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Read MoreBusiness Continuity & IT Disaster Recovery Planning for Public Sector Services
Teed’s consultants have helped local authorities, emergency services organisations and other government bodies develop, implement and exercise their business continuity and IT disaster recovery plans.
The importance of being able to continue to provide public services is paramount and having sound recovery strategies in place will ensure an appropriate response.
The Civil Contingencies Act 2004 delivers a single framework for civil protection in the UK and establishes a clear set of roles and responsibilities for those involved in emergency preparation and response at the local level. The Act states that local responders are divided into 2 categories, imposing a different set of duties on each, as follows:
Those in Category 1 are organisations at the core of the response to most emergencies (the emergency services, local authorities, NHS bodies). Category 1 responders are subject to the full set of civil protection duties. They will be required to:
- Assess the risk of emergencies occurring and use this to inform contingency planning
- Put in place emergency plans
- Put in place business continuity management arrangements
- Put in place arrangements to make information available to the public about civil protection matters and maintain arrangements to warn, inform and advise the public in the event of an emergency
- Share information with other local responders to enhance co-ordination
- Co-operate with other local responders to enhance co-ordination and efficiency
- Provide advice and assistance to businesses and voluntary organisations about business continuity management (local authorities only)
Category 2 organisations (the Health and Safety Executive, transport and utility companies) are ‘co-operating bodies’. They are less likely to be involved in the heart of planning work, but will be heavily involved in incidents that affect their own sector. Category 2 responders have a lesser set of duties - co-operating and sharing relevant information with other Category 1 and 2 responders.
Teed’s experienced consultants work with local authorities to help them build resilience within their own organisation through effective business continuity planning as well as enabling the wider community to respond and recover from incidents. We provide training and awareness programmes to their business communities designed to promote the importance of business continuity management and how to plan for adverse situations.
Projects often focus initially upon considering the loss of office and IT capability and we bring our experience to the table to allow inexpensive solutions and workarounds to be identified, where feasible.
It is equally important to understand how the impacts of all relevant threats/risks could affect the ability to maintain public services and to implement controls accordingly, for example, fuel strikes, severe weather, pandemic or other health alert, industrial action, regional incidents, loss of suppliers.