The Trust has been rated as ‘Substantially Compliant’, against the core standards for Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response, a significant improvement compared with ‘partially compliant’ in 2017.
The NHS needs to plan for, and respond to, a wide range of incidents and emergencies that could affect health or patient care. These could be anything from extreme weather conditions, to an outbreak of an infectious disease or a major transport accident. Emergency preparedness, resilience and response is a programme of work that shows NHS organisations have a plan for, and can respond to, a wide range of incidents and emergencies while maintaining services.
Kevin Claxton, Head of Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response (EPRR) said: “We live in an increasingly unpredictable world, and the NHS and this trust has to be prepared to deal with any emergency or incident. Over the past year we have put in place additional EPRR provision and a large program of work has been undertaken to improve ESHT performance to respond to an incident. We are not complacent and there is more work to, but we are in a much better place than we were a year ago.”
As a ‘Category 1 responder’ under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, the Trust is required to meet core standards set out in the NHS Emergency Preparedness, Resilience and Response Framework. In this annual assessment ESHT achieved compliance against 61 out of 64 core standards which has resulted in the Trust being assessed as substantially compliant.