#LRFPeople: Ady Grant

Meet Ady Grant, the latest subject in our #LRFPeople campaign that focuses on members of the Lancashire Resilience Forum who work hard to keep the people of the county as safe as possible.

Ady is an Emergency Planning Officer who has worked as part of the Civil Contingencies Unit specialist operations team at Lancashire Constabulary for the past nine years and is a font of knowledge when it comes to planning for, and responding to, a wide range of situations throughout the county.

He said: “My job is to assist the discharging of duties to the police under the Civil Contingencies Act which involves planning for emergencies, writing emergency plans, exercising plans, and taking learning from incidents.

“During an incident we can step in and becomethe police commander’s support officers and specialist advisors in relation to issues which are so far outside of the normal policing world of crime and investigation and provide the expertise of someone who works in emergency planning full time.

“I’ve been with Lancashire Constabulary for 20 years and this is one of the best jobs I have had as everyone in the Lancashire Resilience Forum works towards the same objectives. Everybody helps everybody else. I really enjoy the partnership working and developing relationships with partners across multiple agencies who are all focused on the same goals and objectives of keeping our communities across Lancashire safer. We help to mitigate risks but are also there for them when thingsdo happen and try to minimise the effects of anymajor incidents that can occur.

“In terms of the planning I enjoy developing and working on the exercises we put together in what we call ‘peace time’ to help us write and develop emergency plans that make us stronger.

“I have an operational and strategic military background and I enjoy being in what we call ‘response mode’ when we come together to deal with issues. One of the main incidents we have had to deal with over the past nine years was obviously Covid which was non-stop for 18 months from the moment of the first positive test. We were doing things we never thought we would be doing in terms of problem solving in the face of something new and the fact we had such strong relationships across the LRF helped us assist our communities as best we could.’’

He added: “I sit on the riskassessment working group of the LRF which is at the start of identifying the major risks we face and then planning to see how we are going to deal with those risks. We consider if we are comfortable with the responses we have planned for well-known risks or if there are new ones potentially coming, we consider what do we need to do as a partnership to react to them.’’

In terms of resilience Ady feels a lot of progress has been made in recent years but also believes there is more educational work needed to inform the public of the steps they can take to protect themselves and their families.

He said: “Resilience is definitely something that people and organisations are more aware of now. As emergency planners we live and breathe this world, and our work is more recognised than it was when I first started and I know senior commanders at Lancashire Constabulary understand our role and appreciate the expertise, support, and advice we can offer them at vital times.

“The public are more aware of the major risks of things like flooding and climate change, but I still think there is more we can all do together to help members of our community be more prepared for situations that may affect them such as power cuts, a loss of power or in business threats such as cyber attacks.

“September is National Preparedness Month and the LRF will be pushing some important messages about the potential threats that are out there and how we can prepare for them and then deal with them in the best possible way.’’