Agenda Item No______13_______
Business Continuity
Summary:
Six monthly update on business continuity planning, the
progress made to date, ability to respond to any disruptive
events that have recently occurred and the outline of future
objectives.
Conclusions:
Recommendations:
That members note the contents of the report.
Cabinet member(s):
Ward(s) affected:
All
All
Contact Officer, telephone number, Richard Cook
01263 516269
and e-mail:
richard.cook@north-norfolk.gov.uk
1.
Introduction
Part of the Civil Contingencies team’s (CCT) role is to ensure that the Authority has a
robust and effective business continuity plan (BCP) in place. As reported previously
CCT are working with Service heads to ensure that all relevant plans are up to date and
relevant.
1.
Team Business Continuity Plans
I have visited all service areas and have found out that there are 47 teams within the
Authority. Not all of these teams will require individual plans and some service areas
could create one plan to cover all teams. An initial consultation with managers shows
that the total team plans will be in the region of 25. At present there are 8 up to date
plans in place.
CCT are making appointments with any Service managers who require one on one
support to help them complete their plans. All managers have been given the new plan
template and have been asked to bring draft plans to the next BCWG meeting to be
held on 29/02/12. Once the plans have been completed CCT will review plans and
identify the team’s critical areas of service delivery and the resilience within that to
recover. During this review CCT will be looking at what each team requires to deliver
the service and check that the Authority has the ability to manage their requirements
such as IT and home working abilities. The identified critical services will be crossed
checked to what is shown in the Corporate BCP to ensure that these are still the “real”
critical services. This new or updated list will be confirmed by BCWG and then passed
to CLT for approval before going to PRMB. Once the critical activates list has been
ratified the top level BCP will be updated.
2.
Business Continuity Working Group (BCWG)
To ensure that business continuity is embedded within the organisation there is a
business continuity working group (BCWG). Cllr John Lee sits on the group and
provides valuable member input. The BCWG has now met twice and have produced
some good ideas and the group understand the need and value to drive BC to become
a main stream activity within the Authority.
3.
Disruptive Events
No disruptive events to report at NNDC however, other neighbouring authorities have
had telephony issues mostly around Voice over Internet Phones (VOIP). This seems to
have affected District Councils that use the VOIP provided by NCC. NNDC do not have
this service provided by NCC and only have a small number of phones that use this
system in the annex. This information has been passed on to the ICT manager.
Additionally at a recent LA BC meeting a neighbouring authority advised that they had
experienced several “White Powder” incidents. I will advise postal room management
to remain vigilant and CCT will review the NNDC postal Plan.
4.
Standby Power
An interim agreement now exists with Stuart Power and a call out procedure has been
initiated in the revised corporate BCP. On activation Stuart Power will be called to
deliver a generator and ancillary equipment and Kings and Barnham will connect the
generator to our hook up point. A letter confirming and pricing out this arrangement is
attached.
The service offer by Stuart Power meets the requirements for the Authority to obtain the
ability to function if we experience a long term loss of power. This agreement will not
have any cost implications to the Authority unless the service is used. I will try and get
a similar agreement with another supplier and this will then add additional resilience to
the procedure.
5.
Corporate BC Plan
The NNDC Corporate BC plan and Policy is being revised and will be peer reviewed by
the BCWG before passing to CLT for confirmation and adoption. It is anticipated that
this will be completed within 4 months.
6.
Annex Disaster Recovery (DR) and Victory Housing Trust (VHT) Reciprocal
ICT Service Agreement
If the BC Plan was invoked and the annex was used as the DR site most of the
authorities systems which are virtualised would be available within an hour once power
was restored. For systems such as Revenues and Benefits, GIS, document
management and Environmental Health this would take longer as they would need to be
rebuilt and this could take up to 2 days as only one can be done at a time. Telephone
lines could be up and running within an hour. WI-FI internet would also be available at
this location.
In terms of the Victory Housing facility the ICT equipment would take longer to set-up
and the exact time is not known but it would be days. The telephony would be up and
running much more quickly. The preferred location for a full DR site is being reviewed
by the BCWG.
Disaster Recovery and Work Action Recovery sites review is still on going and a
meeting has been set up with ICT, CCT and Victory Housing trust (VHT) to check what
facilities can be delivered if the reciprocal agreement with VHT is activated, it is hoped
that VHT site can be used as a DR and a WAR site in case the present site of the
Annex is unusable.
Now that there is an agreement that NNDC and Kings Lynn and West Norfolk Borough
Councils (KLWNBC), Revenues and Benefit are jointly working in partnership. This
raises the possibility that the Fakenham Connect building could be used as a DR/WAR.
I have spoken to the Emergency Planners at KLWNBC and they are looking at a
possibility of using this site for that role and will be looking at putting in a high speed
internet line to this site. This could also fulfil this role for NNDC and may be a better site
than VHT. Cllr’s Lee and Fitzpatrick are looking at the feasibility of this option as there is
still some uncertainty over the long term use of the Fakenham Connect building.
7.
Future Objectives
For the coming six months key objectives relating to BCP are;
•
Ensure that teams complete their individual team BCP’s with an initial focus on
the critical services
•
Ensure that team BCP critical services are realistic and deliverable
•
Complete Corporate BCP and Policy for sign off and publication