Civil emergencies

Business Continuity

All Bedfordshire Local Authorities through the Bedfordshire and Luton Local Resilience Forum have a duty under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 to ensure that local businesses are made aware of the importance of Business Continuity plans in major incident situations. Bedford Borough Council’s role as a member of the Bedfordshire and Luton Local Resilience Forum is to advise local businesses of the information available nationally to help them formulate their own specific Business Continuity plans.

For businesses to continue to function in the event of a major incident/disaster or indeed the failure of a key business enabler, it is important that businesses have Business Continuity Plans in place. Business Continuity Plans minimise the time a service is unavailable for, and support the recovery of normal business operations.

Your Business

Having Business Continuity Plans in place could significantly increase the chances of you successfully getting your business back to full operation following an unforeseen destructive major incident. The Manchester Bombings in 1996 affected over 600 businesses and of these 250 were closed within 6 months. Whilst many of these businesses had continuity plans in place, it has been assessed that businesses affected by a disaster that do not have a plan in place only have a 50% chance of surviving the next 12 months. The Government’s ‘London Prepared’ website concurs with this assessment and indeed reports that:

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

The size of your business will determine how comprehensive your business continuity plan should be. The aforementioned Government website ‘London Prepared outlines issues for businesses to consider on the basis of the number of employees and provides specific advice and guidance tailored to the size of your business.

For a useful reality check to determine how far you have got with your business continuity planning or to gain an understanding of the various criteria that businesses should consider when continuity planning, please refer to the 10 minute assessment.

Business Continuity Ten Minute Assessment. ( 27 KB ) - DOWNLOAD

General Business Continuity Information

For a wider perspective - the UK Resilience website has guidance for all sizes of businesses covering Risk Management, Business Continuity, Terrorism, Bombs etc. It also has information about forthcoming conferences and seminars, as well as links to the Home Office and other Government websites.

Bedfordshire County Council has produced a comprehensive web-page that broadly addresses business continuity as well as providing key information that businesses should give careful consideration to.

The Business Continuity Institute www.thebci.org/ provides best practice advice and guidance. The Good Practice Guidelines (2005) document can be downloaded from their website.

For a link to the Environment Agency’s ‘Flood Preparation Guide for Business' please click here.

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