Resilience

Resilience is made up of two main areas:

• Business Continuity and
• Emergency Planning

What is resilience?  

• Ability to recover or resist being affected by an event or situation
• Ability to provide and maintain an acceptable level of service
• The rate at which a system returns to normal
• To emphasise safety – both proactive and reactive
• The ability of the organisation to create processes that are robust yet flexible

Resilience at Bedfordshire County Council is about ensuring that we as a council are prepared for any emergency or business disruption that may occur, both internally and externally to the Council. The aim is to ensure that we can support the community and emergency services during an incident and continue to provide our services.   

Why do we need resilience?

As a public-sector body, we have a duty of care to our customers, especially those in vulnerable situations.  If an emergency occurs we want to ensure that customers continue to receive quality services from Bedfordshire County Council. 

However, resilience is equally important to the success of businesses.  We strongly advise local businesses and voluntary agencies to have Business Continuity plans.  

Guidance and free resources for businesses  |(new window) 

What is the Council legally required to do?

Under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004 we are legally required to have plans in place in order to enable us to respond to an internal and external emergency.

Business Continuity and Emergency Planning are also part of the CPA.

How does the Council prepare for an emergency and/or business disruption?

There are a number of things that can help ensure an effective response to an emergency. These include:

• Developing emergency plans which outline the organisation’s overall response/strategy to specific types of emergencies
• Establishing the roles and responsibilities of different organisations and services, and what their capabilities are in an emergency
• Identifying critical services that need to continue running as soon as possible after an incident
• Exercising emergency plans to ensure that they are effective
• Training staff and voluntary groups to carry out emergency duties

What is Business Continuity?

Business Continuity is the practice of preparing a service to deal with an event with the expectation that at some point the event will occur.  Business Continuity involves putting together plans for dealing with a disruption in services, assessing the priority of reinstating services, and training staff to be competent in the event of an emergency/disruption of services.

Why is Business Continuity Management important?

The goal of Business Continuity Management (BCM) is to safeguard services, the organisation’s reputation, and our stakeholders. BCM identifies potential impacts that threaten an organisation and provides a framework for building resilience to the risks. 

What is the Business Continuity Process?

The business continuity process adopted within Bedfordshire County Council is that supported by the new British Standard, BS: 25999 and the BCI Good Practice Guidelines. 

What is a Business Impact Analysis (BIA)?

A Business Impact Analysis (BIA) is used to identify the Council’s critical functions and the potential impacts to those functions being delivered. The information gathered in this stage is vital for determining recovery strategies and for forming the foundations of the business continuity plans. All aspects and functions of the Council need to be analysed, not just ICT functions.

The Business Impact Analysis looks at several areas of the service:

• Identification of critical functions
• Impacts, timescales, control measures and future actions
• Dependencies and Interdependencies
• Resources and Records required
• Non-ICT requirements and ICT requirements
• Recovery Strategies and requirements

Developing a Business Continuity Plan

Information gathered from the BIA’s will formulate the development of Business Continuity Plans. Business Continuity Plans within the Council are on two main levels:

 i.  A corporate plan, which will be used in a serious event that affects an identified proportion of services within the Council or that requires a corporate input, including, actions of the EMT (Emergency Management Team) crisis plan procedures, evacuation procedures and communications issues, ICT Disaster Recovery)

 ii.  Service area plans, which would be used at a local level for an event affecting an individual department. 

The business continuity plans will make use of an Emergency Management Team made up of senior members of staff who will be responsible for the overall management of any disaster or serious incident. 

 What is Emergency Planning?

Emergency Planning is the practice of planning the response to an emergency, were it to occur.  It involves working in co-operation with a number of other agencies, including the emergency services, health, voluntary agencies, and other local authorities, amongst others.  In Bedfordshire, much of this work is carried out in the Bedfordshire and Luton Local Resilience Forum| (new window) partnership (BLLRF).

What is the Emergency Planning process?

'Cycle of Emergency Planning'

Who we work with – our partner organisations

Bedfordshire and Luton Local Resilience Forum| (new window) partnership (BLLRF) is Bedfordshire's co-ordinating group for emergency services. Its members are organisations that respond to emergencies – local authorities, emergency services, health and other agencies.  Most of BLLRF's  work is done by subgroups that focus on key issues.

BLLRF is effective because working in partnership combines resources and also encourages communication. Our communities benefit from the shared expertise, expense, and experience. BLLRF is vital to helping your local emergency organisations provide excellent value for money, as well as efficient and effective emergency management.

Bedfordshire and Luton Emergency Volunteers Executive Committee (BLEVEC) is a sub group of the forum that co-ordinates involvement between local authorities and voluntary agencies in an emergency.

How is an emergency managed?

Each of the organisations involved in the response to a major emergency has its own procedures.  However, they all work together and follow the non-statutory guidance Emergency Response and Recovery issued by central government.

The BLLRF Combined Response Document summarises the roles and responsibilities of each of the organisations in a major incident.

Bedfordshire’s top risks

• Environmental pollution
• Flu pandemic
• Major river flooding

You can learn more about all of Bedfordshire’s risks and what to do to prepare for them in Bedfordshire and Luton’s Community Risk Register. Further guidance on Bedfordshire’s risks is available from the Bedfordshire and Luton Local Resilience Forum website  |(new window).