Business Continuity Promotion – Businesses and Voluntary Organisations

Business Continuity Planning is important to every business regardless of size and sector.  Unplanned events such as floods, fire, terrorism threats or epidemics such as foot and mouth can have a devastating effect on small businesses.

By creating a continuity plan, businesses are able to plan for the unexpected ensuring that minimal disruption is caused to the business and it’s customers.

You may never need to refer to your continuity plan, by producing one you are making sure that your business will be in the best possible position should the unexpected happen. In these uncertain times, it makes sense to plan and prepare your business for the unexpected.

What is Business Continuity?

Business Continuity is about having plans in place to make sure your business/organisation is able to operate in the event of an emergency.

Having a tried and tested plan in place will ensure your business/organisation suffers the least possible disruption - ultimately enabling it to continue operating.

Reasons to have a plan

1. 80% of businesses affected by a major incident close within 18 months.
2. 90% of businesses that lose data from a disaster are forced to shut within 2 years.
3. 58% of UK organisations were disrupted by September 11th. One in eight was seriously affected.

Without effective business continuity planning a natural or man made disaster could result in:

·         Complete failure of your business;

·         Loss of Income;

·         Loss of Reputation and/or loss of customers; 

·         Financial Legal and Regulatory Penalties; 

·         Human Resource Issues;

·         An impact on insurance premiums.

You may already have a plan but:

·         are your staff aware of it?

·         When did you review it?

·         Have you ever tested it?

Developing a Plan

The following guidelines might help you to develop a plan:

• Analyse Your Business – make a list of the critical services in priority order and consider where you business may be vulnerable e.g. suppliers, partners, buildings, people, systems and processes, timescales, power.
• Assess the Risks – ask yourself two questions – how likely is it to happen and what effect will it have on your business.
• Prepare a Plan – Prepare a simple generic plan to enable you to continue each of your critical services, which also details specific actions for different types of risk and different services.
• Test your Plan – Involve your employees in the planning process and make sure that you discuss your plan with all employees when complete ensuring that any training needs are addressed. Carry Out an exercise to test your plan. Ensure that you review your plan on a regular basis.

The Local Authority role in Business Continuity

Business Continuity is seen as a way of improving resilience within the Community. As part of seven new responsibilities under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 the Council is required to promote Business Continuity to Businesses and the Voluntary Sector. 

Your local Council(s) cannot prepare your plans for you – as only you know your business and your critical processes. But what we can do is provide links to useful websites and details of supplementary information. The attached pages on this site, that can assist you in your Business Continuity planning process, have be prepared with the assistance and advice of Business Link Cumbria.  

For more information:
www.ukresilience.info/
www.thebci.org
www.londonprepared.gov.uk
www.pfe.gov.uk