About us

What is the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum?

The Kent and Medway Resilience Forum (KMRF) is a partnership of organisations and agencies who work together to improve the resilience of Kent and Medway, and to ensure a coordinated response to emergencies that could have a significant impact on communities.

The KMRF was formerly called the Kent Resilience Forum (KRF), officially changing to the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum on 1 April 2024.

The KMRF is one of 38 of local resilience forums (LRFs) across England set up in response to the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004. The CCA established a new legislative framework for civil protection in the event of emergencies in the UK.

LRFs are aligned with local police areas, with member agencies working together to ensure that, if and when an emergency occurs, they are prepared to respond to it together and minimise any impact.

LRFs are not legal entities in their own right, but a partnership of member agencies, including those defined under the Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004 by responder 'categories':

Category 1 responders are organisations that are directly involved in the response to an emergency. This includes emergency services in Kent (Kent Police, Kent Fire and Rescue Service, South East Coast Ambulance Service, Maritime and Coastguard Agency), local authorities, primary care aspects of the NHS, and others. These responders are subject to a number of civil protection obligations.

Category 2 responders are those who have a role to play in response but are less directly involved. This includes organisations such as utility companies, infrastructure (e.g. Network Rail), and others. The Act does not place such stringent duties on these responders but does require that they share information appropriate to managing emergencies and cooperate fully with the Local Resilience Forum.

The KMRF also includes members who are not categorised under the Act but have a big role in responding to emergencies, notably the military and the voluntary sector.

What does the KMRF do?

Our strategic aim:

To promote a comprehensive and collaborative approach to mitigation of risks to the public, and to enhance response, resilience, and recovery.

Our strategic objectives:

The core partners will achieve our strategic aim by:

Identifying, understanding, and promoting risk management through joint working.
Developing and validating KMRF plans with comprehensive partner participation.
Training and exercising of KMRF plans via multi-agency exercises utilising JESIP principles to improve collaboration.
Learning from local, regional, and national incidents and exercises.
Enabling and promoting community resilience through a ‘whole of society’ endeavour.
Working together to achieve and maintain ‘Good’ against the National Resilience Standards for local resilience forums.
Facilitating KMRF partner organisations in fulfilling their duties under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

KMRF partnership working includes:

Sharing information to assist each other in planning for, and responding to, emergencies.

Working together to assess risks across the county and developing the Kent Community Risk Register

Planning to make sure we can all carry on operating throughout any disruption (business continuity management).

Providing information and guidance to the public (warning and informing) before, during, and after emergencies so that they are best placed to help themselves and us in dealing with the emergency.

What is JESIP?

The KMRF supports the principles of the 'Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Programme' (JESIP). This programme is designed to make sure the emergency services (as well as other partners) work with common principles and terminology.

This ensures that when we are responding to incidents we can work seamlessly together. Cooperating in this way to ensures we plan for, and respond to, emergencies as effectively as possible. Visit the JESIP website for more details.

The Kent Resilience Team

The Kent Resilience Team is multi-agency team that supports the work of the Kent and Medway Resilience Forum and is staffed by emergency planning officers and support staff from Kent Police, Kent County Council and Kent Fire and Rescue Service. Its offices are hosted at Kent Fire and Rescue Service Headquarters.