Is London really prepared for the flood threat?
It is now a year since the floods that came in the wake of Hurricane Katrina devastated New Orleans, and I have to say that over the last twelve months I have become increasingly concerned about the effect of a similar event in London – mainly because so few organisations that would be affected seem to have business continuity plans that would adequately cope with such an event. London will flood, and flood badly. It’s not a question of if, but when. And when it does, the effect could be devastating to the UK economy unless the organisations that operate in London, be they in the government, health, industry, finance, or other sectors, have realistic, appropriate and effective business continuity plans. In November last year, many financial sector firms took part in the UK’s largest ever market-wide exercise, and a significant number of these were based in the City of London. This exercise had been designed to test the market’s preparedness to respond to a major business continuity crisis, and involved a scenario of widespread disruption in London and other financial centres, but did not involve major flooding in the City. I was an observer earlier on this year to an exercise designed to test the preparedness of a number of large organisations in the health sector in London to another major business continuity crisis, this was a ‘flu pandemic. Other people that I have talked to about the subject also confirm that exercises that they have been involved in have covered many different scenarios, including a flood of one or more of their buildings, but as far as I am aware there has yet to be a coordinated London wide exercise that really investigates the preparedness or organisations to deal with a ‘New Orleans style’ event. Why is this? A number of my clients are based in the areas in and around London that are at risk of flood, and I am sorry to say that the contingency planning of most of these does not cater for a catastrophic flood in London. They are not alone in this. Large numbers of organisations in the City of London, for example, have disaster recovery sites in Docklands. For those of you that are not familiar with the geography of London, Docklands is an area to the east of the City of London in low lying land on the banks of the River Thames – and yes, if the City floods, so does Docklands! I know that the police and local authorities have emergency plans in place to cope with such an event, but I am not talking about this kind of planning. What I am talking about is business continuity, which, for example, includes the ability of the City of London to survive and continue its role as one of the leading international financial centres. The impetus for such an exercise, the objective of which, to my mind, has to be to thoroughly test the preparedness of all major organisations based in London to breaking point, can only come from one of three institutions: the City of London, the Mayor of London’s office, or central Government. Participation should be compulsory, as should the publication of reports showing how prepared each organisation was found to be. If you think that a wide-area flooding event in the style of New Orleans is unrealistic, how about basing the scenario on an event a little nearer to home – Carlisle. How many of you remember this recent flood, and realise that it affected the whole of the city centre and many outlying districts? So, is anyone out there prepared to take up this call to action? Or can you refute my suggestion that London is not prepared? MAKE A COMMENT / RESPOND TO THIS ARTICLE Mel Gosling is a Member of the Business Continuity Institute, and Managing Director of Merrycon Ltd, which specialises in providing Business Continuity products and services. He can be contacted by email at melgosling@merrycon.co.uk
•Date: 1st September 2006 • Region: UK • Type: Article •Topic: BC general |
