Business continuity: strategic guidance for NHS health boards

Section 4: Business Continuity Management Principles

4.1 BCM adopts the principle of building on what already exists within an organisation, including standardising approaches to Crisis Management and integrating existing response mechanisms into a clear, formal strategy. BCM ensures these are integrated into a formal process to enable a faster and more effective response and recovery to disruption.

4.2 NHS Boards and organisations should have a BC policy that will^[14]:

• Prioritise any urgent functions / activities;
• Identify the risks and threats to critical and essential services, functions and assets, and how they will be mitigated and protected respectively;
• Provide activation procedures, escalation processes, roles and responsibilities of staff;
• Outline incident response solutions and resources required to deal with the disruption at various stages;
• Include recovery steps and target timescales to return the service to normal operation;
• Highlight how the plan will be maintained;
• Set arrangements for communicating BC arrangements to staff and enabling them to understand their roles and responsibilities.

4.3 The Cabinet Office Civil Contingencies Secretariat Guidance^[15] and the recognised Integrated Emergency Management (IEM) approach, the following six activities are fundamental to an integrated approach:

• anticipation;
• assessment;
• prevention;
• preparation;
• response;
• recovery management.