Preparing for emergencies
Last Updated: 6 August, 2008
The UK Government undertakes a national risk assessment process which identifies disruptive challenges which could affect the UK over a five year period, and assesses their likelihood and impact. The resulting assessments are used to inform the development of contingency plans and emergency response capabilities.
The Government believes that businesses may find some of this information useful when developing and reviewing their business continuity plans, and when considering the business continuity requirements for organisations in their supply chain.
In particular, businesses may find helpful the 'Considerations for Organisations' set out in the National Risk Register (see below) on the type of major emergencies which the Government judges may arise, and the nature and scale of consequences were they to do so.
That does not mean that all activities within individual businesses should be resilient to all of the challenges set out below, which may neither be appropriate nor affordable. Similarly, there may be other risks particular to individual businesses that are not reflected here. Therefore, use of this material should not be a substitute for carrying out business-specific risk assessments which should underpin all emergency planning and business continuity management processes.