The council delivers a broad resilience and emergency planning function, supporting preparedness, response and recovery across the organisation. While it has long maintained a structured training and exercising programme informed by annual training needs analysis, emergency planning has not always been consistently recognised as a standalone professional discipline within local government.

The introduction of the NOS created an opportunity to change that and provided a nationally recognised benchmark to formalise training, demonstrate capability and reinforce the professionalism of resilience work.

The council adopted a pragmatic, proportionate approach to embed the NOS into existing processes. Training and exercising activity was reviewed and aligned to the standards, building on work previously undertaken with earlier Civil Contingencies NOS. This allowed the team to maintain continuity while strengthening their alignment with an updated, more accessible set of standards.

While the initial focus has been on mapping existing activity, the council recognises the longer-term potential of the NOS to play a more strategic role of supporting future training design, highlighting capability gaps and strengthening workforce planning.

Crucially, applying the NOS has helped the council provide greater assurance. In the absence of a mandated national training framework, being able to provide evidence training and experience against recognised standards offers confidence both organisationally and at an individual level.

Read the full case study to explore how Newcastle City Council embedded the NOS in practice, the benefits realised so far and what other organisations can take from their approach.

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