The majority of local businesses are small to medium sized companies and sole traders and these businesses are more vulnerable to an incident or crisis than any other, yet with only a little bit of preparation you can make yourselves much more resilient.
What could go wrong
The key to business continuity is to understand the vulnerabilities of your business to disruptions and their impact. Come up with a simple plan that will allow you to continue doing whatever is time or output critical to keep the cash flowing.
The impact of a major incident may be:
- a loss of access to a site or office
- a severe and prolonged shortage of staff
- a loss of IT or telecommunications
- fuel shortages or transport network disruption
- a key business partner going under
- a critical piece of machinery failing
In many cases, a simple plan will ensure survival and happy customers but having no plan could put everything at risk.
A guide to business continuity planning
The purpose of Business Continuity Planning for us is to provide a clearly defined and documented policy, framework and operational direction to ensure that our critical services continue to be delivered.
We are happy to advise local businesses on any aspect of Business Continuity Planning. Contact us for more information.
Legislation and accreditation
The Civil Contingencies Act (2004) places obligations upon us in relation to Business Continuity. We have a legislative requirement to develop and maintain Business Continuity Plans to ensure that we can continue to deliver services to the public in the event of a significant incident affecting our operations. In addition to this, we provide advice and assistance to local businesses and voluntary organisations about Business Continuity Management.
We were the first Local Authority in the UK to be awarded the ISO 22301 from the British Standards Institute for our Business Continuity Management System.