- Fire protection
- Engagement
- Business continuity
Almost one in five businesses suffer some sort of disruption every year, be it fire, flood or other emergency.
Following a serious fire:
25% of businesses never re-open.
80% of companies who don’t recover in a month are likely to go out of business.
75%of businesses without Business Continuity plans fail within 3 years.
You need to consider what you would do in order to prepare for an emergency that may disrupt your business. If you don’t, a fire or other emergency could result in:
Loss of reputation and/or loss of customers.
Financial, legal and regulatory penalties.
Human resource issues.
Increased insurance premiums
Or, at worst, the complete failure of your business.
Business Continuity 10 minute assessment (new window, PDF 40KB)
Every second of every day somewhere in the world disasters are happening - man-made and natural - events that can harm people and businesses. We can't stop them occurring, but we can be prepared.
This video explains what Business Continuity Management is and why you should be doing it:
Business Continuity Management is all about understanding and protecting your business from unexpected and planned disruptions, eg fire, flood, illness, strikes, power or technology failures.
Business Continuity Management is a process that helps ensure a business can continue to operate and function in the event of a disruption. It provides the strategic framework for improving the organisation's resilience to interruption.
Effective Business Continuity Management can be beneficial to any size of organisation operating in any sector. By proactively identifying the impacts of an operational disruption your organisation will be able to effectively respond to disruptions, thus minimising the impact on your business.
Planning ahead rather than responding reactively may also:
Save your business money in the long term.
Provide you with a competitive advantage by being able to demonstrate supply-chain resilience.
Help you identify potential business opportunities such as reduced costs, shared services, new products or services etc.
Help us to help you - be prepared for emergencies
The BCI provides information on good practice and guidance on Business Continuity Management.
If you do not already have a Business Continuity plan, there is also a guide available for small businesses, on the Business Continuity Institute (BCI) website:
We have designed the 10 minute assessment as an indicator to areas in which you may wish to develop a business continuity plan for your business. It should be used to pinpoint areas of deficiency within your business resilience.
Download - Business Continuity Planning Assessment (new window, PDF 644KB)
ROBUST is a software program which is intended to help you create and manage an effective Business Continuity plan.
The RISCAuthority is funded by a group of UK insurance companies in pursuit of risk reduction through research, advice and best practice and is administered on their behalf by the Fire Protection Association (FPA).
The ROBUST software is available free to download and use from the RISCAuthority website:
RISCAuthority website - ROBUST toolkit
The RISCAuthority also produces a series of free Business Sector Review Reports for specific occupancy categories within the FPA/RISCAuthority large loss fire database. These reports are designed to highlight loss statistics to inform risk planning and insurance. They also provide bespoke good practice guidance.
The report for your business sector can be downloaded free of charge from the RISCAuthority website:
RISCAuthority website - Business Sector Review Reports
The RISCAuthority's Business Continuity Working Group has developed a simple-to-use template to help small businesses create a business continuity and incident management plan.
The template focuses on the critical business functions and offers examples on how a small business could look to manage and ultimately recover from a disruptive incident.
The template, available in word for easy access and use, can be downloaded below:
Business Continuity Template for Small Businesses (new window, Word Document 288KB)
CLASP is the local authority and public sector sustainability support service for the North West of England. It provides support for Local Authorities and their partners, on dealing with the challenges of environmental resilience, reducing energy use and renewable energy planning issues.
CLASP has been working with local authorities in Cheshire and Warrington to develop a short guide to climate resilience for small and medium sized businesses. Download the guide by visiting the CLASP web-site:
To read more about how the Environment Agency is working to encourage businesses to manage their impact on the environment visit the Environment Agency website:
Environment Agency website (new window)
For information about Business in The Community visit its website:
Business in the Community website (new window)
Find out how networks and individuals can support the country's emergency planning, response and recovery, and keep systems and services running by visiting the GOV.uk website:
Last updated: Thursday, 22 June 2023