Firstly, let me introduce myself. My name is Mark Rogers, and I am the Met Office Civil Contingencies Advisor for London and Southeast England. My role within the Met Office is to work alongside emergency responder partners, providing them with any weather-related information that they may need, especially during a period of severe weather. I also run the Advisor team’s online training offering, both for emergency and community responders.
If you have been linking in with Communities Prepared for some time, you will be aware that they offer a wide variety of excellent training courses to prepare you and your communities for emergencies that may impact you.
What may be less known is that the UK Met Office also provide training courses for Community responders and the Voluntary Sector and have just launched their July to December 2025 prospectus.
The Met Office is the UK’s National Met Service, and one of their core aims is to help people to make decisions to stay safe and thrive. Understanding the weather and climate, and knowing where you can find important information, enables people to be #WeatherReady.
In the new prospectus, the Met Office Civil Contingency Advisors are running three courses which provide you with information which can help you be prepared for what may lie ahead, both for short-term weather and our long-term climate.
The climate change course looks at the science around climate change, what changes and impacts we are already facing, what the latest projections are showing, and finally some of the important mitigation and adaptation ideas that need to be considered to try to reduce the potential impacts. This course also includes information on the Local Authority Climate Service which is an excellent new site from the Met Office where you can find out more information about the changes you are likely to see in your local area.
In the shorter term, the winter weather hazards course does what it says on the tin and looks at the different types of winter weather, explaining how they develop and their potential impacts.
The last of the three courses is the Met Office Information, Products and Services course which looks at the information provided by the Met Office to help people prepare for severe weather ahead of its arrival. This includes the National Severe Weather Warning Service, flooding information and the Met Office App and website.
The training runs on selected dates throughout the year. For further information please email training.cca@metoffice.gov.uk.
Did you know the Met Office website has a Community Resilience Hub? This provides essential information for you and your community to stay safe, prepared and proactive during times of severe weather? Download the Community Resilience leaflet (pdf) to share with your local community.
Thank you very much to Mark for contributing this blog to Communities Prepared. Be sure to get in contact regarding training, and keep up with The Met Office on their X, Linkedin, Instagram and Tiktok.