#LRFPeople: Katherine Bentley

The Lancashire Resilience Forum brings together emergency planning experts from across the county whose main aim is to keep individuals and communities safe by planning and preparing for major incidents.

The Forum is a team of people from agencies such as the police, fire and ambulance services and local authorities who identify potential risks in areas of the county and produce plans to either prevent or mitigate the impact of any incident on their local communities.

In the first of a series of new features, which we are calling #LRFPeople, we put the spotlight on one of the county’s most experienced emergency planners, Katherine Bentley.

Katherine, a UCLAN graduate, has been working in emergency planning for more than 15 years and is Lancashire County Council’s Resilience Service Delivery Manager. She has two vital roles within the Forum, chairing the group that focuses on the county’s main risks and also leading the Local Authority subgroup which supports the co-ordination of localised programmes which help make each individual community as safe as possible.

Talking about her role Katherine said: “I lead the emergency planning team at Lancashire County Council and make sure they can do their job to the best of their ability.

“It is a role and a career I sort of fell into to be honest. I was working for a tour operator as their duty officer which was basically troubleshooting anything that went wrong and when I saw the job advertised it sounded perfect, and I have been here ever since.

“I have worked with some fantastic people over the years. When I started, I had a Head of Service called Bernard Kershaw who was an inspirational leader and anything that is good about me comes from Bernard who was an amazing character. I am also indebted to my direct line manager for many years, Paula Bull, who was also fantastic for me. She showed me how you can be a manager but still be kind to people and was amazing.

“I started as an assistant emergency planning officer in July 2008, and I took every opportunity available to me to move up the ranks over the time I have been here.

“It’s a role I am really passionate about. There are no two days the same and although I know we are in the background, and not out there front facing, I know the work we do is really, really important.

‘’When I started I was given a quote that said, ‘emergency planning is a bit like car insurance…..you begrudge paying for it in peacetime but when things happen you are really glad you have got it’ and I think that sums up a lot of what we do.

“When you see things like the incident in Liverpool a few weeks ago you do look at it with a different mindset. You know the work that will have gone on behind the scenes to ensure the response was as quick and effective as it could have been.

“As a team of planners we often talk about these sorts of events and consider what we do and what we could learn from the response to the event itself. We then try and take as much learning as we can and discuss the findings with all the partners across the Lancashire Resilience Forum.

“That engagement is one of the most important, but often unforeseen, part of the role as managing relationships and learning together is something that everything hangs on really.

“The LRF has definitely helped us do that that by bringing people closer together which has increased our resilience as a group and benefited the people in our communities. Having those relationships and making friends before you need them is so important.’’

Katherine says that focus on strengthening the resilience of our communities is going to be vital going forward.

She said: “Community resilience and what we call the “whole society approach’’ is definitely the key term at the moment and is the golden thread that runs through everything.

“It is vital that we do all we can to prepare communities to be more resilient in terms of major incidents. We need to let people know there is help out there and let them know where that help can be found so they can help themselves prepare for possible incidents, large or small.

“The emergency services will always be there but as we have seen in recent times with incidents such as flooding, the work of Flood Action Groups and the response from people in the local community to support each other at critical times has been vital and that co-ordinated community response, working alongside the emergency services, is something that does make a real difference .’’