Abstract Introduction
Following the 2018 Summer Heatwave, Tower Hamlets local authority felt that actions taken to protect vulnerable residents were not well understood . This led to a review of council actions, against those recommended in the Heatwave Plan for England, which concluded that the communications following a heatwave or cold weather alert, and actions following them, needed to be formalised. Methods Public health worked with the Civil Contingencies team and Communications team. A workshop was held with relevant stakeholders from Housing, Adult Social care, Children Social care and Education. The aim was to raise awareness of the importance of such a protocol, discuss what actions were already being taken, and seek feedback on how to formalise this. A communications protocol was developed using the national plans, which set out how alerts should be disseminated, to whom, and within what timescale. Action card templates were created for services to fill in. An e-learning module was created to ensure that anyone with lead responsibility for a service received training on the protocol and action cards.
Results
The protocol and action cards have been distributed to teams to fill in for their own serviceThis new protocol will be trialled with the heatwave season and adapted.
Conclusions
Clear protocols with senior leadership buy-in and realistic expectations are a useful tool for bringing stakeholders from different services together.Tailoring actions to services, rather than providing general advice on what to consider, means that services may be more likely to engage and implement urgent actions. External funding details