Pressure on companies to improve Business Continuity mounts

In the past few days there has been a lot of media attention on Business Continuity and the need to improve the numbers of companies planning for disruption.

The Continuity Forum has been at the forefront of this activity with Russell Price and John Sharp being featured widely across BBC Radio and TV, ITV News and Bloomberg. The Continuity Forum was also featured on the front page of the Financial Times and Associated Press spread the story still further.

There were 19 media pieces focussing on the need for organisations to ACT and invest in Business Continuity and building on the message from Commissioner James Hart of the City Police urging companies to update their planning. The FT ran an online debate with Commissioner Hart and Hamish Bryce, Chairman of the London Business Resilience Group, a partner of the Continuity Forum and part of the communication channels for the Government for London.

Questions ranged from advice on the separation distance for Recovery sites, the source of statistics used by Commissioner and issues surrounding Protective Zones within buildings.

There were also concerns expressed at the cost and time implications of BCM for smaller companies and recommendations on updating and testing of CCTV cameras. In our opinion one of the most important questions raised was related to litigation relating to CBRN or toxic attack.

Both Hamish and Mr Hart responded reminding people of the duty of care. James Hart said “Under the Health and Safety at Work Act, employers have a duty of care for their staff. Employers must be able to show that they have taken all reasonable steps to ensure the safety of their staff whilst in the workplace“ and Hamish Bryce adding “businesses do have a duty of care towards their staff while at work. The occupier is responsible at all times for their premises and they key part of any business continuity plan is how a company manages its premises and those resident therein during an incident. Government advice is Go in, Stay in, Tune in and only evacuate a building if told to do so by the facilities or security manager or the emergency services.

It is important to point out that this duty does not relate to just terrorist incidents but all involving toxic materials and it is an area often overlooked in planning that could create considerable legal liability. What was also rather interesting to us was the relatively few questions submitted and the fact that most were from those involved either directly or indirectly in the BCM sector. This perhaps more than anything shows that whilst progress is being made there is still a long way to go in promoting BCM to business more widely.