advice

National Audit Office lauches Self Assessment tools for Local Authorities

The Civil Contingencies Act supports the promotion of greater resilience among public agencies and the wider local community.

The Act makes now an appropriate time for authorities to review current arrangements. It promotes business continuity as well as emergency planning, recognising that preparedness is an issue for the whole local authority and the businesses within the area. There is no preferred structure for delivering the services covered by the bill. Much will depend on local issues (for example local hazards such as the number of COMAH sites; the internal arrangements of the local authority regarding risk management and links between emergency planning, risk and business continuity arrangements.)

Companies today face a rapidly shifting landscape when it comes to risk. The threat of a terrorist attack on an important location, ever more burdensome regulation and the trend towards moving operations to lower cost areas of the world are all shaping the risks that companies face.

 Supply Chain failures cause Serious Damage

Like a heart-attack victim felled by poor circulation, companies who suffer a sudden blockage in their flow of products to consumers face a long road to recovery, says Vinod Singhal, professor of operations management at Georgia Tech College of Management.

“Disruptions in the supply chain devastate corporate performance,” says Singhal, who recently conducted several related studies of supply-chain failure in collaboration with Kevin Hendricks, associate professor of operations management at the University of Western Ontario. Their research shows that disruptions do long-lasting damage to companies’ stock prices and profitability and need to be more thoroughly addressed by Business Continuity planners

The Australian Prudential Regulation Authority (APRA) yesterday issued prudential standards on business continuity management for authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) and general insurers.

The new prudential standards aim to ensure that ADIs and general insurers implement a ‘whole of business’ approach to business continuity management, appropriate to the nature and scale of their individual operations.

The Strategic Emergency Plan is a comprehensive overview of London's co-ordinated response to a catastrophic incident.

It comprises synopses of the key plans on which London's resilience is based - for example the Command and Control Protocol, the Communication Protocol, the Mass Fatalities plan, the large-scale evacuation framework and the Site Clearance plan.

Reseach finds that UK organisations are ‘sitting ducks’ as they fail to plan for major disruptions

07 March 2005

UK organisations admit they are failing to protect key assets and the ability to function in the face of major disruptions, according to research published today by the Chartered Management Institute. The 2005 Business Continuity Management Survey uncovered alarming inactivity, with organisations ignoring threats to their business, neglecting the needs of their managers, and not communicating plans with employees.

As forecast by the Continuity Forum, pressure is mounting on Business to ensure that Business Continuity Plans are at the heart of an organisations planning.

Much of the reason is the fear from the sector that still too few organisations are developing an effective response to the risks facing Business, particularly with regard to major Terror attacks and other events, such as the Blackout in South London last winter and the Telecoms Failure in Manchester this Spring. The industry is also concerned about the effects of the recent weather events which have disrupted businesses across the UK and caused millions of pounds of damage.