Business Continuity Awareness Week

Good business continuity management is all about being aware of what incidents could happen and how your business will respond if they do. A key part of this management is to have a business continuity plan which will help your business get back up and running if disaster strikes. 

Running from 16 to 20 March, this year’s awareness week is all about encouraging businesses to make sure their business continuity arrangements are fit for purpose. 

Leicester’s city mayor Peter Soulsby, who leads on resilience planning for Leicester City Council, said: “We have a duty to make sure that council services can continue to function if anything happens that might lead to a significant disruption. We have robust plans in place to help us get things back to normal as quickly as possible. Each year we carry out tests to make sure our plans work and our staff understand their responsibilities. We’re encouraging local businesses, no matter how big or small, to do the same.”

Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Prepared, Local Resilience Forum (LRF) has created a toolkit for businesses. It contains step by step information to help your business create a plan, test it out and maintain it so you’ll be better prepared to respond to any significant incident or emergency situation.

Leicestershire Police Chief Constable Simon Cole, who chairs the Local Resilience Forum, added: “Business continuity planning is about looking at what parts of your business you can’t afford to lose and ensuring you can maintain a service should it be disrupted. As a police force it is vital that we can continue to operate and maintain a service for residents in Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland in the event of any incident. As you’d expect we have various plans in place which are regularly tested and there is a wealth of information available to businesses to help them do the same and make sure they’re prepared.”

The toolkit along with other information and guidance is available on the LLR Prepared website www.llrprepared.org.uk

More information

Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland Prepared, Local Resilience Forum (LRF) formed in 2005 in response to the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. This act requires specific organisations across police areas to work together to prepare, respond and recover from different emergencies.  LLR Prepared is made up of members from 18 core responding agencies and a wide range of supporting agencies including the military, voluntary agencies and utility and transport companies.