Resilience and emergencies professional
- Level
- 6
- Typical duration
- 40 months (about 3.5 years)
- Max funding band
- £23,000
- End-point assessment
- 6 months
- Route
- Protective services
Contribute to the local or national resilience and security agendas.
About the role
Resilience and emergencies professionals are found in Category 1 and Category 2 organisations as defined in the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 (for example emergency services, local authorities, NHS, utility companies), military, the voluntary, charitable, and international sectors, and government. They are also found in the private sector and those subject to major accident hazard, radiation, or pipeline regulation (for example companies transporting or storing toxic chemicals).
The broad purpose of the occupation is to contribute to the local or national resilience and security agendas. They protect and ensure public safety and continuity of essential services by effectively mitigating risks, preparing and planning for emergencies, and coordinating the response to incidents and recovery after the event. Working with stakeholders before, during, and after an incident, they develop locally appropriate ways to avoid disruptive events and prepare and recover from disasters. They ensure organisations satisfy their statutory obligations related to hazards and threats. For example, the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, Control of Major Accident Hazards Regulations 2015 (COMAH), Water Act 2014, Network and Information Systems Regulations 2018, Health and Social Care Act 2012.
In their daily work, a resilience and emergencies professional interacts with stakeholders at all levels of seniority across Category 1 and Category 2 organisations, local or national government, the military, voluntary organisations, community groups, and members of the public. Many resilience and emergencies professionals will work within or interact with a local resilience forum including planning for and embedding arrangements for military aid to civil authorities.
A resilience and emergencies professional will be responsible for working independently or in a small team, internally and externally, to research and assess how hazards and threats might impact the organisation and the people who rely on them. They consider a wide range of risks to people, business, and the environment. For example, severe weather, flooding, social disorder, industrial action, industrial accidents, failures in critical national infrastructure, or pandemics. They must research, assess and anticipate emerging threats. These may be caused by global factors such as climate change, economic and political instability, migration and demographic change. Resilience and emergencies professionals must lead and empower others to contribute to strategies that mitigate risks and achieve sustainable outcomes. To ensure their organisation and others are appropriately prepared to respond when emergencies occur, they must develop and deliver training and emergency exercises and ensure lessons are learned and captured. Whilst resilience and emergencies professionals would not typically be responsible for departmental budgets, they need an awareness of funding and financing mechanisms, costs and resourcing challenges associated with emergencies and resilience. Some resilience and emergencies professionals may be required to be on an on-call rota and may need to be able to respond to incidents and emergencies 24/7/365 as part of an on-call mechanism.
How it compares
At 40 months (about 3.5 years), it is about average length for a degree-level apprenticeship (the average across all 172 Level 6+ standards is 39 months).
The funding band — the maximum an employer's levy can contribute to training costs — is £23,000, at or above the £21,500 average for degree-level standards. Apprentices never pay tuition either way.
Typical job titles
- Civil contingencies officer
- Emergency planner
- Emergency planning officer
- Emergency preparedness officer
- Resilience advisor
- Resilience and response officer
- Resilience officer
What you come out with
- BSc/BA Resilience and emergencies management — Level 6 (integrated degree)
- Professional recognition: Emergency Planning Society — Full membership
What you'll learn
The official standard defines 11 core duties, 27 knowledge areas, 26 skills, 9 behaviours. This is the actual assessed content of the apprenticeship — worth reading before an interview, because competency questions are usually written straight from these lists.
Core duties 11
- Apply, maintain and improve structures and systems used to govern and improve resilience and emergency activity (for example, monitoring and evaluation, quality assurance, change management, and stakeholder accountability).
- Research and analyse intelligence (data, opinion and information) relating to resilience and emergencies and manage information safely and securely.
- Engage proactively, communicate and collaborate effectively with a wide range of resilience partners to improve resilience.
- Project manage and administrate programmes or projects to deliver resilience outcomes and track associated costs.
- Anticipate, assess and support the prioritisation of risks, threats and potential consequences.
- Contribute to the analysis and development of resilience and readiness capabilities to ensure risks are reduced and the demands of an emergency response can be met.
- Contribute to the mitigation or prevention of, or adaptation to, risks in a resilient and sustainable way.
- Prepare the arrangements and plans needed to respond effectively to the anticipated demands and consequences of disruptive events.
- Train individuals and teams in a response role, and exercise and validate emergency plans.
- Support a response that limits impacts and meets the needs which result during disruptive events.
- Work to ensure a resilient and sustainable recovery can be achieved after disruptive events for all affected.
Knowledge 27
- Theories and principles linking societal and organisational resilience, security, sustainability and global change.
- Governance structures and business processes and their significance in emergencies and resilience.
- The role, responsibilities, culture, and key capabilities of the employing organisation, and key partners or stakeholder organisations in resilience, emergencies, and recovery.
- Approaches to driving quality, managing change and improvement used in their organisation. The benefits and limitations of these approaches for improving collective resilience across partners and wider society.
- Legislation, regulation and associated guidance and its role in resilience and emergencies.
- How information and knowledge held by stakeholders can be used across the emergency cycle.
- Sources of and types of intelligence, data, and information; and factors that affect its quality and suitability.
- A range of engagement methods and resources used for people centred working.
- Theories and principles of teamwork, leadership, and partnership working and their application to working in resilience and emergencies.
- The need for and challenges in data protection, information management, security, and sharing.
- Risk communication and decision theory, and factors that influence individual and collective action.
- Theories and models of risk.
- Methods and models used to assess and prioritise risks.
- Theories and principles of learning and training to inform training delivery.
- Theories and principles that underpin exercise design and delivery.
- Requirements for and approaches to health, safety, and wellbeing of practitioners, volunteers, and the public.
- Principles and models for integrating risk, crisis and emergency management and associated risk management options.
- Current published standards and good practice guidance relating to emergencies and resilience.
- Arrangements, plans, capabilities and readiness activities within area of responsibility.
- The characteristics of disruptive events (for example, potential impacts, consequences, and needs).
- Roles and systems for managing incidents.
- How decisions taken during emergency response can affect recovery outcomes.
- Human factors and adaptive capacity in emergency response and resilience.
- Challenges to continuity of business services during a crisis or emergency.
- Theories and approaches to planning, managing, and facilitating recovery.
- Needs of individuals, communities or organisations in response and recovery, and factors that may influence the time and extent of recovery.
- Approaches and challenges to financing in resilience and emergencies.
Skills 26
- Apply policies, legislation, regulations and guidance to ensure compliance and resilience.
- Apply relevant governance structures, standards, policies, and frameworks to evidence and assure performance, impacts, and resilient outcomes.
- Contribute to the debriefing process (post-exercise or post-incident).
- Contribute to the accountability process for performance, impacts, resilience outcomes, and areas for improvement to stakeholders.
- Support lesson learning, improvement and sustainable change.
- Keep records of decisions, actions, those responsible and rationale.
- Collect and analyse information in support of resilience and emergencies.
- Use and improve systems, processes, or applications to gather, manage, visualise, and share information.
- Scale, coordinate, or integrate activities to maximise resilience and ensure interoperability (locally, regionally, sector wide or nationally as appropriate to role and employing organisation).
- Assess the information needs across the emergency cycle.
- Identify, engage, and communicate information with a range of stakeholders.
- Project manage initiatives or activities within area of responsibility.
- Evaluate the risk context.
- Identify and assess risks.
- Make timely and evidence-based decisions.
- Facilitate the development, maintenance, or implementation of resilience and emergency capabilities (for example, early warning, communications, technical specialisms, safety, security, resource and supply).
- Assess the effectiveness and relative value (for example, economic, environmental, and societal) of risk management options.
- Contribute to the development and delivery of resilience and emergency training.
- Contribute to the design and delivery of emergency exercises.
- Apply an all-risks approach.
- Scope, document, review and update emergency, crisis or continuity arrangements.
- Support emergency response within scope of responsibilities (in an incident or as part of an exercise).
- Assess and prioritise recovery needs.
- Apply recovery plans and exit strategies to a real or simulated emergency or crisis (during an incident or as part of an exercise).
- Consider financial implications of resilience or emergency activities.
- Monitor dynamic situations and the effectiveness of interventions.
Behaviours 9
- Empowers and leads others.
- Situation awareness; makes sense of current situation, uses foresight and sees the big picture.
- Builds strong, inclusive, relationships and networks.
- Adaptable and creative problem solver.
- Confident to question and challenge constructively.
- Decisive and takes responsibility for decisions.
- Delivers results at pace.
- Reflective and resilient practitioner - develops self and others.
- Act ethically.
Live vacancies
No live vacancies for this course as of 2026-07-24 — new adverts appear on Find an apprenticeship daily, and many degree apprenticeship employers recruit on their own careers sites instead.
Universities registered to deliver it
2 universities are on the government provider register for this standard. Registration means they can deliver it — live vacancies depend on employer partnerships each recruitment cycle.
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Official sources
- Official standard page (Skills England)
- Registered training providers (Find apprenticeship training)
Occupational summary, duties, knowledge, skills and behaviours reproduced from the ST1322 apprenticeship standard (last updated 2024-10-15) — contains public sector information licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0. Always check the official page before applying: standards get revised.