Business involvement
Government aims to develop civil protection policy in partnership with the business community. This page explains the structures which exist to achieve that.
Business Advisory Group on Civil Protection
The Government has set up a new Business Advisory Group on Civil Protection, which provides a forum through which business representative groups and government can meet to discuss civil protection issues. The key objectives for the group are to:
- take business opinion on significant policy initiatives likely to affect the business community;
- provide a mechanism through which we can improve our communication with the business community;
- provide an opportunity to discuss specific issues on which closer engagement between government departments and specific business sectors could be beneficial;
- allow business representatives to provide a private sector perspective on specific risks and proposed government emergency planning and response arrangements; and
- help government to identify what additional support businesses may need in relation to civil protection.
Further information on the Business Advisory Group on Civil Protection is available here. This includes presentations and other information from recent meetings of the group.
There already exist a number of valuable sector-specific relationships and fora for promoting government/business dialogue in this area. The new group does not mean abandoning existing channels, which we would expect to continue. But it has established a clear point of entry into government for those organisations who were not engaged in sector-specific arrangements.
Sector-specific forums for dialogue with business
These include:
- The Telecommunications Industry Emergency Planning Forum (TI-EPF) is a quarterly, tripartite meeting between industry, government and OfCom [External website]. The forum fosters the development and sharing of best practice and owns the National Emergency Plan for Telecoms along with its associated alert process - NEAT (National Emergency Alert for Telecoms).
- The Energy Emergencies Executive Committee (E3C), chaired by DBERR, is a forum for discussion between Government, the National Grid, representatives of the gas and electricity industries and regulators (OfGem [External website] ) which works to develop and implement effective emergency arrangements for the gas & electricity industries.
- The Defra-chaired Food Chain Emergency Liaison Group (FCELG) meets every six months to discuss issues of concern to the food industry. The Group's membership comprises of Defra personnel, Trade Associations such as the British Retail Consortium (BRC), Food & Drink Federation (FDF), Cold Storage & Distribution Federation (CSDF), Federation of Wholesale Distribution (FWD), British Hospitality Association (BHA), the Food Standards Agency, Devolved Administrations, the Institute of Grocery Distribution (IGD), National Farmers Union (NFU) and the Civil Contingencies Secretariat. The Group's aim is to work together to improve Defra's and the food chain's emergency preparedness in the face of risks of major disruption to food supplies.
- The National Security and Emergency Working Group (NSEWG) is chaired by Defra and meets every six months to discuss national security and emergency planning issues which affect the water industry. Its membership includes the water companies, Environment Agency, Water UK and the Devolved Administrations. Guest speakers from Other Government Departments and agencies are invited to the meetings to make a presentation to the Group that has a bearing on emergency planning for water. Many of the issues discussed at the meetings are sensitive or classified and therefore there is no website address for this Group.
- The Cross Market Business Continuity Group (CMBCG) provides a forum for the financial authorities, infrastructure providers and key firms to pool information in the event of major operational disruption. The Treasury, Bank of England and Financial Services Authority run the Financial Sector Continuity website [External website] to provide information on business continuity to the financial sector. The site provides further detail of the activities in which we are engaged.
More information
- You can get more information, including more links, answers to frequently asked questions, and a glossary of terms, by going to the More Information section of the website.
- You can get more detailed information on other civil protection topics on UK Resilience [External website].
[return to top]
