Emergencies and Disruptive Incidents

Definitions

A ‘disruptive incident’ is an event occurring outside of the routine that has a negative impact on the school; but which is not considered potentially life-threatening or particularly hazardous to the school community. Examples of this would be minor injuries / illnesses, burglaries.

An ‘emergency’ is an event or situation that threatens serious damage to the welfare of the school community (such as loss of life, illness, injury or trauma) or its facilities.

Requirements

All schools should have:

An “Emergency Plan” for responding to incidents /emergencies in the school, during visits and off-site activities or affecting the school community. To help you develop this Emergency Plan there is a guidance document, “Emergency Planning Guidance for Buckinghamshire Council Schools”, available on SchoolsWeb at:

https://schoolsweb.buckscc.gov.uk/media/6911/2017-07-21-ep-guidance-for-schools-v3-1-doc.pdf

A Business Continuity Plan (BCP) to ensure the continuation of critical activities in the event of a disruption to normal service delivery however caused (e.g. loss of ICT, loss of premises, loss of electricity, loss of staff etc.). A template School Resilience Policy, with more information on Emergency Plans and Business Continuity, and a template BCP can be found at:

https://schoolsweb.buckscc.gov.uk/emergencies/emergency-planning-and-bcp/

There is an expectation that schools will manage the response to an incident / emergency in their school. Buckinghamshire Council will offer support during an emergency.

The Council’s Resilience Team offer a 24/7 point of contact for schools to contact the Council in the event of serious emergencies affecting the school 07738 501318.

For more information see: https://schoolsweb.buckscc.gov.uk/emergencies/schools-emergency-contacts/

Please note that the emergency services should be called first and that this is to be used only under the circumstances described. 

Further information about emergencies and planning for them can be found here: https://schoolsweb.buckscc.gov.uk/emergencies/

Updating your Keyholders / Emergency contact details

There is now a new and improved process for you to check and update your school emergency contacts and keyholders. It is very important that these details are correct, as the emergency services need to know who to contact if there is a problem at your school out of hours. You will be asked to validate your contacts every half term to ensure that the information is accurate.

How to check and validate your emergency contact details

Log in to SchoolsWeb using the SMT@ profile (the allschool@ profile cannot access this area).

Click the Emergencies / closures link at the top of the page

On the emergencies page, click the button which says View and edit emergency contacts for your school.

You will then see the contacts registered for your school.

If they are correct, please click the Validate contacts button at the bottom of the page.

How to update your emergency contact details

If there are changes (for example someone leaves your school, or is away for a weekend), you can update your contacts straight away. The emergency services will be able to see the changes immediately.

If at stage 4 above you find you need to update details for a contact, you have 3 options:

To edit a contact

Click the edit details link by the contact, update using the form, and then click 'submit' at the bottom of the page.

To indicate that a contact is temporarily unavailable

If an emergency contact is temporarily unavailable, go to the edit page for that contact, and click the temporarily unavailable tickbox at the bottom of the page. This contact will not be deleted but will appear in grey until you untick the box at a later date.

To delete a contact

If a contact needs to be permanently deleted, click the 'request delete' link on the contacts front page.

The Local Authority is currently designing a new interactive School Keyholders application which will make updating this a lot easier.

Schools should include key contact information in their Emergency Plan and Business Continuity Plan.

School Emergency Closures

Schools are reminded that the decision to close a school is taken by the Headteacher and Governing Body. When the decision has been taken you should log the closure immediately via SchoolsWeb, which automatically generates emails to the Local Authority, Passenger Transport Team, Senior Adviser and local radio stations informing them of the closure. We would encourage schools to use this process where possible but should this not be possible schools can phone their local radio station and log the closure. You will need to use a password so that the station knows that it is a genuine call, the password is ROSEBUD.

How to log an emergency closure via SchoolsWeb

• Log into SchoolsWeb and click ‘Emergencies’ from the menu.
• Click on ‘Register a Closure’ to go to the Closures form.
• On the form, under ‘Add new closure’, fill in the closure’s dates; this defaults to the current day, returning to normal the next day.
• Select the Status: this creates an automatic headline to indicate the reason for a closure.

Comments are only necessary in specific circumstances, for example if only specific pupils should attend.

Note: This system is only for emergency closures, not for scheduled closures such as inset days.