Emergency planning and business continuity

Emergency planning

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council (in conjunction with Kent County Council) has certain responsibilities and powers to make, keep under review and revise plans to cope with the effects of a major civil emergency within all or parts of the borough.

A major emergency is defined as:

• an event or situation which threatens serious damage to human welfare in the United Kingdom or in a part or region
• an event or situation which threatens serious damage to the environment of the United Kingdom or of a part or region or,
• war or terrorism, which threatens serious damage to the security of the United Kingdom.

Disaster often strikes quickly and without warning. It can force you to evacuate your neighbourhood or confine you to your home. The likelihood is that most of us will never face a major incident during our lifetime but tragedies such as air and rail disasters, storms and floods do happen and therefore we must be prepared.

Tunbridge Wells Borough Council has a wealth of expertise, which is used daily to deliver services to the public. In an emergency, key specialists are called together to identify the problems, and make sure an effective response is being operated. This is managed though our emergency procedures.

Business continuity

Business continuity management is a process that helps Tunbridge Wells Borough Council manage risks, allowing us to continue to deliver services to the public in the event of a disruption, big or small, right through to recovery.

Any incident whether it is large or small, accident or deliberate can cause major disruption to your business. However, by planning in advance you will be able to resume your day to day business sooner.

This is where business continuity planning comes in. Its purpose is to help you to prepare strategies to cope with disruptions so that you can continue to deliver your businesses critical activities and reduce potential harm to staff.

By understanding the risks facing the everyday running of your business or organisation, you are better able to foresee problems and guard against them developing into serious disruptions.

Why have a business continuity plan?

It is important to plan for unforeseen circumstances. For example, what would you do if your workplace catches fire?

Some hard decisions will have to be made, and made quickly. For instance:

• what do you do with all your staff?
• how do you tell the community or customer that you cannot provide business or service as usual?
• how will you meet important deadlines?

The list of questions grows, and so do the levels of uncertainty and anxiety. Without a business continuity plan you will have to rely on an ad-hoc approach to deal with these.

For further information on business continuity, please visit the Business Continuity Institute website.

If you have any queries or require further information on this webpage, please contact our Emergency Planning team.

Community emergency planning

The Kent Resilience Forum ensures that the whole of Kent works together to improve the resilience of our county.  To find out more about how you, your business and your community can prepare for emergency please visit Kent Prepared.