BUSINESS CONTINUITY


Reducing the risk I


Local authorities now face more threats than ever and need to have effective emergency planning and risk management policies in place. Public Sector Executive spoke to Dr Lynn Drennan, CEO of Alarm, the public risk management association, to find out more


t has always been important for local authorities to have effective back up plans in place in case of an emergency situation and in view of the current environmental and economic situation, these plans are more important than ever.


As the number of threats which councils face has increased, be it a flu outbreak, flooding or industrial action, the funding which councils have to deal with these problems has reduced.


This means that new ways of working have to be found to enable authorities to deliver the same quality services at a reduced cost. One of these ways is partnership working.


Many public services are now delivered through partnerships but according to Dr Lynn Drennan this doesn’t just mean partnerships between the public and private sectors but between the public and third sectors and between different types of public body.


For example, Sunderland City Council’s approach to dealing with the problem of obesity involved both the education and health departments working together alongside schools and community groups to introduce initiatives which resulted in major improvement in the health of the community.


However, a survey of its members by Alarm, the national


Jul/Aug 10 Dr Lynn Drennan


forum for risk management in the public sector, has found that many local authorities are not reviewing their partnership risk strategies on a regular enough basis.


“I think that one of the main problems in terms of partnership working is around differing organisational cultures,” says chief executive Dr Lynn Drennan.


“For example, a large


bureaucratic local authority will operate in a very different way from a small community group or charity.


“People who have previously worked in these kinds of partnership arrangements have reported that they had to work hard simply to achieve a joint understanding between organisations, even around simple straightforward issues such as risk terminology.


There was often quite of a lot of work which needed to be done to ensure effective communication between the parties, so human


People often have a


misconception that both risk management and business continuity professionals only deal with major incidents. However, their remit covers any occurrence, no matter how basic or small, which could impact upon an organisation’s capacity to function fully.


“Business continuity is a very complex area because there are so many different types of event which could cause your business to be disrupted and in the public sector we often use the phase service continuity to better reflect the nature of our work.”


Dr Drennan believes that the vast majority of public sector organisations do have effective plans in place to deal with these kinds of incidents.


“You can never be sure what the trigger incident will be in these kinds of situations but you can plan ahead by identifying a range of incidents which would have the same kind of impact and then formulate a joint response to them, which can then be moulded to each of them individually.


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factors really were the major challenge.”


As budgetary pressures intensify, this kind of working will become more commonplace. So what is being done to enable better partnership working in the area of local authority risk?


“There needs to be an acknowledgement that there is an issue in the first instance. If you are not aware that these will be the kind of issues which you will face when working in partnership, then you will not be able to work as effectively.”


Good communication is vital in identifying the partnership’s objectives, the tasks which each party will tackle and each member’s skills in order that they are assigned roles which take full advantage of their skill set.


“It is about clarity about the project aims, clarity about the roles and responsibilities of each party, along with maintaining the right level of communication between the parties.”


Dr Drennan illustrates this by referring to what can happen even in the event of a small flood which has cut off buildings which are vital for the delivery of services.


“Plans need to be in place for this kind of occurrence because even a small incident could prevent healthcare professionals getting in to care for patients and other local authority workers from delivering essential services.


“We have been very lucky so far in not having the major flu pandemic which was being predicted last year.


“If we did have an incident like that, public service providers would have to deal not only with staff being off sick but also staff having to take absence from work to look after their sick relatives.


“It means that as an organisation you have to have plans in place in case you have a situation where you have to operate with skeleton staff whilst delivering the most essential services.”


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