Continuity plans and exercises

Care homes, schools, surgeries and the firms that have to stay open when the services stop are expected to hold a continuity plan that has been tested. I do this work across Hampshire, East and West Sussex and the Isle of Wight.

For a care home, the Care Quality Commission expects the plan to cover a failure of the gas, the water or the electricity, and to say how the plan will be tested to make sure it works.

I write the plan for the building you actually have, so that it covers what the regulator expects and what your staff would do. It is then tested with you and the staff on duty, in the working day, and the test is written up and dated so the file shows the plan exists and has been checked.

It starts with a walk round the building with you. I say what I would put in the plan and what I would test, and you decide whether to go ahead.

I was a police officer in Hampshire for six years, two of them on the Priority Crime Team. Since 2021 I have been one of fewer than fifty enforcement officers in England and Wales appointed by the Lord Chancellor, which is work that turns on getting the law and the paperwork right and on walking into buildings where something has already gone wrong. Before that I ran my own businesses, with staff and premises that had to open the next morning whatever had happened overnight. I hold a Level 7 Diploma in Risk Management, and I write civilresilience.uk, the public reference on civil resilience in the United Kingdom.