Issue - meetings

Report by Kate Connelly

The Council’s Strategic Management Team approved the establishment of a project to undertake the review of the Council’s Business Continuity arrangements.  The project was initiated on 1st February and is due to be completed by the 31st July 2012.  This report presented by Kate Connelly provided details of consultation arrangements incorporated as part of the approved project plan

The Group:

(a)     Noted current plans to incorporate feedback with communities and other stakeholders at this stage of the review;

(b)     agreed to help facilitate local arrangements in order to maximise input from local groups and organisations;

(c)     noted that since the project was initiated in February this year, a comprehensive mapping exercise has been completed to take account of changes in the Council’s structure;

(d)     noted that the scope and nature of critical activities has been scrutinised, resulting in a significant reduction of the number of activities confirmed as critical.  The revised list has not yet been confirmed but will undoubtedly include services to protect and assist vulnerable people e.g. children and elderly.

(Ref: Report by Kate Connelly, Project Officer, submitted)

Argyll & Bute Council – Kate Connelly, Governance & Law

The Project Officer gave the background to Business Continuity Management  within the Council to ensure that critical activities can be recovered quickly following any major incident which causes disruption of normal business.  She advised that an internal audit identified that improvements should be made to the existing plans with a requirement to engage stakeholders and local communities to make it easier to engage with them and enlist their support.  She encouraged the Group to fill in the survey which refers to critical activities and can be found on the following link:- https://secure.crtviewpoint.com/OnlineSurvey/default.aspx?session=819f0d9e-7ae7-4791-9bf6-1789ebadfb11

Councillor Strong spoke on the problems regarding communication during the last storms and the Head of Governance and Law advised that these would be fed into this process.

Decision

The Group noted the information provided.