Our regular #LRFPeople feature looks at people around the county who are key to keeping our communities as safe as possible.

This time we talk to Caroline Suart, Resilience Manager and National Inter-Agency Liaison Officer (NILO) for the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust (NWAS).

Caroline has 18 years of experience in emergency planning, and she wouldn’t want to do anything else. “I absolutely love it,” she told us, “I wouldn’t know what else to do. You’re never just sat behind a desk; you are often out and about travelling, and you wouldn’t get that from a normal job. There’s so much variety, even more so with being part of the on-call function whether that is just providing telephone advice or actually responding to something that’s happened to members of the public, and supporting commanders in those decisions on the NWAS response.

 “And you’ve always got that patient focus in your mind because it’s the nature of what we do at NWAS – to look after people.”

 Caroline began her career with Lancashire Constabulary in 1994 as an Admin Assistant in the Firearms Training Department. Then through subsequent roles within the Firearms Licensing Department, she became involved as a Logistics Officer for the planning of equipment, personnel and staffing, and subsequently the Logistics Manager for several party-political conferences that came to Blackpool, and that sparked her interest in emergency planning.

In 2008 she moved into the Civil Contingencies department as an Emergency Planning Officer on a brand-new team, where she planned, delivered and produced exercises, wrote emergency plans, delivered training, and carried out a significant amount of multi-agency work through the Lancashire Resilience Forum.

“I picked up a lot as I went along,” Caroline said “I attended all kinds of various sub group meetings and was Chair for some, including the Lancashire Emergency Response Plan and Protect and Prepare sub groups. As I developed in that role, I became line manager to the admin staff and was involved in the response to several large incidents including Storms Desmond and Eva in 2015, a house explosion at Heysham, and more latterly Covid.’’

Prior to moving to NWAS, Caroline was part of a planning team for Exercise Goshawk in 2022. This was a three-day live exercise testing the multi-agency response to a terrorist attack – the largest exercise ever delivered in Lancashire.

“I left Lancashire Constabulary in November 2022 as an opportunity arose to develop new skills and work in a different emergency service undertaking emergency planning,’’ she continued.

“With NWAS I am still working with the emergency services and protecting people but with a different kind of approach to emergency planning.

“This role is probably more tactical, and whilst it’s classed as Resilience Manager, there is a lot more involved. It was purely Lancashire for the Constabulary, but NWAS is regional, so in terms of primary resilience I cover Cumbria and Lancashire alongside two other colleagues. It’s a big patch and does involve quite a bit of travelling. We maintain all our site-specific plans for Cumbria and Lancashire and also some of the core plans from across the Trust, we sit on both Cumbria and Lancashire resilience forums together with various exercise planning meetings, and we support in the delivery of multi-agency training such as JESIP. 

“During my time in emergency planning, I have gained a keen interest in the risk assessment processes aligned to the National Risk Register which has involved me sitting on various local, regional, and national risk assessment working groups. This has continued into my role within NWAS where I am now responsible for leading on the management of the various NWAS resilience risks. 

“My remit covers any kind of major incident, and on top of that, any sort of event that takes place. For example, we put plans in place where NWAS staff are deployed to events such as Lytham Festival, Blackpool Air Show, and Appleby Horse Fair.”

As well as her “day job” as Resilience Manager, Caroline is also a National Inter-Agency Liaison Officer (NILO) providing on-call cover across the whole of the North West. 

Caroline said: “It’s demanding with the pull internally and from the LRFs. It can be a quiet shift, but you could end up with a 1am call to an incident”.

You just never know what to expect, Caroline emphasised: “I’ve responded to various flooding and adverse weather events including a train incident requiring the evacuation of more than 400 passengers. I’ve worked on a lot of pre-planned police operations and protected persons visits, such as the King’s recent visit to Cumbria and Lancashire – there is a lot of planning for those kinds of things, including operational response.”

This is where working with other agencies across Lancashire and Cumbria is vital, Caroline confirmed: “It’s about knowing people and making friends before you need those people to help. One organisation can’t respond to one incident alone, it takes a multi-agency approach and having that understanding of what each does, having those relationships and it all working together.

“From a North West regional perspective, because we’re covering different resilience forums we might see things differently, but we all have the same theme of looking after people, protecting people and responding to emergencies. So, the structures may be different but there is definitely a common goal and understanding in terms of what we want to get out of it. For example, Cumbria and Lancashire look different to Greater Manchester because of the geography”. 

Caroline will reach her fourth anniversary with the NWAS in November and has gained invaluable experience to carry out her role with confidence, particularly as a NILO: “Because of the amount of training, CPD, and speaking to other people involved, you’re as prepared as you can be. You’ve got all your knowledge and understanding, so it’s about taking a breath, start gathering and sharing information, asking questions, follow your action cards. You’re not on your own either, you have other NILOs for support, it’s very much a team effort.

“We are always dealing with the unknown, if that phone rings you never know what you’re going to get so you have to be prepared for every eventuality you might face. It keeps me on my toes.”