Continuity
Planning (sometimes also called Disaster Planning, Recovery
Planning, Contingency Planning)
Every
Practice should have a Plan which sets out what is to be done in the
event of any unexpected disaster, incident or failure which has the
potential to de-stabilise the Practice and impact on the short, medium
or long term running of the Practice; such events as fire, flood,
damage to buildings, failure of power/phones/computers, loss of data,
loss of key personnel, epidemics/pandemics.
Such
a plan may be called a Continuity Plan (but may also
be known as a Disaster Plan, a Recovery Plan, a Contingency Plan).
The Plan should identify what actions should be taken in the event
of an incident, what back up arrangements exist and how they should
be activated. Creating a Continuity Plan involves
identifying all the risks (i.e. the occurrences which can cause disruption)
and setting out what actions should be taken for each circumstance.
To
help Practices develop their Continuity Plans,we have prepared a toolkit
which describes in simple, plain English, the process of creating
a Continuity Plan and provides a risk assessment
template (including examples of typical risks), plus a draft of a
complete Continuity Plan which you can adapt for
your Practice. The toolkit is in the Members
section - Members click
here
to access the toolkit.
If
you are not a Member,
click here
for information about the benefits of membership and how to subscribe.
Civil
Contingencies Act
What
is the relationship between a Continuity Plan and
the Civil Contingencies Act? Click here
for more information on this.
