Emergency Planning Officer to report. 

The Committee received an update on Business Continuity from the Emergency Planning Officer.

The Emergency Planning Officer gave an overview of the subject; advising it was the process for assessing the risks faced by the organisation, and analysing the impacts they may have on day to day operations. Business Continuity Management was about identifying what parts of the business it could not afford to lose, such as premises, staff or information and putting the necessary plans and mitigations in place so if the worst happens it could maintain essential services.

The Emergency Planning Officer advised:

·       Exercising and testing was a vital element of the business continuity management life cycle as it ensures our arrangements were validated.

·       Last year SMT signed off the exercise and testing strategy which outlined the frequency of exercises and types of exercises that would be completed across the organisation.

·       In addition to exercising, the Council had recently procured organisational resilience training for all managers. This was a key recommendation following the exercises. This training was currently being installed, ready to be rolled-out.

·       There were a range of plans in place to help the council respond to a business interruption or incident. These included the Business Continuity Implementation Plan, the Business Continuity Policy and Service Resumption Plans. There were also specific risk plans such as the Fuel Shortage Plan (which outlined the council’s response to a fuel shortage)

·       There were supporting plans such as the crisis communications framework which was currently in development with the communications team.

·       There were two outstanding recommendations for emergency planning. One was awaiting an output from the Local Resilience Forum, and the other was for the training to resume for Councillors. This training would be scheduled for any who had not yet received it.

·       So in terms of next steps,

o   All services would be moved across to the new service resumption templates.

o   The service resumption plans would need to be validated through an annual exercise to ensure they were accurate, reliable and workable.

o   All managers were required to complete the business continuity training. 

o   A joint Cyber and business continuity exercise was being considered for 2024. 

·       The National Security Risk assessment was released by government at the end of 2023. The local resilience forum, which was a multi-agency group of emergency services; local authorities and other responders have assessed this and developed a more localised community risk register. The next steps were to assess these risks and ensure the plans currently in place were appropriate and where further mitigation may be needed look to introduce a new specific risk plan.

In response to questions from the Committee the Director of Resources and Deputy Chief Executive confirmed that:

·       The ICT team carried out continual testing of their back-up systems.

·       Procedures were in place to support organisations (including zoos) during times of hardship – such as support through the licencing team and the previous financial assistance provided in the form of business grants during the pandemic.

·       National protocols were in place for National emergencies.

In response to questions from the Committee the Emergency Planning Officer confirmed that:

·       The organisation was now in a stronger position, and more prepared, than before (the pandemic).

·       Risk assessments had been completed as part of the business impact assessments.

·       The plans were flexible and enabled responses using minimal resources

In response to a question from the Co-opted Member, the Emergency Planning Officer confirmed that although Climate Change was not identified as a risk in the plans, the effects of climate change, such as local flooding would be. The plans considered the effects and results of climate change, rather than the cause.

RESOLVED that the update on Business Continuity be noted.