Business continuity management (BCM)

Business continuity management (BCM) is the name given to the process that helps you to:

• Reduce the chances of a disruption
• Respond more effectively when disruptions and emergencies occur
• Recover from emergencies and disruptions more quickly

As well as being good business practice, local authority-maintained schools are required to have a business continuity plan under the Schools Financial Value Standard.

Since it's not possible to write a plan for every possible scenario, BCM helps you to mitigate the effects of disruption which generally means one or more of the following:

• An inability to carry out daily activities
• Shortage of staff due to illness, or strike action
• Loss of building, or part of building or access to the building
• Adverse publicity and/or reputational impacts
• Loss of ICT
• Loss of critical supplier or partner

The key document in the development of a business continuity (BC) plan is the business impact analysis (BIA). It helps you think about what you do as a school and when something goes wrong what activities really matter most.

A key feature of the BIA is to let you identify and rank your activities and then identify and focus on priorities. It does this by looking at impact over time - how long can you manage without a particular activity being in place.

The results of a BIA - ie your critical activities - are carried over to the first part of your BC plan and form its basis.

Who should complete a BIA?

The ideal time to complete a BIA is in a team meeting where you have all the key people round the table at one time, such as facilities, finance etc.

If you have the right people around the table, the BIA should take about one hour to complete and it should be signed off by the management team.

A BIA should be reviewed every annually or if there is a significant change at the school.

We can help you plan for disruptions and deal with them when they occur. We can also help you to:

• Complete a Business Impact Analysis
• Develop a Business Continuity Plan
• Complete, embed and test your Incident Management Plan

For more information about these services please contact the Resilience Team:

• Call 01603 222016
• Email: businesscontinuity@norfolk.gov.uk

Please note that you won't find our services on NorfolkS4S.

LA Schools can access the Business Impact Analysis template, and the Business Continuity Plan template on the mySchool section of the website.