This document gives guidance on how to develop recovery plans and renewal strategies from a major emergency, disaster or crisis (such as the COVID-19 pandemic). It provides guidelines on how to identify the short-term, transactional activities needed to reflect and learn, review preparedness of parts of the system impacted by the crisis, and reinstate operations to build preparedness. It also distinguishes a longer-term perspective of recovery, called “renewal”. In describing renewal, the document provides guidelines on how to identify visionary initiatives to address the strategic impacts and opportunities that have been exposed by the crisis and need to be addressed through transformational, ambitious initiatives. Recovery plans enhance preparedness following a crisis and renewal strategies enhance resilience. The guidelines cover how, in both recovery and renewal, there is a need to identify scalable activity on people, places, processes, power and partners.
This document is applicable to those involved in community, local, national and international recovery and renewal including staff from public, private, voluntary, community and social enterprise sectors, among others.