Our Resilience, Acute Flow and Transformation (RAFT) Team held a huge emergency planning exercise last week - with a mock scenario - to see how we, and other agencies, can come together to manage incidents in the best possible way. This is part of our efforts to strengthen our emergency resilience and response at the Trust.

There were 60 participants, including representatives from The Yorkshire Ambulance Service, West Yorkshire Fire and Rescue and the Integrated Care Board. Our executive directors, senior leaders and a number of operational colleagues came to the three-hour event, designed and delivered by RAFT’s Sarah Rothery and Karen Bates.

There was a pretend scenario in which a crane had collapsed onto a building at CRH resulting in a Major Incident being declared.  Command and Control groups – Strategic, Tactical and Operational command – came together to manage the response to the emergency scenario.

Director of Corporate Governance, Vicky Pickles, said: “While the exercise used a ‘pretend’ scenario, with all the work we have planned at Calderdale, it felt like a good test case for us to use. So to have the opportunity to work through what we would do in this, or any other emergency situation, was really important.

"When you are a director or senior leader on call, one of the most daunting parts of the role is that, should there be a critical incident, you would need to take the strategic commander role.

"Thankfully these incidents are rare and most of us will never experience one. Which is why this training is so important to learn from places like Manchester Arena and St James' Hospital.

"We all hope it will never happen here, but if it does we need to be ready."