The Environment Agency and Community Resilience

The Environment Agency is one of the most important agencies we work with to promote community resilience. Clare, our Community Resilience Liaison Officer,  has been very grateful for their support and opportunities to work together across her first year in post.

Clare attend the Bournemouth Air Festival in 2023, and hopes to attend the event again in 2024, where she can assemble her Community Resilience Stand and engage with members of the public, offering advice and information on becoming prepared for, and more resilient to, risks and emergencies both in the home and within communities across the beautiful County of Dorset.

Lisa, from the Environment Agency, spent a full day on the stand with Clare, engaging with the public and explaining how individuals and communities can be better prepared to deal with the risk and dangers associated with flooding and flood water. In the hope of attracting a younger audience to the Community Resilience Stand and most exciting, for our very young community members, was the interactive water tank (filled with cold tea to simulate flood water), that the young residents could put their hands into, to pull out the sort of risky items that can be found in flood water, such as shopping trolleys, old bikes, broken tree branches and some slightly more ‘icky’ items that could find their way into flooded fields where animals graze. The key message from Lisa being – ‘do not go into flood water, even if you are wearing your wellies.

Later in the year, Clare was invited by the Environment Agency to attend a number of Groundwater Roadshows across Dorset communities, also supported by Wessex Water and Dorset Council. While the Environment Agency delivered a presentation and provided advice on groundwater flooding and the impacts of climate change, Clare was able to provide some further, more general advice and information on community and individual management of risk, preparation for, and resilience against, those risks. Clare is extremely grateful to the Environment Agency for this incredible opportunity to spread the resilience message and hopes to be working further with the Environment Agency this year.