Business Continuity
The guidance in this section is intended as general information about planning for emergencies. It is not intended to replace detailed guidance and planning specific to your business.
The Civic Contingencies Act 2004 places a duty on local authorities to promote Business Continuity Management and where possible provide Business Continuity advice to commercial and voluntary organisations.
What is Business Continuity?
Business Continuity Management (BCM) is a management process that helps manage the risks to the smooth running of an organisation or a delivery of a service, ensuring it can continue to operate to the extent required in the event of disruption.
Another term commonly used is Disaster Recovery (DR) which is an agreed and planned method of recovering your critical ICT infrastructure in the event of a major disruption.
Why Business Continuity?
Without effective business continuity planning a natural or man made disaster could result in any one of the following:
- A complete failure of your business
- Loss of income
- Loss or reputation or loss of your customers
- Financial, legal and regulatory penalties
- Human resource issues
- An impact on insurance payments or premiums
Business Continuity Planning
To plan for a successful response to business disruption you should:
- Understand the core, critical functions that your service delivers
- Consider what type of disruption might prevent your intended delivery of those functions e.g. fire, flood, loss of staff, ICT
- Assess the protective measures that you have in place that would enable you to maintain service delivery, even if to a less than optimum extent. Implement additional measures if current measures are deemed to be insufficient.
- Prepare a plan that could be used as a guide during times of disruption that ensures the protective measures are implemented.
- Maintain and test the plan to ensure it remains relevant and seek continual improvement.
Last Modified: 19/03/2025
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