People & communities

Health and safety

While Sydney is a safe place to live, work and play, we have a responsibility to increase and enhance community health and safety.

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NSW Police Force

For all emergencies please dial 000 (triple zero). If your matter is not an emergency, call 131 444 or contact your local police station.

Sydney Local Health District

Why it’s important to us

Whether you live or work in our area, it’s important to us that you feel safe at all times.

We know that good preparation and well-implemented strategies can not only improve the quality of life of our residents but also save lives.

Sydney enjoys a reputation as one of the safest and most liveable cities in the world. From time to time, there can be emergencies in the city requiring a significant coordinated response from emergency services and other government agencies such as health and transport.

Severe storms with strong winds and lightning strikes, heavy rainfall and flash flooding, and extreme heat during a heatwave are the most likely emergency and disaster impacts for our residents, workers and visitors.

Other impacts could include health emergencies such as a major influenza outbreak causing service disruptions in the local area.

It's our priority to do everything in our power to ensure that our communities have access to help when needed and feel safe at home and work.

Evacuation and emergency situations

Evacuation plans

The Sydney and North Sydney CBD evacuation plan was developed by emergency service agencies and government including NSW Police Force, Fire and Rescue NSW, Ambulance Service of NSW, NSW State Emergency Service, Transport for NSW, City of Sydney and North Sydney councils.

You can help effectively manage evacuations in the city by:

  • knowing your roles and responsibilities under the plan
  • monitoring emergency events before, during and after the event
  • understanding when to evacuate and when to shelter in place
  • being aware of safe evacuation routes out of the city centre.

What to do in emergencies

Resilience NSW provides information for individuals, councils, community service organisations and businesses to become disaster ready through its Get Ready Sydney initiative.

To manage a coordinated response, we've worked with emergency service agencies in the local area to develop the local emergency management plan. The plan describes the arrangements to prepare for, respond to, and recover from emergencies.

Building and business owners and managers should develop an emergency management plan suited to their local environment.

You can help effectively manage emergency events in the city:

  • Take responsibility and prepare a personal emergency plan.
  • Know who to contact in an emergency.
  • Check on your friends, family and neighbours before, during and after emergency events.
  • Monitor emergency events before, during and after an emergency.

Our emergency preparation guides will provide you with some simple steps you can take to prepare for these emergencies or potential disasters. There are many sources of information to help you before, during and after an emergency or disaster.

Crime prevention and safety

We work on crime prevention campaigns and initiatives with NSW Police and other organisations to help reduce the already-low crime rates in Sydney.

Crimes against the person such as assault and robbery are unavoidable in large cities but we work hard to counter street crime and violence. Our community safety action plan sets out our contribution to making Sydney a safe and resilient place to live, visit, work and study.

Domestic and family violence support guide cover

Guides

Domestic and family violence support

A guide for people who have experienced or are supporting someone who is experiencing domestic and family violence.
Published 13 February 2023

Business crime prevention

Produced with NSW Police, our helpful videos provide tips to keep your business, employees and customers safe from fraudulent acts.

Transcripts available in English, 简体中文 – Chinese (simplified), 繁體中文 – Chinese (traditional), Bahasa Indonesia – Indonesian, 한국어 – Korean, and ภาษาไทย – Thai.

Donating goods to those in need

The NSW Government, on behalf of all local councils, has commissioned not-for-profit organisation GIVIT to coordinate the donation of goods and services in bushfire-affected communities.

While affected communities are grateful for the donations of food and supplies, they request these are no longer provided directly. There simply aren't enough resources to manage and distribute donated goods as efforts are focused on rebuilding local communities.

GIVIT captures public and corporate pledges of assistance online and helps to coordinate and manage donations to those in need.

The organisation works with local councils, charities and community groups to match a donation to a recipient in need.

This ensures those in need get exactly what they need when they need it most. It also eliminates the need for storage and sorting of donations and potential disposal of unwanted goods.

Money received by GIVIT is used to buy essential items from local businesses to help economic recovery

City of Sydney News

2 meals on wheels volunteers packing food in a kitchenPublic health & safety programs
Community safety action plan 2019-2023Strategies & action plansCommunity safety action planPublished 28 September 2020
community recovery planStrategies & action plansCommunity recovery planPublished 30 June 2020