Vic emergency arms need to plan better: AG

Victoria's natural disasters are predicted to become more severe but the two main emergency response agencies are not managing their volunteers effectively, a report has found.

Auditor-General John Doyle says neither the CFA or SES have a sound understanding of their volunteer workforce and their recruitment is ad hoc and not based on need.

"CFA does not know how many volunteers it needs and SES's data on how many volunteers it has is unreliable," Mr Doyle said in his Managing Emergency Services Volunteers report tabled in the Victorian parliament on Wednesday.

Further, he found both agencies were unable to identify skills gaps and were overestimating their capacity to respond to emergencies.

Mr Doyle said addressing these issues was critical to the long-term sustainability of the agencies, which are the main ones to respond to emergencies and which both rely mainly on a volunteer workforce.

This was particularly important as the state is prone to natural disasters and these are predicted to become more regular and more severe.

Mr Doyle said both agencies have responded positively to his report and the CFA is putting in programs to address concerns raised and SES says it will create a plan to address all of his recommendations.

CFA has about 57,000 volunteers while the SES reports it has about 5000.