Staying safe in an emergency

There are steps you and your organisation can take to make sure your critical services carry on when an emergency or incident occurs.

Business continuity is about knowing and managing risks. They affect the everyday running of an organisation. It helps you prepare for disruption by planning new ways of working. This lets you keep delivering services and recover quickly.

The key points are:

• what activities does the business need to maintain
• how will you go about it
• who does what

Business continuity plans

First, identify your critical functions, then create a business continuity plan containing:

• the purpose and scope of your plan
• document management information such as document owner, version control, distribution list
• how will the plan be activated - when by whom and how
• roles and responsibilities
• critical functions and activities to be recovered, timescales and recovery levels needed
• resources available to deliver critical functions during the first 24 hours and up to 2 weeks from the event, and processes for mobilising resources such as equipment, IT, transport and staff needed to maintain operations
• actions to be carried out, in what timescale and who will do these
• key contact details - internal and external
• clear communication processes - who reports to whom or cascades information (contact details should be tested regularly on at least a 6 monthly basis)
• process for standing down and returning to normal business

Make sure you regularly review your business continuity plan. 

Make sure staff are fully aware of their role in an emergency.

Start with a minimal plan and test it with a short exercise to ensure its suitability for purpose. You can also complete a brief business card and give it to your staff for them to carry with them. 

Useful links

• Preparing for emergencies from GOV.UK
• Preparing your business from London.gov.uk
• Business Continuity Institute

Contact us

The Emergency Planning Team 

Email emergency.planning@southwark.gov.uk