WEST Dorset District Council is updating ts community resilience plan and Bridport Town Council has been asked to look at it.

Town clerk Bob Gillis said at the environment and social well being committee that the town council had always been committed to having its own resilience plan.

He said: “It has all come into focus with all the recent flooding.”

Councillor Dave Rickard said questions on longer term resilience would be looked at the next meeting of the West Dorset climate change steering group.

He said: “We are getting more extreme weather and detailed and telling questions are being asked about what we would do when we get power outages for more than 24 hours.

“A lot of our functions, personal and civic, are totally dependent and back power is not available – things like central heating systems, sewage treatment and pumping.

“They can go cope for a certain amount of time on generators but if every sewage works over a large area goes out you have a serious problem. These questions may or may not be covered in this more general plan.”

He suggested the town council could host a ‘round table’ and get all the agencies together to ask the questions and see whether the plan put forward would actually cope.

Cllr Anne-Marie Vincent said: “You realise why we all rely so heavily on electricity when the power goes out.”

Cllr Rickard said when the town had a major power cut a few years ago at least 60 per cent of shops had to close.