The Kent Resilience Forum (KRF) may not be a name familiar to many but it positions itself as the county's unified solution to everything from a nuclear meltdown at Dungeness to the collapse of the QEII Bridge at Dartford.

And in recent weeks its name has popped up daily as parts of the county ground to a halt as P&O suspended its ferry crossing, leading to gridlock on our roads.

But just what exactly is it? Who is on it and, given parts of the east of the county has spent much of the last few weeks in a state of paralysis due to the problems at the ports, does it actually deliver on its promises?

"The whole purpose of the KRF," explains its tactical lead, Toby Howe, "is to make sure there's a coordinated approach in reaction, training and event management throughout, so when we do have an incident, everyone is working together.

"And that incident can be far more than the road network - it could be flooding, or when we had foot and mouth in the county. All are coordinated by the forum - even down to when there was a dead whale on the beach a few years back."

It's certainly a wide remit. And, as Medway Council puts it, it's aim is to ensure "Kent and Medway have the ability to bounce back from disaster", meaning there's plenty of weight carried on its shoulders.

Toby Howe, tactical lead at Kent Resilience Forum and senior highway manager

Fortunately, its shoulders are broad, powerful and flexible.

Key constituent members of the forum are the key services upon which we rely - the police, fire, ambulance, coastguard and Environment Agency.

Below that sit all the county's district, county and unitary authorities along with the key health trusts.

Then, depending on the issue being dealt with, additional expertise will be drafted in to attend key strategic and tactical meetings.

So when Storm Eunice swept in earlier this year, the Met Office joined the regular meetings while the recent disruption at the ports saw the likes of National Highways (the government agency formerly known as the Highways Agency), Eurotunnel, the Port of Dover and various road haulage associations join the discussions.

In short, depending on the situation being coordinated or planned for, those organisations and authorities who will have the highest level of involvement will be involved.

As such, it is a revolving table of senior figures from each organisations inputting into the discussions with the aim to either respond to the problem the county faces, or creating a 'playbook' for those it anticipates - detailed strategies so everyone, is singing from the same proverbial song sheet.

And there are some sobering events they've had to prepare for.

Between them, they have formulated what's known as the 'Kent community risk register' - a sliding scale of potential catastrophes and challenges.

So, for example, on the 'very high risk' list are events such as the total failure of the nation's electricity network for five days or more, the spread of an infectious virus (sound familiar?) or the loss of the strategic road network.

The 'high risk' list includes extreme weather conditions (both in terms of heatwaves and disruptive snow), the collapse of the QEII Bridge or the Sheppey Crossing, or an incident in the Channel Tunnel.

All, it should be said, attain their high position not necessarily by their likelihood, but the severity of the impact they would have on the county.

Yet rarely has the forum come in for the sort of public criticism it has seen this month.

Dover District Council leader Cllr Trevor Bartlett threatened to withdraw the authority from its ranks after complaining his town "appears to be the ‘acceptable sacrifice’ with the KRF’s planning based on the acceptance of gridlock at Dover".

Toby Howe may not be an elected politician, but he's savvy enough not to be drawn in to the politics of a situation where Kent is so rarely a winner.

"My focus is on making sure we're doing the best for Kent overall," he says, "rather than focusing on just one town, but, yes, we hear what they're saying."

Of course, there's an argument to say that Kent is always at risk of the problems we have seen recently.

We are, after all, a county for which three of our four sides are defined by coastline. If there is any issue at the ports there will, inevitably, be a significant impact on the county's roads.

The bigger questions may be that when we have a situation as we have seen recently - when a major cross-Channel operator (in this case P&O) stops sailing - why is it Kent alone which takes the backlog of trucks? Certainly we should expect initial chaos given the sudden decision to suspend services; but for weeks after?

But much of this will be outside the remit of the forum. It needs central government intervention and more UK-wide co-ordination to hold HGVs back before they enter Kent.

"We do need a coordinated national approach," says Toby Howe, "but we do have input from many government departments to make sure they are aware of what's going on, so they can advise higher up, so when you hear the likes of [Transport Minister] Grant Shapps warning of problems, that's from our group and going all the way up to the very top.

"There's also the issue of the KRF putting pressure on the government and saying look 'Kent is suffering, the residents, the businesses, tourism - we need future planning so we don't suffer all the time'.

"Everyone within Kent is doing the best they can but I've been a resident and worked in Kent for many years now so as a resident I'm frustrated if I need to get out and see family and the roads are jammed. I fully understand and sympathise with everybody when these issues go on because there isn't that bigger solution being arranged.

"We have this happening every time.

"Stack has been in place since the 1980s we had a huge Stack in 2015. And each time there's talk but it's Kent that suffers each time."

Of course, this will be a familiar refrain. There's plenty of talk in Whitehall when the roads are snarled up and people can't get away for their holiday, but, as is still the case, apart from the inadequate Operation Brock, nothing has been done to genuinely ease the strain the county takes from being the nation's main gateway to the Continent.

So are they listening and, more importantly, acting?

"I like to think so. I'm an optimist," says the KRF's tactical lead, "and I think they do listen - but that's one thing, getting action is another isn't it?"

Resilience forums around the country sprang up in the last 10 years - a requirement of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 that each county should have a more coordinated approach to tackling local challenges in civil emergencies.

The Kent RF was formed in 2014 and, when not facing an on-going problem, will meet anywhere between once a month to once every three months. It is administered by a small team which draws its members from affiliated organisations and is based at the Kent Fire & Rescue headquarters in Tovil, near Maidstone. The Kent Resilience Team, as the centralised staff are known, receives a small amount of central funding. All of the forum's major players come to the table as part of their roles within one of the primary organisations.

As it approaches its first decade and with an eye firmly on the very recent past, does Toby Howe believes it works?

"What makes me comfortable that it does work," he explains, "is that the objectives set out for a local resilience forum do operate and when we're having a tactical or strategic meeting there is a voice from all parties and it includes those not directly in the forum. So for example with the recent situation, we'll have Logistics UK and the Road Haulage Association in there to feed in their input from the HGVs and logistics industries. We have the Port of Dover and Eurotunnel as part of it. So all the voices are heard and are part of the decisions that are made. It isn't KCC, it's not Kent Police, it's not National Highways who say this is what we're going to do, it is a joint decision from all parties that are in those meetings.

"Each organisation has to put their point forward and what they can and can't do.

"So yes, in an ideal world, we'd like 10,000 police on every single junction of the roads, but again they'll come back and say 'we have this level of resource', National Highways will say 'we've got this' and so we have to do with what's available. And luckily, we are getting as resourced as possible."

After each operation there will be a coming together of all the organisations to discuss what did - and did not - work well. All of which will go towards adjusting those playbooks.

"We all have different day jobs," Toby Howe adds, "but when something happens, we all know each other's strengths and weaknesses and can work as a good team to make sure we are getting the best out of each organisation."

Certainly, the last few years have seen it regularly called upon. From the pandemic to Brexit, storms to road chaos, the forum has certainly been kept busy.

Concludes Toby Howe, whose day job is as senior highway manager at Kent County Council: "We'd like it to get back to some sort of normality where it is just irregular incidents rather than all of things which seem to be falling down on us regularly."