Contribute to the local or national resilience and security agendas.
Apprentices learn to assess and manage the risks that can disrupt organisations and communities, from flooding and industrial accidents to pandemics and failures in critical national infrastructure. The programme covers the full emergency cycle: risk assessment and mitigation, emergency planning, exercise design and delivery, incident response, and post-incident recovery. Apprentices also develop an understanding of the legislative framework governing resilience work, including the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 and COMAH regulations, and how to apply governance structures to assure organisational performance.
On a typical week, an apprentice might be updating risk registers, contributing to multi-agency planning documents, or supporting the design and delivery of tabletop exercises. They will attend Local Resilience Forum meetings, liaise with Category 1 and Category 2 partners such as the emergency services, NHS bodies, and utility companies, and draft briefings for senior stakeholders. Record-keeping, post-incident debriefs, and identifying lessons learned are regular tasks. Some roles include on-call duties, requiring the ability to respond to live incidents outside standard working hours.
Completing this apprenticeship typically leads to roles such as emergency planning officer, resilience advisor, civil contingencies officer, or resilience and response officer. Employers span a wide range of sectors: local authorities, fire and rescue services, police, NHS trusts, the military, utility providers, government departments, and private sector organisations subject to major hazard regulation. With experience, professionals can progress to senior resilience manager or head of emergency planning positions, or move into consultancy and national-level advisory roles.
Sorted by achievement rate.
No training providers currently listed for this standard.
Completers typically move into, or consolidate in, roles such as Emergency Planning Officer, Civil Contingencies Officer, Resilience and Response Officer, Emergency Preparedness Officer, and Resilience Advisor. These posts involve maintaining community risk registers, designing and running exercises, writing emergency plans, and supporting the response to live incidents. Employers include local authorities, NHS trusts, police and fire services, utility companies, and major hazard site operators subject to COMAH regulation.
Within three to five years, many practitioners advance to Senior Emergency Planning Officer, Resilience Manager, or Head of Emergency Planning. From there, two distinct tracks open up. The leadership route leads to roles such as Director of Risk and Resilience or Head of Civil Contingencies, with responsibility for strategy, budgets, and cross-agency partnerships. The specialist route tends toward technical depth in areas such as critical national infrastructure protection, major hazard regulation, or business continuity, often moving between sectors. Chartered membership of relevant professional bodies typically accompanies progression at this level.
Demand sits across a wide mix of public and private sector organisations. Category 1 responders, including local authorities, NHS bodies, and the emergency services, are consistent hirers. Category 2 organisations such as electricity, gas, water, and transport operators also maintain dedicated resilience functions. Central government departments, the Ministry of Defence, and large voluntary sector organisations employ resilience professionals at a national level. Private sector employers include chemical, nuclear, and pipeline operators where statutory obligations under COMAH or equivalent regulations require specialist in-house capacity.
Throughout the programme, apprentices build competence in their role while remaining employed, applying knowledge and skills directly to their organisation's resilience and emergency planning work. Before moving to final assessment, they must pass a gateway review, a readiness check carried out by the employer and training provider to confirm the apprentice has developed the required knowledge, skills, and behaviours across the full standard. Final assessment then confirms whether the apprentice can perform at the level expected of a qualified resilience and emergencies professional. Assessment models for many Level 6 standards are currently being updated, so check the standard's gov.uk page for the current specification.
Building a strong body of workplace evidence from the start of the programme gives apprentices the best foundation for final assessment. This means keeping records of real decisions, plans, exercises, and stakeholder engagements as they happen, rather than attempting to reconstruct them later. Close, regular communication with both the employer and the training provider is important for tracking progress against the standard's knowledge, skills, and behaviours and for identifying any gaps well before the gateway review.
Look for providers whose tutors have direct backgrounds in emergency planning, civil contingencies, or crisis management, ideally across more than one sector (blue light, local authority, NHS, or regulated industry). The training should explicitly address the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, COMAH regulations, and the full emergency cycle, not just theoretical risk frameworks. On FATP profiles, achievement rates above 65% are the baseline; given the 40-month programme length, anything meaningfully below that warrants scrutiny. Check that providers run, or facilitate access to, realistic exercise design and delivery, since planning and running exercises is a core competency at this level.
Be cautious of providers who cannot show tutors with operational or planning roles in Category 1 or Category 2 organisations. Generic business continuity or health and safety content dressed up as resilience training is a common mismatch for this standard. A high enrolment count alongside a low or declining achievement rate often signals weak pastoral support across the long programme duration. Vague answers about how stakeholder engagement skills are assessed, or no evidence of multi-agency exercise scenarios in the curriculum, suggest the provision may not meet the depth this occupation demands.
Candidates must be employed in a role with genuine resilience or emergency planning responsibilities. Employers typically look for existing experience in protective services, local government, the NHS, utilities, or a regulated industry, though entry routes vary by organisation. There is no single mandated prior qualification, but the work content is degree-level, so apprentices need the literacy and analytical ability to study at Level 6 alongside their job. Check individual provider entry requirements before applying.
The typical duration is around 40 months, though the exact minimum and any off-the-job training requirements are subject to ongoing reform under Skills England. Apprentices remain employed throughout and apply their learning directly to live resilience work, exercises, and incident response. For the current specification, including time commitment details, check the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education page for standard reference ST0707 on gov.uk.
Apprentices must reach the gateway before their end-point assessment, demonstrating the required knowledge, skills, and behaviours across the full emergency cycle. Assessment models for many Level 6 standards are being updated, so the specific end-point assessment methods may differ from older versions of the standard. The current assessment plan is published alongside the standard on the gov.uk Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education website. Apprentices should expect to evidence independent working, stakeholder engagement, and decision-making under realistic conditions.
The funding band for this standard is £23,000, which is the maximum that can be drawn from the apprenticeship levy or co-investment arrangement. Levy-paying employers (broadly those with a pay bill above £3 million) use their Digital Apprenticeship Service account. Smaller employers pay 5 per cent of the training cost and the government contributes the rest. Employers with fewer than 50 employees taking on an apprentice aged 16 to 18 pay nothing. Funding rules are set by the Department for Education and are worth confirming with your training provider.
Day-to-day work typically involves assessing hazards and threats, maintaining and testing emergency plans, designing and running exercises, and liaising with partners across local resilience forums, blue-light services, local authorities, and the voluntary sector. Apprentices keep records of decisions and rationale, analyse intelligence and data to support planning, and contribute to debriefs after exercises or real incidents. Some posts include on-call responsibilities requiring the ability to respond to incidents at any time.
Graduates typically move into senior emergency planning, resilience advisory, or civil contingencies officer roles within Category 1 or Category 2 organisations, central government, or the private sector. The Level 6 qualification provides a foundation for chartered membership pathways with relevant professional bodies in emergency management. Some progress into consultancy, academic research, or specialist roles in areas such as critical national infrastructure protection, counter-terrorism preparedness, or international disaster risk reduction.
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Curated by Alex Lockey, FATP founder and editor. Last reviewed: .
Sources include the apprenticeship's official specification on apprenticeships.gov.uk, Skills England guidance, IfATE archive records, DWP funding bands, and provider data sourced directly from the public Apprenticeship Provider and Assessment Register (APAR). Standard reference: 707.
Some sections on this page were drafted with AI assistance from published source data and reviewed by a human editor before publication. See our editorial methodology for how we maintain this content. Spotted something out of date? Tell us.