How resilient is your business to disaster?

The 1996 Manchester bombing had a devastating affect on local businesses. With a 700m cordon, the bomb affected over 600 businesses. Within 6 months 250 of these had gone out of business.

The estimated cost of the Manchester bomb was £100m, with an additional £400m of insurance claims.

More likely threats to your business may be from fire, theft, fraud or vandalism. Serious storms, floods or water escape from other sources can also have a major impact. Flooding on average costs the UK £600m per annum, and the January 1990 storms causing insurance losses of £500m.

Many of the businesses that survived the Manchester bomb had Business Continuity Management plans in place – however, it has been assessed that businesses affected by a disaster that do not have a plan in place only have a 50% chance of surviving the following 12 months.

Depending on the size and nature of your business you may require more or less comprehensive plans to be in place. By following the links to the UK Resilience website you are able to self assess your business to see how prepared you already are, and find out more information on whether you should have further measures in place.

www.londonprepared.gov.uk/business/businesscont/ takes you through a process of self assessment to see whether you are at risk. It then has advice and guidance that is tailored to your size of business, whether you employ less than 10 staff or more than 250. It provides guidance on the principles of creating a plan - then testing the plan and training your staff.

The UK Resilience website, has a variety of further guidance for all sizes of businesses covering Risk Management, Business Continuity, Terrorism, Bombs and many more. It also has information about forthcoming conferences and seminars.

The Nottingham and Nottinghamshire Local Resilience Forum website has further information on Business Continuity.

The Business Continuity Institute provides best practice advice and guidance which is available to download online at www.thebci.org/