Business continuity guide

Helping to keep your business in business.

  • What is business continuity?
  • Why is business continuity important?
  • How to develop business continuity arrangements
  • What should a Business Continuity Plan contain?
  • Reviewing, testing and implementing your business continuity arrangements
  • How resilient is your business continuity plan?
  • Coping with Disruption: Business Continuity Support Service

1. What is business continuity?

At its simplest, business continuity is about coping with disruption. Disruption could occur due to fire, flood, snow, IT failure or power loss and so on.

2. Why is business continuity important?

Effective business continuity planning helps to ensure your business survival should an incident occur, by supporting the prioritised recovery of your most time-sensitive objectives. Nearly one in five businesses suffers a major disruption every year. Yours could be next . If you invest in insurance cover, it makes sense to invest in business continuity planning too. This doesn't need to be a difficult or expensive task. If your clients include large organisations, it is likely they will ask you about your business continuity arrangements.

3. How to develop business continuity arrangements

  • A key first step before you develop your business continuity plan is to identify your critical activities and assets through a business impact analysis.
  • Critical activities can be defined as those activities which need to be performed to deliver key products and services that enable your business to meet its most important and time-sensitive objectives, and to maintain your cash flow.
  • A business impact analysis is a process of identifying your critical activities, determining the impact over time that a disruption to these activities would have on your business and what resources you need to maintain them to an acceptable level.
  • Consider what risks your business faces and how they could impact your critical activities and assets. Risks are possible events, for example fire and power loss, with a probability and an impact. A top-down risk assessment helps define your priorities and requirements.
  • Estimating the time it would take for adverse impacts, which might arise as a result of not providing a product/service or performing an activity, to become unacceptable, will help determine your priorities and the most suitable recovery arrangements.
  • Once you have carried out your business impact analysis, you can start developing your business continuity plan.
  • Small companies will manage with a simple document that sets out the three key elements of business continuity management: what activities do we maintain, how do we go about it, and who does what.

Source: Lacey, D. (2012) Business Continuity Management for Small and Medium Sized Enterprises: How to survive a major disaster or failure. BSI.

To find out further information on hazards like fire and cyber attacks, please see:

  • Fire safety for businesses and organisations
  • What you need to know about cyber security

4. What should a Business Continuity Plan contain?

The free, government Business Continuity Management toolkit provides details on what your business continuity arrangements should contain and further advice on how to develop your plan.

As an overview, business continuity plans should generally contain the following details:

  • Plan purpose and scope
  • Document management information such as a document owner, version control or distribution list
  • Roles and responsibilities
  • How will the plan be activated – when, by whom and how?
  • Key contact details – internal and external
  • Critical functions / activities to be recovered, timescales and recovery levels needed
  • Resources available to deliver critical activities during the first 24hrs and up to 2 weeks from the event, and processes for mobilising resources
  • Actions to be carried out, in what timescale and who will do these
  • Clear communication processes – who reports to whom or cascades information
  • Process for standing down and returning to normal business.

5. Reviewing, testing and implementing your business continuity arrangements

  • Make sure you regularly review your business continuity arrangements and ensure staff are fully aware of their role in an emergency.
  • Start with a minimal plan and test it with a short exercise to ensure it is fit for purpose. This can be carried out through a table top exercise with key staff involved in managing the response to an incident. The business continuity worksheet below provides an example of a generic exercise scenario.
  • All plans should be reviewed whenever there are any major changes to premises, processes or services, or when a new threat emerges that threatens to disrupt your business activities.
  • Essential contact details should be tested regularly on at least a six monthly basis.
  • Evacuation exercises can be carried out to test back up arrangements, as part of scheduled fire alarm evacuation drills.

6. How resilient is your business continuity plan?

Once you have drafted your business continuity arrangements you can check them against the free government toolkit requirements and the below 10 minute assessment. You can also use the business continuity exercise worksheet, which is also linked to below, to help validate your business continuity arrangements against a specific dependency.

7. Coping with disruption: Business Continuity Support Service

If you want to provide assurance to existing and potential new clients that your organisation can cope effectively with disruption and continue to deliver your critical services when incidents occur, the Surrey County Council Emergency Management Team can deliver a cost effective, bespoke solution for you. The team provides advice, planning, training and exercising support to devise, review and validate resilience arrangements against recognised industry and good practice standards. To find out more please see the Business Continuity Support Service leaflet (PDF) .

Files available to download

  • SCC resilience policy 2020 (PDF) Policy which outlines Surrey County Council's roles, responsibilities and commitments in ensuring business continuity of services to residents
  • Business Continuity exercise worksheet (PDF) Generic scenario that organisations can use to help validate their BIA and BCP arrangements against a specific dependency
  • Business Continuity 10 minute assessment (MS Word)
  • SCC Business Continuity Support Service (PDF) An outline of business continuity services offered by the Emergency Management Team, including advice, planning, training and exercising
  • Reviewed: 19 Jun 2018
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Create your business continuity plan (with free template)

business continuity plan template uk government

Our experts

Written and reviewed by:.

As a small business owner you may have been alarmed by the events and uncertainty of the past few years. Since COVID first hit, a barrage of tough trading conditions has seen countless businesses forced into administration or even company liquidation .

With a background of Brexit, pandemics, lockdowns, the Great Resignation, an in-and-out-and-in-again recession, and other current stressors – you will need a clear plan in place to keep operations running smoothly in these uncertain times – one that focuses on the continuity, survival and durability of your small business. That's where a Business Continuity Plan can be essential.

You may have heard about Business Continuity Plans (BCPs), but don't know exactly what they are or how to go about creating one. Whilst many small businesses have insurances in place, far less know they need a BCP or some kind of framework to deal with unexpected or unpredictable events.

We’ll guide you through the process here, explaining the key considerations and elements. By the end of this article you’ll know how to write a thorough and workable BCP, using the free template provided to get started .

In this article, we will cover:

What is a business continuity plan, why is a business continuity plan important.

  • How to Create A Business Continuity Plan

Next Steps: Testing and Reviewing Your Plan

Our below guide will give you detailed advice on how to write a quality BCP.

But first, you need to know what to include – and that's where a high quality template can help.

We recommend using the free clickup.com BCP template to ensure nothing gets missed. Every step involved in the business continuity plan – coordinating your emergency response, forming your strategy to get back up and running and communicating with your customers – is already mapped out for you, ready to be filled in with your details.

We recommend creating an account with Clickup to use this free template – doing so means you may be able to keep your business protected financially and otherwise in the event of an emergency. You can see the template below, or click to try it for yourself by signing up to Clickup.

business continuity plan template uk government

Business continuity is the ability of an organisation to continue production and delivery to an acceptable standard following a disruptive incident. A Business Continuity Plan details the steps and strategies to how you intend to do that.

Your Business Continuity Plan can take many different forms – a paper document that you could store away in a filing cabinet, or a digital document that you store on your computer (or multiple if you want to be really safe).

Ultimately it is the emergency strategy you use if you want to get your business on track in terms of regaining customers (and to avoid losing them to competitors) from supply chain issues, for example, to fixing physical damage to products or property, recovering from any losses of particularly significant people, and keeping the business from fully having to close down due to significant negative events.

You would normally use it as soon as you possibly can after said negative events to mitigate as much damage (whether physical or representational) as you can. This would also inspire confidence about you to your team and show the leadership needed to deal with stressful situations when it’s most needed.

The state of the world leaves much to be desired right now. We are seeing such unprecedented upheavals in almost every sector of everyday life – from the cost of living, to post-pandemic effects, to rising electricity prices and other forms of inflation – that Collins Dictionary chose “Permacrisis” as their 2022 word of the year.

“Permacrisis” perfectly encapsulates the ‘survival mode’ most small business owners are in right now . But having a Business Continuity Plan ensures that your company and its assets are protected and are able to function quickly in the event of a disaster – so that the business survives with as little damage as possible (financial or otherwise).

Your business continuity plan should detail such important aspects such as:

  • Coordinating an emergency response
  • Dealing with damaged infrastructure
  • Timescales for getting systems back up and running
  • Strategies for reassuring customers

How to Create a Business Continuity Plan

We know you already have a lot on your plate right now, and creating a new plan may seem like a lot of work with multiple considerations and factors – but not to worry. A solid plan is worth it, as it can be an essential asset for years to come, and we’re here to walk you through making one.

(We’re also assuming you already have your business plan in place, but if not, we also have a guide that will give you detailed advice on how to write a quality business plan here.)

Step 1: What are your potential risks and impact?

  • Consider all the potential risks to your company. There are external risks (for example power cuts, natural disasters, cyber attacks and other things that are out of your control for the most part), and internal risks (for example sudden cash-flow issues, tough sales months or losing key staff).
  • What parts of the business could they affect? The issues could affect anything from your premises, people, stock and equipment, operations and processes, to technology.
  • What could the impact be? You could for example experience a loss of sales and income, increased expenses, decreased customer satisfaction and loyalty, delayed service delivery, poor product quality, or regulatory fines.

Let’s put it together: If you owned a hair salon and a competitor opened up next door .(potential risk), it would affect the volume of potential customers (part of business affected) and there may be a loss of sales (business impact).

Step 2: What are your critical business functions?

  • A critical business function is a process that must be restored in the event of a disruption to protect the business and keep meeting expectations (up to the standards of shareholders, for example). A good Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system would help with this process, and you can find some of the best CRM for small businesses here .
  • A few different business functions that exist are paperwork, employees, and production for example .
  • Using paperwork that was at risk of a fire as an example, a way to mitigate this potential risk would be to have multiple backups , in different locations and the responsibility of different people in the business.

Step 3: Who holds the key roles and responsibilities?

It’s important to consider the key roles and responsibilities in your business because that way, the right information can get to the right people in a streamlined way and issues can be resolved by the right people quickly.

These may include:

  • Internal staff (sales leaders, accountants, client managers etc)
  • External key players (contractors and service providers, suppliers and distributors, IT consultants, utility companies etc)
  • It’s important to have a list of key people (with their documented roles), and other important contacts, as well as clear instructions that clarify their responsibilities in an emergency situation.

Let’s put it together: If there was a security breach in a tech company, the customer service department (internal staff) would need to be alerted who could send out a reassuring email to customers. Next, a call would need to be made to an IT consultant to fix the issue (external key players). At the same time, a senior manager for example (key people) could also send out a message to shareholders to clear up and clarify any incorrect information showing on systems.

Step 4: What is your communication plan?

  • Who needs to be contacted: in the event of a disruption or emergency? Some examples may include employees, customers, clients, or suppliers.
  • How will you communicate with them: Depending on the severity of the situation and also taking into consideration the tone of your company brand and the mediums your customer base use most, you could use social media, press releases, or an email newsletter for example.
  • What will the tone be? The tone can be serious, reassuring, optimistic or anything else you feel most accurately serves the situation, and that would be on brand for your company.
  • Test your plan. It is extremely important to make sure your plan works BEFORE it's put into action. There would be nothing worse than to feel you have a good plan but when something serious actually happens, it all falls apart because it wasn’t properly tested or viable in actual practice.
  • The various components of testing may involve training staff, practice drills where you can receive feedback on areas of improvement, and allowing yourself time to make adjustments where necessary. Project management software would be useful in organising all of this with the many different people involved – we have an article on some of the best free project management software here.

When Should You Review Your Plan?

A Business Continuity Plan should be a living, breathing entity just as your company is. As life’s natural changes occur, and shifts in your business infrastructure inevitably occur over different periods of time, you will need to ensure that your plan is regularly updated so it’s the best it can be.

Key factors that should trigger a review include:

  • Changes to staff: New staff will need to be informed about the practices of your plans, and sometimes the plan may need to be adjusted to accommodate new staff, if they have specific needs for example.
  • Changes to premises: Your plan should include emergency procedures for every physical premise you have, so if there is a change there make sure your plan reflects that to ensure it’s as optimal as possible.
  • Changes to processes: If there are changes to your processes, your plan should reflect these changes so that everyone can stay updated and there is as little confusion as possible in the event of anything unexpected.

How Often Should You Review Your Plan?

  • Timeframe: An annual review is good practice to review and update your business continuity plan, because usually in that amount of time a business, the environment of the business and the world would have naturally changed and evolved to some extent.
  • Who to update: You should inform anyone within your company that the changes will affect, such as staff and employees, who will need to know in order to adjust their behaviours and processes and move forward safely. (You can use your list of key people for this).
  • How / where to store your BCP: As mentioned above in the ‘critical business section’, it’s important that your BCP is stored in a few different locations, and accessible to the people who may need it.

Your business continuity plan should not just be something you create then never intend to action. You never know when an emergency event will come into play that could potentially break your business in some way or another, and you can use the free template provided by Clickup to rectify that.

Hopefully you’ll never need to use your plan, but in the worst case scenario, you can rest assured that you have yourself and your business covered.

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Provider Engagement Network

Supporting health and social care providers in Devon

Business continuity planning and support

Published 17:16pm, 6 April 2020

Last Updated 16:09pm, 17 January 2022

Beat the heat: Be prepared for summer heat waves

With global warming happening even faster than feared, the Met Office has warned:

  • There is a 66% chance that global temperatures will exceed the 1.5C pre-industrial average for at least one of the next five years;
  • There is a 98% chance that one of the next five years will be the warmest on record;
  • This follows heat waves of increasing duration and intensity in recent years with temperatures recorded in England at over 40C last July with widespread ‘tropical nights’.

We know that older people and people with certain health conditions are less able to adapt to hot weather, especially when it is overnight and for extended periods.

That makes it more important than ever that as organisations which support people vulnerable to hot weather, we are informed and prepared.

We will continue to issue heat wave warnings when we receive them as PEN newsflashes.

It is important all of us check our business continuity and other arrangements with the potential of longer and more intense heat waves in mind.

Here is some advice that may be useful:

  • UKHSA guidance ‘Hot weather and health: supporting vulnerable people’

This information aims to assist professionals in protecting vulnerable people from the health impacts of severe heat in England.

This includes specific advice for social care staff managers and carers and for healthcare professionals.

  • UKHSA guidance ‘Adverse Weather and Health Plan’

The Adverse Weather and Health Plan aims to protect individuals and communities from the health effects of adverse weather and to build community resilience.

  • UKHSA guidance ‘Beat the heat’

This guidance provides advice for everyone on how to stay safe during hot weather. Includes a poster and leaflet.

  • UKHSA guidance ‘Heat Health Alert Action Cards’

Heat-Health Alert (HHA) action cards summarise suggested actions to be taken by different professional bodies and organisations in the event of extreme heat.

This includes specific advice for commissioners, providers, and the voluntary and community sector.

  • Care Provider Alliance guidance on business continuity planning , including for hot weather

You will also be aware that Devon reservoirs have been well below capacity for some time, with water use restrictions in place. Devon County Council and our Local Resilience Forum are in regular dialogue with South West Water on this and don’t currently anticipate any disruption to supply for domestic or health and care settings.

Avian influenza (bird flu)

How to spot avian influenza (bird flu), what to do if you suspect it and measures to prevent it. For advice and information please refer to the government website .

Winter Plan 2021-22

  • Home – Safety and Emergencies
  • Local Resilience Forum
  • Business Continuity Planning – Care Provider Alliance

COVID-19 national Winter Plan updated with comprehensive provider guidance links

The government has now updated its national COVID-19 Winter Plan for adult social care into a document which brings together information and guidance on all relevant topics including Infection Prevention and Control, PPE, COVID-19 and flu vaccination, hospital discharge and more, with discrete sections on action for providers.

Please read The adult social care: COVID-19 winter plan 2021 to 2022 .

Domiciliary Care Business Continuity Planning meeting 13 January 2022

A presentation from the meeting with useful links to support tools.

  • The Letter for people using services from (11 January 2022) for you to send to clients using your services when the need arises, for example as part of staff absence related to covid. Please consider the most appropriate point to send the letter to avoid any unnecessary anxiety to your clients. The template letter can be revised with your own logo and key messaging, but we ask you retain the bullet points which are key and will ensure consistency of message across the DCC footprint.
  • The Keeping Yourself and Others Safe Leaflet can be sent to you in hard copy to help support messaging.  If you would like these posted to you, please email the mailbox: [email protected] and provide: a) recipients name in your organisation b) address for delivery c) how many leaflets required. (Please be aware we will be unable to send the leaflets out to you if any of this detail is missing, but you can print the leaflet from the link above).
  • Whilst you will have your own Client Prioritisation (RAG rating) tool as part of your Business Continuity Plan; we are sharing a tool developed by DCC to assist you in prioritising support packages for your clients.  This is for your use and DCC do not require this information to be submitted.
  • We would like to receive detail of where you are stepping down care (stepped down individual visits), and have created the following template to support you to complete this Weekly Record .

Please send your updated template through to the relevant CDP team on a weekly   basis and mark the email as “ COVID – STEP DOWN ”. Where possible please submit this by 10am – we will use this as a summary of your position for our records.

Please note – if you are concerned about a client’s safety, please alert us in the normal way and not via this form.

This is a temporary measure during the Omicron peak to support both DCC and private clients, the temporary step down will be effective from Monday 17 January 2022. This position will be reviewed w/c 31 January and DCC will communicate if the process should stop or continue.

The responsibility for client care will remain with the provider, and where care is stepped down, regular welfare calls will need to be made to ensure the contingency in place remains robust. The provider will be expected to step back up care where the contingency arrangement cannot be maintained.

Please approach your local Care Direct Plus Centre if you would like to request a review for a client, we will prioritise this where possible (subject to our staffing capacity).

Please ensure that you communicate any concerns with the relevant CDP as soon as feasible; as whilst DCC and the system remain under severe pressure, the earlier we are informed the better able we will be to support you.

Locality emails:  

CDP East email: [email protected]  

CDP North email: [email protected]    

CDP South & West email: [email protected]  

Business continuity planning templates and guidance

As part of organisational resilience, it is vital for providers to have a robust and up to date business continuity plan (BCP) that support them to manage risk effectively at a point of crisis.

The Care Provider Alliance has developed business continuity planning guidance along with a standard template for social care which can be found here: Business continuity planning guidance and template – Care Provider Alliance .

The guidance also includes additional information on planning for power outages, data breaches and cyber-attacks.

All providers should have updated their own business continuity plans to include all foreseeable risks including those presented by the COVID-19 pandemic. This document provides useful tips to develop your business continuity plan and is grouped by different service types.

If you would like the County Council to review your business continuity plans or to offer any support please email [email protected] and they can support you. Please be aware that this will be where capacity is available. When sending your BCP please state the reason that you are requesting the review.

Care homes and residential care Winter Readiness Toolkit

The Winter Readiness letter with links to the Pack have been sent directly to care homes but the Pack can be found online .

Care homes business continuity planning for COVID-19 outbreaks

DCC’s Service Recovery Team has issued care homes business continuity planning for COVID-19 outbreaks .

Business support

You can contact the government’s Business Support Helpline for free advice. See GOV.UK – Get help and support for your business to find out more about the helpline as well as other schemes to support you.

Free business support helpline (South West)

Businesses across the south west, who are facing changes to their working environments due to the coronavirus pandemic, will be able to access free advice and support on remote and home working with the launch of a new helpline (call 0330 088 4421).

Cosmic, a Devon-based social enterprise specialising in all things digital – including digital skills training –  has launched its Business Continuity Helpline to share their knowledge and expertise with organisations in the region and to ‘keep the south west working’.

The helpline and an associated toolkit will provide advice and support on home working and managing a business during periods of disruption.

Advice from ACAS (the Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service)

ACAS: advice for employers and employees worried about coronavirus

How do I get additional supplies of food to feed residents if we run out and can’t get more?

It was not anticipated that there would be food shortages, but your Business Continuity Plan should include consideration of action to address such an eventuality. If you believe that you are at serious risk of being unable to source supplies, please contact us [email protected].

Adult Care and Health have escalated the shortage of food supplies in local supermarkets to the Devon County Council Pandemic Incident Management Team and we are working to help resolve local issues. We will update on the position as soon as possible.

Has any provider undertaken a risk assessment or set up specific policies they might share?

How have providers set up contingency for staff shortages?

Business Continuity good practice tips for providers and some useful links to refer to .

We would encourage you to share good examples of BCPs with one another on the Care Managers Facebook Page, LinkedIn and  Outstanding Managers Facebook Page . If you register on these facebook pages you will be able to access all sorts of examples posted by providers.

If the invoicing team are quarantined do DCC have back up plans to be able to pay providers in the usual timescales?

DCC departments have business continuity plans prepared. Staff who handle payments are organised in a range of teams which are based at a number of different locations around the county. If required, staff skills are transferrable to support Accounts Payable operations.

Please make DCC aware if the service is at risk of experiencing critical staffing levels despite exploring and exhausting all avenues of their BCP.

DCC and CCG business continuity information for providers

All providers should have developed their own coronavirus business continuity plans.  Many providers are already doing so, together with other examples of policies that people can use to guide their development.

This document provides useful tips to develop your business continuity plan and is grouped by different service types.

If you would like the County Council to review your business continuity plans or to offer any support please email [email protected] and they can support you.

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Free Business Continuity Plan Templates

By Andy Marker | October 23, 2018

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In this article, you’ll find the most useful free, downloadable business continuity plan (BCP) templates, in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats. Customize the templates to fit the needs of your business, ensuring you maintain critical operations at all times.

Included on this page, you’ll find a business continuity plan template , a small business continuity plan template , a business continuity framework template , and more.

Business Continuity Plan Template

Business Continuity Plan Template

Download Business Continuity Plan Template

Word | PowerPoint | PDF  | Smartsheet

Use this template to document and track your business operations in the event of a disruption or disaster to maintain critical processes. With space to record business function recovery priorities, recovery plans, and alternate site locations, this template allows you to plan efficiently for disruption and minimize downtime, so your business maintains optimal efficiency. This template is available for download in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and PDF formats.

Additionally, you can learn the definition of a business continuity plan, the steps involved in business continuity planning, as well as about the business continuity lifecycle in our article about business continuity planning .

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business continuity plan template uk government

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IT Service Continuity Plan Template

IT Service Continuity Plan template

Download IT Service Continuity Plan Template

This template is geared specifically to IT business operations and aims to maintain IT processes despite any possible harmful disruption. Use this template to document recovery objectives, teams, and strategies in order to accurately capture all facets of the continuity plan needed for an IT team. This template is available in both Word and PDF formats.

Business Continuity Framework Template

Business Continuity Framework Template

Download Business Continuity Framework Template

Word | PowerPoint | PDF

This template outlines the structure involved in creating a business continuity plan. It provides an easy, comprehensive way to detail the steps that will comprise your unique BCP. Use this template to plan each phase of a typical BCP, including the business impact analysis, recovery strategies, and plan development. This template can serve as an overall framework for your larger BCP plan.

Business Continuity Program Template

Business Continuity Program template

Download Business Continuity Program Template

Similar to the business continuity plan template, this template documents the steps involved in maintaining normal business operations during an unplanned disruption or disaster. Using this template, you can plan out the critical elements needed to continue business as usual, including recovery priorities, backup and restoration plans, and alternate site locations. This template is available for download in both Microsoft Word and PDF formats.

Business Continuity Procedure Template

Business Continuity Procedure Template

Download Business Continuity Procedure Template

Much like the business continuity framework template, this template helps users create a thorough, streamlined BCP by detailing the procedure involved in creating and maintaining a plan, as well as implementing one. Use this template to document everything from a business impact analysis to plan development, plan testing, and exercises. Download this template in Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, or PDF to get started.

Business Continuity Plan Template for Nonprofits

Business Continuity Plan Template For Nonprofits

Download Business Continuity Plan Template for Nonprofits

In the event of a disruption in business that affects your nonprofit organization, use this template to document a business recovery strategy, identify alternate business locations, and effectively plan for inevitable business downtime. This template is available for download in Microsoft Word and PDF formats.

School Business Continuity Plan Template

School Business Continuity Plan Template

Download School Business Continuity Plan Template

Plan for disruptions in regular school activities and operations in the event of emergency or crisis with this helpful template. This template, designed with schools, colleges, and universities in mind, allows you to prioritize operations and responses, identify important phases of recovery, design a restoration plan, and more.

Small Business Continuity Plan Template

Small Business Continuity Plan Template

Download Small Business Continuity Plan Template

Record your business recovery priorities, identify alternate site locations to conduct business, create recovery teams, and assign recovery responsibilities to specific team members with this continuity plan for small businesses. Ensure that you are able to maintain critical processes and minimize downtime so your business can keep moving forward.

SaaS Business Continuity Plan Template

SaaS Business Continuity Plan Template

Download SaaS Business Continuity Plan Template

Use this business continuity plan template to keep your SaaS business productive and efficient, despite any unforeseen events or disruptions. With space to record everything from recovery procedures and strategies to relocation strategies and alternate site locations, you’ll be able to keep business moving and remain productive during a crisis or disruption.

Business Continuity Plan Template for Medical Practices

Business Continuity Plan Template For Medical Practices

Download Business Continuity Plan Template for Medical Practices

Identify risk strategies for specific areas of business, like clinical, finance and operations, and IT, designate specific recovery strategies, and prioritize the most important, mission-critical operations for your medical practice with this complete business continuity plan template.

Business Continuity Plan Template for Healthcare Organizations

Business Continuity Plan Template for Healthcare Organizations Template

Download Business Continuity Plan Template for Healthcare Organizations

Some businesses, like healthcare organizations, rely on critical processes and procedures to maintain productivity and keep both patients and staff safe. To ensure these processes are followed — even during a business disruption — use this business continuity plan template to identify all potential risks, create mitigation plans, and assign tasks to key team members.

Activities to Complete Before Writing the Business Continuity Plan

Certain steps can help you prepare to write a business continuity plan. See our article on how to write a business continuity plan to learn more.

Common Structure of a Business Continuity Plan

Every business continuity plan should include certain common elements. See our article on how to write a business continuity plan to learn more.

Tips For Writing Your Business Continuity Plan

Business continuity experts have gathered time-tested tips for business continuity planning. See our article on how to write a business continuity plan to learn more.

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More than a tenth of UK businesses fail each year, according to government figures. While this is often the result of cashflow issues, some companies fail because they’re unable to recover from an unforeseen event that suddenly devastates their business.

Such events can include a pandemic, premises fire, flood, burglary, a serious act of vandalism or arson. According to government estimates,43% of UK firms have suffered a cyber breach or attack, which can also prove fatal.

Some UK firms have their survival threatened by customer or employee fraud while others must face the consequences of breaking the law or legal action brought by clients or customers for alleged negligence. Few events are more devastating than a workplace fatality, while terrorist attacks have also affected many UK businesses.

Often events can be much less dramatic but still impactful. Examples can include losing a major customer or one going bust without paying their bill. A key staff member can leave; a business owner can suddenly become seriously ill; a main supplier can suddenly go bust.

Moreover, technical problems can suddenly result in the loss of business-critical data that hasn’t been backed up and stored elsewhere. Businesses also need to consider power cuts, losing telephone/internet use and serious disruption caused by extreme weather.

Whatever the event, having a robust business continuity plan can minimise damage and make all the difference between survival and failure.

What is a business continuity plan?

As the name suggests, a business continuity plan can enable your business to continue to operate following a significant event, emergency or disaster. Crucially, a business continuity plan can minimise disruption, thereby limiting cashflow impact.

Sometimes the term ‘disaster recovery’ is confused with business continuity. Although disaster recovery is an essential part of business continuity planning it is specifically related to the Information Technology aspects of your organisation and recovery of these following a disruption.

A business continuity plan refers to the wider and longer-term objective of ensuring that a business can continue to function, while protecting its revenue and rebuilding/recovering following a disruption.

Why do you need a business continuity plan?

Thankfully, bad events are rare. But, they do happen, and having a well-considered business continuity plan can provide owners, managers and employees with a reliable way to react and recover in the event of a business disruption. Taking the right action at the right time can mean the difference between recovering quickly or not at all. Any disruption will impact your cash flow so it’s vital to quickly act on your plan.

Having a business continuity plan offers no guarantees of recovery. However, you’re more likely to survive if you’ve taken time in advance to identity risks and have worked out how best to respond. You may not have the time or ability to think clearly and make good decisions in times of emergency, disaster or crisis. How you react immediately afterwards is vital.

How to create a business continuity plan

There are 6 main phases to creating a Business Continuity Plan; the industry standard for Business Continuity Management is set out in the Business Continuity Institutes Good Practice Guidance – Business Continuity Lifecycle.

  • Policy and Programme Management – establishes the organisations policy relating to Business Continuity and defines how the policy should be implemented via an ongoing cycle of activities within a Business Continuity programme.
  • Analysis – review and assessment of the organisations objectives, how it functions and its constraints. Includes Business Impact Analysis and Risk Assessment.
  • Design – identifies appropriate solutions to ensure continuity during and following a disruption.
  • Implementation – the development of the documented Business Continuity Plan including a response structure.
  • Validation – the testing and exercising of the Business Continuity Plan to ensure that continuity solutions, response arrangements etc are current, accurate, effective and complete.

Further information and guidance on developing a Business Continuity Plan can be obtained from:

How to create a business continuity plan | FSB, The Federation of Small Businesses Introduction to Business Continuity | The Business Continuity Institute (BCI) | BCI (thebci.org) Your Local Government Emergency Planning/Business Continuity/Resilience Team can also assist; most have information related to Business Continuity on their website along with local considerations.

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Reference to any organisation, business and event on this page does not constitute an endorsement or recommendation from the British Business Bank or the UK Government. Whilst we make reasonable efforts to keep the information on this page up to date, we do not guarantee or warrant (implied or otherwise) that it is current, accurate or complete. The information is intended for general information purposes only and does not take into account your personal situation, nor does it constitute legal, financial, tax or other professional advice. You should always consider whether the information is applicable to your particular circumstances and, where appropriate, seek professional or specialist advice or support.

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Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the UK: corporate plan 2024 to 2025

This Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) corporate plan and business plan outlines the activities the Commission will undertake during 2024 to 2025.

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Commonwealth Scholarship Commission business plan 2024 to 2025

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The Commonwealth Scholarship Commission (CSC) corporate plan and business plan outline the activities to be undertaken during the first year of the CSC’s new strategy.

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