Mutual aid

The Northern Ireland guide to emergency planning arrangements says every emergency plan must say where help can be obtained, because an organisation cannot meet a major incident from its own resources alone. The first source of help it names is mutual aid: "arrangements, where organisations with similar functions, expertise or equipment agree to assist each other in an emergency situation". It explains that this can happen with services provided on a regional basis, "where resources from an unaffected region can be called upon to support the work of an agency in a different region whose normal capabilities are overwhelmed". Its example is the electricity industry, where companies serving the national grid can call on engineers from outside their own organisation to help restore services.

The guide also places mutual aid at the tactical, or silver, level of incident management, where co-ordination includes "determining priorities where resources are limited and providing mutual aid in order to address priority tasks", and notes that press offices should have mutual aid arrangements for large events.

Gov.uk guidance on emergency response and recovery links to a short guide on mutual aid for local councils. The sources use the term for arrangements between organisations; help between neighbours and community groups is described under community resilience and volunteering instead.