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Make a Business Resilience Plan to satisfy yourself you could cope in an emergency. Firstly check building and contents insurance are adequate and consider extra insurance, especially for business interruption.

Some risk reduction is common sense. Carry out a risk assessment including flood, drought, storm and temperature extremes. You may already in fact have done this as part of your health and safety risk assessment and even if you have review.

Flooding is often one of the most devastating disasters for small businesses. If your businesses have been flooded before, you will know what chaos it can cause. Anticipate problems before they arise and put a plan in place in case the worse should happen. Make sure you keep stock, computers and other electrical equipment off the floor and avoid using basements for storage wherever possible. Anything that could be contaminated by flood water should be stored securely. If stock were damaged how would it be moved? Could staff move it? Where are the insurance documents? Consider demountable flood defence products and don’t necessarily rely on that old standby the sand bag to do an effective job.

It is prudent to ensure that should the worst happen the business could still function. Most important is staff safety. Consider who would be responsible for what aspect of business. Who would liaise with customers, sort out employees and liase with the emergency services? What are the most important aspects of the business to keep running? If computers and phone lines are down how could you continue? Is there another office you could move temporarily to? Would staff be sent home and asked to work from there? Would that be possible? How would you fund the changes?

Since the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, local authorities have a legal obligation to help you develop a business continuity plan. Each authority has an Emergency Planning Officer who will advise. In addition check if you are in a flood risk area.

useful websites:

www.axa4business.co.uk/bc Comprehensive guides on continuity planning with free downloads.

www.biba.org.uk British Insurance Brokers Association. Provides useful information on business resilience.

www.preparingforemergencies.gov.uk

www.survive.com Lots of information to help businesses, plus a new business continuity assessment available online.

www.businesslink.gov.uk

www.hse.gov.uk

Heather Harrison is a highly regarded member of the Duport team. Her thorough knowledge of small businesses, combined with her talents developed during a career as a well respected journalist, make her articles very popular with our readers. Heather has worked on a variety of weekly and monthly magazines, both in the consumer and business press.