Communicating with the public before, during and after major emergencies: The UK's Ten-Step Cycle

The UK Government introduced the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 with the express aim of ensuring that the country would be prepared to respond to, and recover from, all future major emergencies. One element of the legislation is the duty for Communicating with the Public, which was designed to provide a framework in which the responding agencies could promote and foster resilient communities, through all stages of the disaster cycle, by providing timely and appropriate warnings and information. To support that work, a new piece of informal guidance, the 'Ten-Step Cycle', was published in June 2007 by the Civil Contingencies Secretariat, in conjunction with the National Steering Committee for Warning and Informing the Public. Designed to provide responding agencies with a 'route map' to help implement the duty of communicating with the public, this paper will give readers an insight into how this new initiative works, explaining the steps that local resilience forums need to take.