Preparing for Emergencies Guidance

Appendix 2 - Business Continuity Management

Business Continuity Management (BCM) gives organisations a framework for identifying and managing risks that could disrupt or halt day to day services. It is an essential tool in establishing any organisation’s resilience. An organisation’s BCM System will help the organisation to anticipate, prepare for, prevent, respond to, and recover from a range of disruptive events, regardless of the cause or which part of the business is impacted.

The Civil Contingencies Act (CCA) 2004 stablished legislative framework for civil protection within the UK. The Civil Contingencies Act (Contingency Planning) (Scotland) Regulations 2005 describe how the provisions of the Act apply in Scotland. Both place clear obligations on Category 1 & 2 listed responder organisations, in relation to assessing, preparing, and responding to disruptive challenges.

There is a need to ensure that all Health Boards within NHS Scotland, together with those providers who supply a critical service to NHS Scotland (e.g. GP practices, dental practices, pharmacies, etc), are sufficiently resilient to respond to any threat or disruption.^[2] Consequently, there needs to be a robust system in place within all organisations to plan, test and exercise, and review their response against a range of disruptive challenges.^[3] Business Continuity Management (BCM) is an essential component of this resilience and a requirement of the Civil Contingencies Act 2004.

BCM principles that Health Boards and their key partners/contracted services should work to include:

• Improve BCM organisational resilience within each Health Board
• Ensure through the adoption of resilience principles that we have continuous operational delivery of critical healthcare services when faced with a range of disruptive challenges e.g. staff shortages, denial of access, failures in technology, loss of utility services, or failure of key suppliers
• Help drive NHS Scotland’s compliance with the Civil Contingencies Act 2004
• Promote a unified and cohesive approach to BCM which replicates the most up-to-date standards, such as ISO 22301 and ISO 22313