Family-specific

The parent page does the important thing, which is to say that a household plan built for healthy adults is not a plan. This adds the four items that are specific to Britain and are almost always missed.

The register nobody signs up for

The Priority Services Register is free, it takes about ten minutes, and it is the single most useful action on this page.

It tells your energy supplier, your electricity network operator and your water company that somebody in the household needs extra consideration. What that buys is real: advance notice of planned interruptions, priority contact during unplanned ones, and in some cases alternative arrangements such as bottled water delivery or support during an extended power cut.

Two things people get wrong.

It is not automatic and it is not shared. You have to register separately with your energy supplier, with the electricity network operator for your area, and with your water company. Doing one does not do the others.

Temporary counts. A new baby, a broken leg or a period of illness qualifies, and you can come off it afterwards. Households skip it because they picture it as being for somebody else.

Do it for the person, not the household. If a grandparent lives alone elsewhere, register them at their address, with their permission, and add yourself as a nominated contact so the supplier can reach you.

Who actually carries an adult downstairs

The parent page says mobility plan, who physically moves grandma, with what. The honest answer for most households is that nobody can, and knowing that changes the plan.

Carrying a non-ambulant adult down a staircase is genuinely difficult and needs training or equipment. Attempting it improvised injures both people, and it happens on stairs, in the dark, in a hurry.

So the plan is usually not evacuation. It is one of these:

1. Shelter in place, better. Make the ground floor warm and workable in advance: a bed downstairs if needed, the toilet arrangement thought through, the medicines to hand. This is the realistic answer for most flood alerts and every power cut.
2. Leave early, while walking is still possible. The tripwire for somebody with limited mobility must be set earlier than for everybody else, because the option disappears sooner. This is the practical consequence of the whole page.
3. Ask for help before you need to carry. Fire and rescue and the ambulance service have both equipment and people. Ringing early is not an imposition, and it is the point of registering above.
4. Know your equipment options now. An evacuation chair, a transfer belt, a slide sheet. If somebody in the house may need one, find out what exists before the night it matters.

Say this out loud as a family. It is an uncomfortable conversation and it is far better had over tea than on a landing.

The three month medicine supply, again

The parent page asks for a three month supply. As the medical companion sets out, UK repeat prescriptions run around 28 days by policy and that is not generally obtainable on request.

What is obtainable, and what to do instead:

• Order repeats the day they are due. This builds a fortnight of buffer permanently, at no cost and with no conversation.
• Keep the printed repeat list, generic names, doses and frequencies, in the document pouch.
• Know which ones are dangerous to stop suddenly, and treat those as the priority in any disruption.
• Register on the Priority Services Register if any of it is powered.
• Spare glasses, hearing aid batteries and a spare cane, exactly as the parent page says. These are the items with no waiting list and no policy attached, so simply buy the spares.

Pets, and the reason people do not leave

The pet plan is a human safety issue, because unwillingness to leave an animal is a documented reason people delay or refuse evacuation, and rest centres do not always take them.

• Find out now what happens to pets in your area's arrangements, and ask your reciprocal contact whether the dog is included. That question, asked in advance, removes the commonest reason a plan fails at the door.
• Check the microchip registration is current. A chip with an old phone number on it is a chip that does not work, and this is the commonest reason animals are not reunited. It takes five minutes online.
• A photo of you with the animal, as the parent page says, which is proof of ownership when nothing else is.
• Carrier per animal, lead, a month of food rotated, and any medicine. A cat that will not go in a carrier is a cat you cannot take, so practise it.
• Be honest about large animals. Horses and livestock need a plan that is made months ahead with other people, not one made on the day.

What to teach a child, and where

The parent page's list is right and one item on it is imported from somewhere else.

"If lost: hug a tree" is wilderness advice, and it is good wilderness advice. The far likelier British case is a child separated in a shop, a station, a park or a crowded event.

So teach both, and be explicit about which is which:

• Lost in a town, a shop or a crowd: stay where you are, and if nobody comes, find somebody who works there, or a police officer, or a family with children. The children's tier has the wording, and it is the same rule as the app's own guidance on which grown-ups to ask.
• Lost outdoors, walking or camping: stay put, stay visible, three blasts on the whistle, and wait. This is where hug a tree belongs.

And the parent page's most important item is the one to actually drill: full name, address, and the out-of-area number by heart. Practise it out loud until it comes without thinking, then check again in six months. A number written on a card in a pocket is good; a number a frightened child can say is better, and most children can learn one if it is practised as a rhyme or a song.