Civil Contingencies Act: Business Continuity Advice to Commercial and Voluntary Organisations

Tony PartCivil Contingencies Act TeamCabinet Office

Purpose of this presentation

• Brief overview of BCM promotion duty:– Rationale– Requirements and – Key messages

• Progress on implementation• National work on BCM promotion

BCM promotion: rationale• Building “Community resilience”

– Helping businesses help themselves

• Building stronger links with the business community

• Local authorities well placed to promote BC

Scope of the duty: awareness raising

• Must provide generic advice and assistance to the business and voluntary sector communities at large– Messages: (e.g.) risks, local civil protection

arrangements, steps businesses can take– Means of communication: websites, bulletins,

public meetings, forums

Scope of the duty: specific advice

• May provide more detailed advice and assistance to individual organisations– Discretionary, not compulsory– Likely to involve: company specific presentations, risk

assessment, plan development, exercising, training

• May refer organisations to sources of competent and experienced business continuity consultants – “Signposting”, not definitive recommendations

Key messages in the guidance

• Focus on the needs of businesses• Identify and engage other partners

– Within local authorities– Other local responders– Other public sector partners (e.g. RDAs, Business Links)– Representative groups and individual businesses

Progress on implementation

• Significant progress made, but still a long way to go:– 2/3 of local authorities have mechanisms to get generic messages

to the business community at large– Most BCM promotion work is passive and one-way at this stage– But some excellent work underway

• Greater scope for:– Collaborative working– Learning from each other

Norfolk Major Incident Team (NORMIT)

• Public Private partnership• 111 members

• Specific advice on a cost recovery basis– Plan consultation, auditing and testing

– Exercise development, management and analysis

– Emergency management training

– Members mutual aid database of resources

http://www.normit.org

London Prepared

• Pan London approach• 10 minute checklist• Business Impact Analysis• Business Continuity Plan Template• Advice on exercising

http://www.londonprepared.gov.uk

BCM Survey

• Chartered Management Institute, supported by Cabinet Office

• 1150 respondents across all sectors from all sizes of organisation and from all areas of the UK

BCM Survey Results

• 77% of managers reported that BCM is important in their organisations

• Only 49% of organisations have business continuity plans in place. However, 94% of those who have plans and have had to invoke them agreed that they reduced disruption.

• Only 37% of those organisations with plans exercised them. However, 79% of those who did identified and remedied shortcoming as a result.

BCM Survey Results

• Organisations asked for more guidance– 50% asked for advice on creating business continuity plans– 42% asked for case studies

• 70% wanted web based materials• 53% wanted printed materials

National work – identifying and disseminating good practice

• Work steered by practitioner group (including business representatives)

• Work programme– National promotional leaflet– National toolkit– Good practice examples– Drivers to improve take-up

National Promotional Leaflet

• National messages• Local branding• Distributed locally

National Toolkit• It is envisaged that it will include:

– a workbook setting out the steps an organisation should go through

– business continuity checklist

– business continuity plan template

– exercise scenarios • April 2007• Available through ‘Preparing for Emergencies’ and the Business

Link website

Good Practice Examples• Advice for local authorities focussing on:

– developing a strategy

– liaison with other responders

– using networks

– encouraging take-up (particularly amongst SMEs)

– measuring effectiveness

– advice on the identifying case studies

Drivers to encourage take-up

• Public Sector procurement• Insurance industry• Banking industry• Accountancy professionals

Any Questions?