Recent world events highlight importance of Lancaster and Morecambe businesses preparing for unexpected

The loss of power across wide areas of Spain and Portugal, the huge disruption for travellers caused by a fire close to Heathrow Airport in March and the recent cyber-attacks on several leading UK retailers have highlighted the need for organisations of all sizes to make sure they are ready for and possible disruptions.

Next week is Business Continuity and Resilience Awareness Week (BCAW+R), an annual event organised by the Business Continuity Institute, that aims to inspire organisations to put together a plan to consider how their business would cope in the face of any potential disruption.

Julie Ferguson, chair of the Lancashire Resilience Forum’s Business Continuity Group, says this is the perfect time for all businesses to consider producing a Business Continuity Plan detailing how they would react to an incident such as a fire, flooding, a power outage, or a cyber-attack, which would affect their day-to-day operations.

Such a plan basically provides a strategy for prevention and recovery from potential threats to a company.

It ensures greater resilience by identifying the elements you cannot afford to lose, such as information, stock, premises, staff, equipment, utilities, and cash flow, and shows how you could maintain your operations if an incident occurs.

Julie said: “It is a really good idea for organisations of all sizes to have a business continuity plan because, as recent events have shown, you never know what's around the corner.

“For small businesses, the plan could hold some very basic information to help support them if they are impacted by an incident. It could be supply chain disruption, a fire, a flood or could even be a road closure. Basically, it can be anything that could impact on your business and what plans you have in place to respond to keep your business functioning and delivering the service you provide as best as you can.

“Some small firms may ask why they need a plan, especially a business that's never maybe actually had a business interruption impact them at all. But we saw the importance of having some sort of plan during the pandemic and with other incidents such as Storm Desmond a few years ago which really hit businesses hard.

“It is hard to imagine these things happening but they do, and it is really worth having some form of plan available, if it does.’’

Each day of BCAW+R will have a different theme with a series of webinars on the Business Continuity Institute website which can be accessed here:

Monday, May 19: Predictive Analytics and Forecasting

Tuesday, May 20: AI & Exercises

Wednesday, May 21: Supply Chain and Cyber Resilience

Thursday, May 22: Enhancing Organisational Resilience through AI

Friday, May 23: Success Stories Demonstrating AI Applications Across Industries

The Lancashire Resilience Forum has a free business continuity template that you can download on its website at https://www.lancashireprepared.org.uk/protect-your-business