THERE have been some terrible events this year, including terrorist incidents and the Grenfell fire. While the investigations into those appalling events continue, we should turn our attention locally to emergency planning.

Our progress in writing local emergency plans has been slow. We’ll speed that up.

One of things we must address is how we communicate when there are problems in the town.

This is urgent as we are facing an unprecedented series of road and rail closures in the coming months. We need to get the message out that Ludlow is still open for business, or we will risk losing shops, cafes and bars, and jobs.

The rail line will be closed at weekends for a month.

The A49, our only primary road, is slated for a nine-day closure at Onibury. Upper Galdeford is due to be closed during the day for 11 days in August, disrupting buses, shoppers and tourists. Corve Street will be shut for up to three days.

These are planned events. We also need to be ready for unplanned events, like the closure of Ludford Bridge last year which had a serious impact on local businesses.

We are working on plans to advertise that “Ludlow is open for business” during the closures. We aim to have plans in place and signs in store to allow us to quickly get the message out about how to get into and around Ludlow when closures or incidents occur.

We are far more likely to suffer a flood event or road accident than an incident on the scale of those that have occurred in our cities. But we do need to be prepared.