plans on a regular basis, ensuring assets and people are protected and able to function in a flood, including emergency duty teams in place for adult and children’s services and children and older people’s homes.

Work with the Integrated Commissioning Board and Commissioning Plan to ensure that statutory and voluntary organisations have actions in existing plans to support vulnerable people during and after flood events.

Hold an annual flood emergency practice day (scoped with partners) in each area throughout Calderdale to practice flood plans.

Work with nurseries across Calderdale to provide evacuation and invacuation training to support nursery emergency plans.

Work with housing providers of vulnerable residents (Registered Providers) across Calderdale to provide evacuation and invacuation training to support emergency plans.

Ongoing regular communication, training, support and sharing of knowledge and experience across networks of flood wardens and flood groups.

Ongoing volunteer recruitment to attract additional flood warden volunteers to the existing groups and continue support and training for new flood wardens.

Maintain a database of volunteers willing to offer support and help in response to flood events and ongoing public education and awareness of flooding.

Ongoing maintenance of community support hub and training and support to volunteers running community hub.

Work with flood groups to produce community flood plans.

Continue to support the development and promotion of Watermark for local flood fundraising.

Work with the Health and Wellbeing Board of Calderdale Metropolitan Borough Council to plan for the effects of future flooding on people's health.

Continue to develop the community led web portal ‘Eye on Calderdale', providing up to date information about flooding and resilience across Calderdale, including review of the current website.

Consult with planners and architects on Calderdale Council’s Local Plan for proposed development sites and the Supplementary Planning Document offering guidance on reducing flood risk at new developments.

Signpost homeowners who are renovating or constructing new property to advice on flood resilience and resistance works to minimise the impact of future floods. This will include information on any financial assistance, when it is available.

The delivery of FloodSave will be to encourage businesses and residents to save monthly for new flood events. Each pound saved is equally matched, savers can access up to £2,000 in flood incidents.

Assess and improve the performance of Environment Agency flood warnings (coverage and triggers) so that people know what to expect earlier and have more time to take effective action.

Investigate improvement of existing flood warning measures by prioritised hydrometry: the network of rain gauges throughout Calderdale, using telemetry, the CCTV network and the Flood Forecasting Centre.

Work with partners, charities and local groups to continue to produce a regular newsletter that showcases the actions on flood recovery and updates on flood resilience, as well as news from partners, charities and community groups.

Provision of skips to support flood clean-ups as and when required.

Link willing shops to the local flood hubs so they can be used in the event of a future flood. Work to ensure coverage is robust and explore the provision of other local amenities.

Target schools at high risk to raise awareness of flooding with students and staff to develop knowledge and skills and keep safe during flooding.

Review delivery of Calderdale Council actions resulting from the Council S19 report (lead local authority requirement following major flood event) on the winter 2015 floods; future S19 reviews will be incorporated into the learning and Council actions resulting from any other Calderdale floods.

Review and communicate how flood recovery grants were allocated in 2015 to 2016. Consider any policy modifications to promote take up.

Issue and delivery of work through business resilience grants to be completed; the Business team also makes links through business advice and practices for flood preparation.

Review initiatives carried out under the Joseph Rowntree Foundation Kindliness initiative locally and nationally, identify best practice and what would support community resilience in flooding.

Completion of Level 2 work of Strategic Flood Risk Assessments, to inform the Local Plan policies and land allocation.

Ongoing updates to key household information for households at risk of flooding, provided on laminated cards and fridge magnets, as and when contact information changes.

Carry out a questionnaire to find out how many properties are still without flood risk insurance cover and promote the Flood Re-insurance scheme to qualifying households.

Establish and implement a communications and marketing plan around preparedness and behaviour change for the three target sectors of owner occupiers, private tenants and private landlords (and letting agents); with a specific focus on improving and updating content for the ‘Eye on Calderdale' website. Messages also required on maintenance, servicing and repair of flood resistance works such as pumps, flood doors, barriers, air vent covers etc.

Develop and maintain a portfolio of case studies from owner occupiers, private landlords and private tenants linking into social media and press releases to communicate key messages around flood resilience, resistance works and behavioural change. Use case studies in comms and marketing campaigns across various channels of the internet, social media, etc.

Agreements being developed with mobile phone companies to enable recruitment of customers to the flood warning system through an opt-out approach.

Work with Google to use Environment Agency data from the Environment Agency flood warning system to enable greater visibility of flood warnings and to alert those at flood risk based on their location. National action.

Help communities at high risk of flash flooding install their own methods of monitoring weather and river conditions and triggering alerting systems.

Support and, where needed, provide training to professional partners, including flood groups, on using social media to raise awareness of the risk of flooding, flood warnings and how to be better prepared for flooding.

Provide more online forecasts, including communicating the probabilities of flooding and flash flooding, measuring river levels and showing forecast river levels up to 36 hours in advance.

Investigate how we can integrate risks from groundwater flooding into our existing flood warning service, and help local councils reach those people at risk of flooding from local sources.

Installation of variable message signing at key decision points across Calderdale's major highway network to warn drivers of closures and incidents.

Explore additional ways to communicate information about roads affected by and impassable due to flood water during incidents, such as real‐time mapping.

Delivery of mental health support, information and advice to improve the health and wellbeing of Todmorden residents.

Development and delivery of mental health support, information and advice to improve health, wellbeing and resilience of Calder Valley residents vulnerable to, or affected by flooding.