The three-day contact plan: what your household needs before an outage.

The most useful emergency tool might be a sheet of paper

A fully charged phone is valuable until its battery, signal or network fails. A written household contact plan makes it easier to act without searching through apps when time or power is limited.

The UK government's Be Ready guidance ↗ encourages households to think about how they could manage for at least three days during an emergency. The goal is not to predict a specific event. It is to make ordinary disruptions easier to handle.

Make a one-page contact plan

Write down the names and phone numbers of people you may need to reach, including a trusted person outside your immediate area. Add relevant utility numbers, your household meeting point and any practical needs that cannot be improvised. Keep the sheet somewhere accessible, and tell household members where it is.

Avoid placing account passwords, bank details, medical records or other sensitive information on a sheet that visitors could see. Keep any necessary medical details securely and agree with the person concerned how they should be accessed.

Make the plan work for real people

A plan for a family with young children differs from a plan for someone living alone. Consider mobility, pets, medication, language and whether someone depends on mains-powered equipment. Include neighbours only with their consent. For medical dependencies, agree a plan with appropriate professionals and providers rather than relying on a generic online checklist.

Practise a small scenario

Imagine the power is off for two hours and mobile data is unreliable. Who checks the official information? Who contacts a relative? Where is the torch? What happens if someone is away from home? If your answers require opening five apps, simplify them.

Keep the plan current

Review the sheet after a move, a new phone number or a change in household needs. The strongest plan is short enough that someone will actually use it.

Discussion prompt: What is the one contact or piece of information you would regret not having written down during a power cut?

Further reading: UK Government Be Ready ↗ and British Red Cross emergency preparation ↗. This is a planning exercise, not emergency advice for a specific incident.