Business Continuity Management

Manchester City Council has developed its own business continuity arrangements, these are set out in the Corporate Business Continuity Plan.  The plan covers all Council Services and aims to ensure that during an emergency, critical service delivery can be maintained or recovered, if necessary through the reallocation of Council resources.

The Corporate Business Continuity Plan and the Council's Emergency Management Plan are owned by the Council's Civil Contingencies Unit. The Unit is responsible for the activation and delivery of both plans whether activated singly or at the same time.

Both plans have been tested to ensure they are fit for purpose and actually work.  A desktop scenario is used for both plan's to walk-through the different elements of the plan and to ensure everyone is aware of roles and responsibilities.

A crucial element of the plan test is the post-exercise de-brief session, which helps identify lessons learned and to improve the plan wherever possible.

How the Council's Plans Were Developed:

All Council services have undertaken Business Impact Analyses (BIA's) which have assessed over 500 service functions and identified their critical impact, recovery objectives and key dependencies.

All sections of the Council have drawn-up risk registers to sit alongside management action plans and existing specific risk assessments (for example fire, security). These risk assessments are being used to inform Business Continuity Management approaches and, in turn, risks identified in BIAs are being included in service and departmental risk registers.

Business Continuity Management Plans

Further to the completion of BIA's, Business Continuity Plans and continuity strategies have been developed for all Directorates. Strategy documents  identify key risks arising from the BIA process and recommendations for the way forward, including the development of service business continuity plans for all critical services.

Business Continuity Plans for the Council's critical services are reviewed each year.  This is to ensure they reflect any changes to the Service, are accurate and are kept up-to-date.