Business resilience in Nottinghamshire

A wide range of businesses attended Climate East Midlands' business resilience workshop, hosted by Boots in Nottingham on 7th February. The workshop was part of our Building Business Resilience project, funded by the Environment Agency.

The workshop began with Climate East Midlands introducing key messages from the UKCP09 climate projections, the steps businesses of different sizes can take to increase their resilience, and the support available to help businesses take these steps. Each participant was given a copy of our Weathering the Storm guide, which includes useful sources of information and advice for businesses.

Next up was Paul Scragg, Emergency Planning Officer at Nottingham City Council, representing the Local Resilience Forum. Paul got people's attention by giving a live demonstration of how severe weather can affect a business. Using rocks of varying sizes to represent the business's priority areas, sand, a pint glass and some water, the point of the demonstration was to show how disruptive a severe weather event can be, and how a business can make itself more resilient by understanding its priority areas and the critical activites that need to be the focus of its business continuity plan. Paul's presentation shared examples of comparatively small events (such as a burst pipe or a leaky roof, both weather-related) to explain that they may be just as disruptive as an extreme event, and perhaps more likely to occur.

Zoe Wharmby from the Environment Agency provided information on flood risk mapping and their flood warning service. Zoe explained the various sources of flooding (rivers, surface water, groundwater and structural failure; coastal flooding not being an issue in Nottinghamshire) and described the past impacts of flooding in the East Midlands. EA staff have special roles during flood events, including flood warning, operational actions, data collecting and flood ambassadors. EA and Met Office staff monitor river and sea levels 24/7. Duty officers interpret the information and make judgements based on forecast thresholds, local knowledge and on-site observations. If needed, flood warnings are issued. Find out more about flood warnings, and check flood risk in your area, on the Environment Agency website.

Last but not least, Phil Bates from the Institution for Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) introduced the health and safety implications of severe weather events, e.g. flood hazards including the dangers during the clearing-up phase, personal protection kit, heatwave hazards, windstorms/tornado hazards, winter hazards, and advice on ways to help staff cope with such events, both to ensure business continuity and to protect their health and wellbeing. IOSH is the world's biggest professional health and safety membership organisation.

Interesting points raised during discussions included:

• The challenges of deciding which risks to manage, and weighing up the costs of adapting.
• Businesses could be less well prepared for events that don't happen very frequently, and consequently it's important to exercise business continuity plans to make sure they work in real life, not just on paper.
• Flooding has a multitude of knock-on consequences, including potentially leading to loss of power.
• When flood risk is described using probabilities it can be confusing. For example, a "1 in 5 year" flood means that there is a 20% chance of such a flood occurring annually.

On their evaluation forms, participants provided the following comments:

• "Excellent - plenty of food for thought."
• "Helped build knowledge for developing site risk plan."
• "Very interesting and informative."

Participants said they were planning to use the information from the workshop when they got back to their place of work, for example:

• "Sharing with senior management and producing a robust continuity plan."
• "Sharing. Reviewing plans. Checking. Thinking outside the box."
• "Will use info in BCP project - consider climate."

If you would like to find out about forthcoming business resilience workshops, please see our Events section.