Be prepared, and have a Business Continuity plan

The Civil Contingencies Act 2004, gave Local Authorities the duty to provide local businesses and voluntary organisations with advice on Business Continuity Management. This duty aims to help ensure local businesses are able to quickly recover from disruptions. A resilient business community creates a resilient County.

What is Business Continuity?

Business Continuity is a management process that provides a framework to ensure the resilience of your business to any eventuality, to help ensure continuity of service to your key customers and the protection of your brand and reputation. It provides a basis for planning to ensure your long-term ability to continue trading following a disruptive event. Here are some ways your business may be affected

• Unable to access premesis due to fire, flood, local evacuation
• Staff strike
• IT failure & loss of phone lines
• Power failure
• Flu pandemic / staff sickness
• Inability of staff to get to work, e.g. snow

Business Continuity Plans need to be clear, concise and tailored to the needs of the business. Unplanned events can have catastrophic effects and the disruptive incidents can come from accidents, criminal activity or natural disasters. Business Continuity should become part of the way you do business. It is better to plan for incidents, which may affect your business, rather than having to play "catch up" when a problem occurs.

Business Continuity needs to be considered by small companies as well as larger corporations. The key principles are the same for multi-nationals and small traders.

There are five steps to the Business Continuity Management process. See below for more information.