Encouraging resilience within SMEs: The Cabinet Office’s proposed approach

Stuart Sterling, Assistant Director, Civil Contingencies Secretariat, Cabinet Office

Abstract
This article introduces the Cabinet Office’s Civil Contingencies Secretariat (CCS). It explains how the National Risk Assessment, produced within the CCS, is created and used. As part of the recent Strategic Defence and Security Review, the Government made a commitment to improve the business continuity of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).This article describes the CCS’s approach to achieving this, and explains why the resilience of SMEs is important to both local communities, at a time of disruption or crisis, and the essential services sectors, such as energy, food and transport. It provides an outline of a strategic approach that will seek to simplify business continuity by making it accessible, achievable and affordable, and, in partnership with the organisations that SMEs turn to for advice, promotes the benefits of business continuity and encourages its use.

Keywords
National Risk Assessment, business continuity, crisis, SMEs

Stuart Sterling is Assistant Director within the Civil Contingencies Secretariat at the Cabinet Office with responsibility for corporate resilience. The Civil Contingencies Secretariat provides central support to the British Prime Minister, Deputy Prime Minister and cabinet ministers, and coordination of the UK Government’s response to emergencies. Stuart heads the corporate resilience area within the department and has responsibility for the National Risk Register guidance to organisations and business continuity guidance that accompanies the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. Stuart is chair of the government estate business continuity forum, which aims to promote best practice within the business continuity discipline. Stuart has spent most of his career in the public sector, with a short but successful period within the commercial environment running a business and steering it through the exit process.

If you wish to read the full text of the article you will need to subscribe.