Civil Contingencies Act: Business Continuity Advice to Commercial and Voluntary Organisations Tony Part Civil Contingencies Act Team Cabinet 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

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

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?