Business Continuity Management : Cumbria County Council

Business Continuity Management (BCM) will provide Cumbria County Council with a framework for building resilience and the capability for an effective response to events that might threaten it, so safeguarding the interests of all those who live and work in Cumbria.

BCM is being implemented to ensure that in the event of an incident that causes disruption to the Council's operations, it can continue to provide essential services and recover the remaining services in a controlled manner.

The Chief Executive and Corporate Directors have responsibility for the Council's implementation of BCM, which will follow the Business Continuity Institute's Good Practice Guidelines and enable the Council to meet its obligations under the Civil Contingencies Act (2004).

The Business Continuity Management Policy and Procedure has been designed to enable responsible officers within each Directorate to develop Business Continuity Plans to meet the aforementioned Corporate requirements. Working on the principle that each Directorate is divided into functional sections, for example the Safer & Stronger Directorate is made up from Fire and Rescue, Trading Standards, Community Safety, Community Unit and the Resilience Unit each one a functional unit. Each functional unit should develop the following;

• List all of the services they provide

• From what locations

• Using what resources

• How many people currently supply the service from each location?

Once they have done that they need to consider what are the critical services they provide and to who (internal/external partners/communities) for example libraries might be able to close for the issue of books for an extended period but they are in times of crisis used as focal points for public information which is a critical service. They need to decide how long they could stop providing a service for, before the disruption became intolerable. For example a primary school may be able to close for two weeks, a secondary school for 7 days, a special needs unit 24 hours. They need to decide once having identified the maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPD) what is their absolute minimum acceptable level of service and what people/resources do they need to deliver it. Again this is subjective and based on their professional opinion. Each Directorate needs to look specifically at any service provision that needs to be delivered in 7 days or less (7 day or less MTPD).

• Identify critical service

• Identify the MTPD in days. ( If the MTPD is immediate, record a figure of 0)

• From what locations

• Using what resources

• How many people are required to supply the critical service from each location?

Directorates then need to look at the dependencies like Capita, Agilisys and Amey and their internal dependencies; who do they need to use to deliver their critical services. The Resilience Unit can offer advice and support to Directorates to enable them to meet their responsibilities.