Business continuity
Business continuity management helps Tunbridge Wells Borough Council manage disruption and continue, recover or appropriately prioritise critical public services. Council services identify their critical activities, dependencies, staffing and technology requirements, alternative working arrangements and recovery priorities. These arrangements are reviewed and exercised regularly.
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 voluntary organisation, you can identify critical activities and dependencies, plan workable alternatives and reduce the effect of disruption.
Why have a business continuity plan?
TWBC provides general business continuity advice and signposting for local businesses and voluntary organisations. This includes considering loss of premises, staff, utilities, suppliers, telecommunications and ICT, and identifying practical recovery arrangements.
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, please contact Info@Tunbridgewells.gov.uk