Episode 1: Resilience is Everyone's Business

Welcome to Resilience in the Round, a brand new podcast from the UK Resilience Academy. This show is all about bringing people together as part of a wider national resilience conversation. Over six 30 minute episodes, we will be welcoming a range of guests into the round to talk about the structures they work in, share some of their stories, and discuss solutions for strengthening societal resilience together. Welcome to Resilience in the Round, where we're talking about resilient systems, sharing stories, and discussing solutions for strengthening societal resilience together. Today in the round with me, I've got Dr. Kathy Oldham, the Chief Resilience Officer for Greater Manchester Combined Authority since 2017, and also Salafi Abbashal, who is the VC FSE, that's the voluntary community faith and social enterprise programme manager for Greater Manchester Resilience Forum. Welcome to you both. Thanks so much for joining us. Thank you for having us. Yes, thank you. Excited to be here. To get us started, could you tell us briefly what was your own personal route into resilience? Kathy should we come to you first. So I'd been working at Manchester City Council for about 15 years and I'd managed all sorts of different services, including housing, regeneration, I'd manage the Lord Mayor's office at one point, and then I was asked would I like to take on simple contingencies? And I said yes, the choice being that or IT. And then the next question I asked was and what's that? Because it was a completely new term to me. And it's obviously been something that I've absolutely relished being part of because I think I've now been in civil contingencies for two decades. Wow. Wow, that's fantastic. Amazing. Thank you. Better than IT? Well, I don't know, not having done the IT bit, but certainly I found it, you know, a great place to work. And I think the other thing is it's pulled on all the different jobs that I've done over time. You know, you need to know a bit about housing, I've done health in the past. You need to know about it about businesses and I've done a bit of retail and that sort of thing. So it's been an absolutely fascinating journey that for me linked up quite a sort of disparate set of skills in my career to that point. Yeah, that's really interesting. Fascinating. Thank you. Thank you. So laugh about how about you, what was your journey into resilience like? Similar to Kathy in a way. So before joining the combined authority, I'd spend nearly 15 years working in the BCFSE sector. So work for organisations who were focused on a whole range of different things like conservation, mental health, work with older people. I worked in a service for young homeless adults in Manchester. And then most recently I worked for a community development organisation in South Wales. And when I applied for it, I saw it, to be honest, I didn't really know what the combined authority was. I'd never heard of resilience forums before. And I think along with what I assumed the majority of the members of public, I just assumed emergency services showed up when things happened. And I didn't really appreciate them out of planning a preparation that went into this background of it. And so I've been in post just over three years. It's been a really steep learning curve, challenging, stressful at times, the rate which my hair is going great is rapidly accelerated over the last three years. But I really love the job. There's so many great opportunities. It's really exciting and interesting and it feels like a good space to be in at the moment. That's fantastic. And I suppose what we can take from this actually is that there's not really a regular route into resilience is there. I think we've all got our individual journeys. So it's fascinating to hear yours. Thank you. So the second question I'd like to ask is to you, Kathy, first of all, what do the governance structures and the local arrangements for resilience and emergencies look like in greater Manchester, resilience forum because you are a large one. And not everyone might be familiar with the way things work in your locality. Can you tell me a bit about it? Yes, of course. Thank you. So we do have the multi-agency statutory structures that you would expect. And I'll come back to those in a minute. But I wanted to start by really discussing the fact that resilience is broader than preparing for and responding to emergencies. So for me, it's always had a dimension of place building. So how we design and shape our places to offer good housing, resilient infrastructure, economic opportunities. And it's also about social resilience in our communities. So it's about the social agendas that the combined authority pursues. So for example, the mayor has a priority around living well, which is really a prevention agenda, preventing ill health, promoting well-being, enjoying life, having purpose, having a say in local decisions. And so our local resilience forum, the Greater Manchester Resilience Forum, really picks up on those threads. And I would say sits in an ecosystem, if you like, of system-wide governance structures. So we've got representatives in the Greater Manchester Resilience Forum sitting on groups such as the Economic Resilience Group, or the Strategic Infrastructure Board, or the Natural Capital Group, or the Digital Infrastructure Group. And it's a recognition that all of those parts of what the combined authority and our partners do has a role to play in resilience. And then just turn to the local resilience forum itself, it probably has, I would say, the same structures as many of the local resilience forums around the country. We've got a strategic board. It's supported by a senior management group. And then that receives reports, commissions work from a whole series of topic-based working groups. So we've got one looking at risk, plans, training and exercising. So very much the topics you would expect us to be looking at. And then we also, again, similar to, I think, many other areas, convene an enable-specific sectors to be represented in an effective way at the Resilience Forum through what I would call sector groups. So we've got the local health resilience partnership bringing together health colleagues from across Greater Manchester. We've got a local authority chief officers group, because we've got 10 local authorities, so that enables a smaller number of people to represent the local authorities at the Resilience Forum. And then we have a group that enables the voluntary and faith sectors to be represented effectively at the forum. And that's actually what I'd like to hand over to Silafer if that's OK. So tell us a little bit more. That's great. Thank you, Kathy. Thanks, Kathy. So we have a VCFC forum, which provides that sort of sectoral representation for the VCFC sector. And that means that our partners in the sector are directly involved of the work of the Resilience Forum. We try and make sure that we've got sectoral representation in all the groups that Kathy mentioned as well, so making sure, again, that the VCFC sectors got a voice throughout our governance structures and the opportunities to influence and contribute to the work of Resilience Forum. We've got a real range of partners in our VCFC forum. Many are sort of specialist crisis response organisations, like British Red Cross, Mountain Rescue, Islamic Relief, Rainett, just to name a few. And I think most Resilience forums have some kind of relationships with similar organisations who do incredible work across the UK. And we absolutely see that collaboration as vital. In Greater Manchester, I'm sure also in many of the other areas, we've learnt from past emergencies that those strong local partnerships are also essential to the work that we're doing. So Resilience and Response looks really different in each community, not just in Manchester, but across the UK. So those local partnerships are key to making sure we respond in ways that meet the specific needs of each area and each community. We're really fortunate. We've got a really strong VCFC sector in Manchester. We've got networks like 10GM. We've got a VCFC leadership group. We've got Bungie Centre in North West, all of which kind of work to amplify the sector's voice, in policy discussions and making sure that the needs of communities are reflected in the decisions we make. We're part of the combined authority, which puts us in a really positive position. The combined authority absolutely committed to working alongside the VCFC sector as equal partners and absolutely recognising its critical role all in there. decision-making, delivering services and shaping policy. The Cathy mentioned LiveWell, which is a real whole system approach to tackling inequalities, improving health and social outcomes. These are lots of the factors that we know affect a community's ability to be resilient. So as Cathy mentioned, resilience isn't just about reaction or response. It's about sort of shaping those places that we live, the services that we rely on and the support systems that help us navigate challenges. And LRFs take really different approaches to try and tackle the ways in which we embed some of these wider resilience building initiatives into their work, which sometimes doesn't feel like a totally natural fit into the structures that we have. Some LRFs have VCFSE forums like we do or community resilience working groups, some have a quality panel, some have human aspects groups. There's a whole different range of ways in which we kind of engage with those broader themes. For me, I think the really important thing is about how we create an enabling environment for these groups to be able to kind of progress, thrive, influence and how we build sort of support for that to really be embedded into the wider work of the LRF. It's really interesting, isn't it, because as you've both highlighted, it's not just about the response. It's so much broader, the structures, the work that goes on behind the scenes. Salafat, from your work, do you have any questions? I have some examples of some of the solutions that you've tried to put in place and are working on at the moment to help foster this community or societal resilience. Yeah, thank you. I think we've got some really exciting projects that we've been involved with. We've got some really exciting projects coming up over the next year or two. I suppose it's just, I think it's useful for me when I was thinking about societal resilience. And I suppose I went back to thinking about the release of the UK resilience framework, which really highlighted the need for a whole of society approach to resilience. And it said that resilience is a whole of society endeavor, which is a big statement. And we must empower, we must be more transparent and empower everyone to make a contribution. That's big. Responses is and always will be at the heart of what LRFs do. We had a lot of conversations about this. The shift towards societal resilience encourages a broader, I suppose, more proactive approach, focusing on some of those long-term solutions and addressing factors that impact communities' ability to be resilient beyond just emergencies. I suppose the difficult part, the challenging part, is turning the idea of societal resilience into something that's tangible, like what does it actually mean to people? So it's one thing to talk about resilience in society, but how do we make it something that our local communities can take hold of and really act on? So how do we empower everyone to take action? Again, it's a really big ask. Ask. So when I started this role, I felt like I didn't have many places to turn to or learn from. There were some really good international practice happening, but it felt like kind of the UK voice was quite quiet in the space. And then slowly, roles like mine started to emerge. And I was so relieved to sort of connect with other people that were leading practice in the area and to have a group of people to talk through these big ideas with that community is made up for more sorts of people from rural, urban areas. We've got different risk profiles and the people that are leading the work have got a real different set of skills, which I think we've kind of heard about that range of skills that you need. We're all just kind of trying out different ideas and trying to learn and share with each other, testing new things and new approaches to kind of really grab on to what societal resilience means in each place. So thinking about practical examples, we've been really fortunate to receive some funding parts which have allowed us to work in different ways with new partners and to explore what societal resilience means to us and our communities. So one of those projects was Project Heat Wave. That was a project where we collaborated with one of our local infrastructure organisations, self and CVS, where we explored what a VCFC system of support for older people in extreme heat could look like. We taught loads of learning from that project around specific needs of older people before during and after periods of extreme heat and also learned how to build an understanding of heat related risks and really think through the actions that VCFC organisations could take to support older people. So we're now continuing to work in that space looking at co-producing comms around heat risk and looking at how to sort of make sure that message about how to stay safe in heat really lands with older residents. We've also got a couple of new projects start in this meeting month which is exciting. One of those is the Inclusive Resilience Pathways Project which is funded through our successful application to MHCLG's Innovation Fund. So that project is focused on ensuring that resilience efforts are truly inclusive which again is a really big ask but we'll be working to engage with groups whose voices have not always been front and centre in resilience planning really trying to give them the opportunity to share their needs and perspectives and ensure that they're reflected in planning and response strategies that we take on as an LRF. The second project is our Faith and Resilience Youth Project which again we've received funding from a slightly different pathway from the Co-Optive Council's Innovation Network to that project we'll be looking to bring together young people from diverse faith communities. We'll be exploring how past crises have shaped their communities and really look at the role of faith and young people in resilience and try and sort of develop practical solutions. So the projects have given us a really great opportunity to work across different areas so seeing how resilience fits into the broader work of the combined authority and our different directorates like Safe Astrology Communities, Environment, Public Service Reform and Equality. So thinking through that sort of broad agenda and broad themes. The short term funding can be absolutely brilliant, it can help spark innovation ideas and we've been fortunate enough to get these opportunities but I think long term funding would really allow us to build resilience into our sectors. It would allow a bit more time for co-producing meaningful solutions and it would allow time to build those strong relationships and tackle issues around capacity and capabilities in all of our sectors. That sounds incredibly busy, incredibly valuable, really fascinating work. Kathy, back to you, having looked at the local level, I'm also aware that Greater Manchester is part of the International Resilient Cities Network. So actually zooming up from local to global now. Are there some initiatives that you're involved in with that that enable more of that learning and strategic prevention or sharing of good practice in terms of the approaches to societal resilience? I think in terms of the international piece, I think most people listening to this will appreciate that the world is very interdependent and interconnected and so emergencies in one area of the world in one city can have impacts in cities in other parts of the world. And so we find it's really beneficial and important to share ideas between cities and of her today's world characterised as tuna, so turbulent, uncertain, novel, ambiguous. And so because it's changing rapidly, that means that as resilience professionals, we need to be very agile and work with communities to adapt to that changing world. And one of the opportunities we've had is to work with the Resilient Cities Network and the ZEURIC Foundation to have a project in Greater Manchester called Resilience for Communities or R4C, put a new acronym in there. And there are nine cities around the world who are working on a three-year project to co-design solutions with communities. So it stretches right from the global into the local and we're looking particularly at the challenges that climate change brings us. So for us it's a million dollar programme and we're working with two communities so actually on the edge of Stockport Town Centre and also higher folds in Lee, which is near Wiggen. So both of them have identified a hazard that particularly might affect that community and climate change. So for edge it's heat and the stress that heat might bring to that community and they've already experienced that. And for higher folds it's flooding. And again already higher folds experience flooding and climate change suggests that may only get worse. But I think as Zalaphron I have both been saying as well as thinking about the hazard that you might face, we think that resilience includes strengthening a community's coping capacity if you like. to be able to deal with whatever shops they experience. So for us, this is also about harnessing opportunities. It's about looking at where we can build skills. It's about building social connections and giving voices to communities and it's about leveraging finance to amplify and expand the work that can be done. So in edgy, we've opened a resilience hub. Now it's a term that's used to describe a lot of things at the minute. This is about a derelict building that's been brought back into use. It's connected to surrounding green spaces and it's a place that can foster connections between local people. It's a place where the community can work with other stakeholders to think about climate change and what might be done to build for the future. And it's about that co-development of solutions to really respond to extreme weather hazards. It's really important to say that we've had funding from Zed's Euric Foundation but we've also had funding from the Merrill Development Corporation in Stockport from the English Cities Fund, from the Stockport Council. So in a way, once we started to talk about resilience we started to talk about climate change and the community started to articulate what they wanted to do and their ideas. We were able to pull in other funding to support initiatives on the ground. That resilience hub, there's a community group forming around that and we'd really like to support that group to become sustainable and have the funding that it needs moving forwards. If you look at higher folds, inevitably it looks a bit different and they're the solutions I talked about flooding and they're going to look at how, actually understanding how water moves around the area. So many people on the core will know that flooding's not just about the local brook, it can be about groundwater, it can be about, so as you know, if it can be about a whole range of different causes. We're looking at a nature volunteering program. We're looking at natural flood management and we're looking at sustainable urban drainage. And at the same time. - Oh, there's more. - There's more. - Yes, it's about recognizing where this connects to other programs. So for higher folds, there is a green community hub, which is all about learning about green skills and taking action in green spaces. And also there's the Green Doctor Service, which is about fuel poverty and about energy, but we've also added in heat wave advice into that as well. So, you know, very much sharing our learning with those global partners and a lot of our work has been facilitated by drawing on international ways of thinking and taking those right into the local level. - Incredible. - We're coming towards the end of our time together. And as we bring the round to a close, I would did have a final question. What do you think are the key areas of transferable learning that you would want to share with the wider resilience community, either working in similar roles, perhaps different ones? What's your top three takeaways? - So, I think we've mentioned it a few times, but I'll mention it again. It's the importance of resources. - Resources, right. - And so I think to work effectively with communities needs to be resourcing. And both the VCFC and local authority sectors, both facing financial challenge. And so we've found it's been really important to access a whole range of funding sources. And so we've used a mixture of government innovation funding as Salafer mentioned. We've accessed local and national grants. We're drawing on international funds. We're using private sector funds, but it's very much a recognition that to do this work in a way that is sustainable, lasting, and will have impact, it needs resourcing. So that would be my first take away. My second would be that for me, resilience, it's a journey. So we sometimes start very small and then see where that takes us. But it's one that connects policy agendas. So we mentioned when we started about the Mayor's LiveWell project, and it's about recognizing the contribution that resilience makes to that. And that if people experience emergencies, then it's really important that they're prepared and that they've got the things in their life that they need to be able to come through the other side. So it's very much a journey for us and it's a journey for the people that we work with. And I think in Edgeley, they talk about resilience promoting fun, trust, and skills, brilliant, love that. And that is an amazing journey that's Edgeley and stoppore to going on. So, and I think my third point is that perhaps self-evident, but resilience is everyone's business. - So when I talk about it connecting and cutting across different policy areas, and we talk about resilience being, yes, understanding risk, preparing for, responding to emergencies, but also being so much more, then we're really making a shout out to everyone and saying, please make resilience part of your work. We will only become resilient communities, resilient organizations, a resilient country if this is everyone's business. - Wow, thank you very much. I don't think we could have said it any better than that. Salafia, over to you. What would be your top three takeaways, transferable learning for others in the community? - I mean, at first, you're absolutely agree with what Kathy was saying and I wish it went first now. (laughs) But maybe I'll build on some of her points. So for me, there's definitely something about the importance of co-production. So, I mean, co-production can be messy, but in a really good way and can be complicated, but it's so valuable. Sometimes people shy away from it because it's not straightforward, it's time-consuming, you don't always know what you're gonna get at the end of it and sometimes that's where the best sort of solutions come where you're not already thinking what's gonna come out the other end. But when co-production's done well, the rewards are huge. And I'm not saying we need to co-produce everything, there's definitely a time and a place for co-production, but I think we can ask ourselves when we start new projects. Can we work alongside communities to design and implement solutions rather than thinking about imposing top-down approaches that aren't gonna be owned and aren't gonna be sustainable in a community setting? My second point is really about the power of partnerships and collaboration. So for me, partnerships are the absolute backbone of societal resilience and I feel like majority of my work is around how do I build partnerships and relationships across sectors? And I think part of that is really about thinking how we bring the right voices into the space as well, how do we create an enabling environment where everybody can contribute meaningfully? And what does that really look like? So it's all very well saying that everyone's got a seat at the table if you invite them. But then I think we also need to think, okay, well, what makes it possible for people to make that meaningful contribution? Is it about having shared training? Is it about having shared values? Is it about trusted relationships? Why the partnerships? Or is it about funding and resource and capacity as Kathy mentioned? And finally, I think curiosity and connectivity is a massive one for me. I'm really nosy. (laughs) I suspect Kathy might agree with me. I like to sort of understand a little bit about everything 'cause it really helps me try and work out where I fit and where resilience could possibly fit. So I think curiosity is really key in resilience work. Don't always stay in your lane. Get curious, ask questions, explore what other people are doing. So much is happening already out there in communities in different sectors, in different organizations. As LRS, we absolutely do not need to own it all. We don't need to be responsible for it all. As Kathy said, resilience is everybody's business. But can we think about ways that we can connect in with that? Who do we need to talk to? Who can we ask? and simply knowing something exists sometimes is enough and an opportunity might share itself later to build resilience into other agendas. So I think that's it for me being open to learning and get curious. Fantastic, I love that, that's brilliant. And it really doesn't emphasize that exactly what you were talking about when you mentioned the framework earlier actually in terms of that whole society approach. And that is what is really coming through that it's a whole way of thinking, a whole way of listening, a whole way of talking and a whole way of planning good things together in order to help people before they need they need support and emergency and equally after as part of a much wider view of resilience, which is fantastic. Well, thank you so much to you both Kathy, Salafi for your time, for your expertise, for sharing your stories, for talking about some of the structures and also some of the solutions that you're working on here in Greater Manchester. It's been a pleasure to have you. Thank you very much, I think it's been our pleasure to be here as well. Absolutely, thank you for having us. This podcast was brought to you by the United Kingdom Resilience Academy, UKRA. The UKRA launched on the 28th of April 2025 to help deliver a better prepared and resilient society. For more information on how we are enhancing the resilience and training education offer, strengthening professionalisation and convening collaborative conversations, visit UKResilienceAcademy.org