Stay in touch when phone or internet services fail

Your mobile may hold your contacts, maps and messages in one place. That is convenient until its battery runs out or the network is unavailable. Start with a few important details you can still reach without it.

Write down the numbers you would most need, including someone you can contact about family or caring arrangements. Keep the list somewhere you can find. A battery-powered or wind-up radio offers another way to hear public information if online services fail.

1. Choose the people who need to hear from you if normal contact is disrupted. Agree what you will try first and what you will do if a message cannot get through.
2. Discuss a meeting place where appropriate, taking account of who can get there. Don't make the plan depend on everyone being able to drive or walk the same distance.
3. Keep essential addresses or travel information available offline. Think about someone returning from school, work or a care visit who might not be with you when an outage starts.
4. Tell the people involved where the paper contact list is. A plan stored only in one person's phone is hard for anyone else to use.

A digital landline makes calls through a broadband connection and needs power to work. Keeping an old handset does not remove that dependency. Ask your phone provider what happens during a power cut and how emergency calls would be made.

If you rely on a landline because there is no reliable mobile alternative, explain that to the provider. Ofcom requires an appropriate free backup solution for people who depend on their landline for emergency calls. Ask how to use it and what its limits are.

Check care alarms and other connected devices with both the device provider and phone provider. A working telephone does not by itself prove that a separate alarm will work through an outage.

UK Emergency Alerts can send urgent warnings and instructions to compatible mobile phones in an affected area. You don't need to register, install an app or turn on mobile data. The service uses mobile networks, so it is not a substitute for every other source of information.

A switched-off phone, a phone using only Wi-Fi, or a phone outside the compatible network coverage may not receive an alert. Keep other ways to hear official advice. If an alert arrives, read the instructions when it is safe to do so; don't read or respond while driving.

Use the official service or authority named in the information to check what applies to you. Emergency Alerts will not ask you to provide personal details.

Use the boxes while you read, or tick them on a printed copy. This site doesn't save your ticks.

• Important numbers can be read without unlocking or charging a phone.
• The people in the plan understand the fallback contact or meeting arrangement.
• You have checked landline and care-alarm behaviour with the relevant providers.
• A radio or another agreed information route is available alongside mobile alerts.

Keep the contact arrangements with your household plan, so they sit alongside getting home and helping anyone who needs support. Use the power-cut guide for the electricity side. Repeating the same numbers in several unrelated lists makes them harder to keep current.