As police prepare for continued widespread disorder in the UK, we look at practical steps your organisation can take to understand and mitigate the risks.
At the time of writing, police across the UK have been preparing to respond to incidents of planned civil unrest. Violent attacks on people, property and police began on July 30 in Southport and spread to towns across England and Northern Ireland.
With headlines still dominated by dozens of so-called protests and counter-protests to reclaim the UK streets, to support you in protecting your business in this challenging time, we offer guidance to identify and mitigate the impacts of potentially violent disorder and civil unrest.
Understanding the range of disorder-related risks
The potential immediate impacts of civil unrest on your business can be wide-ranging and include:
- Physical damage to assets
- Threats to employees and the potential for physical violence
- Disruption to operations
- Reputational damage, particularly where employees may have been involved in violent disorders or accused of inciting violence online
- Reduced footfall in retail sites, particularly in town centre locations
- Media pressure for statements from affected organisations and/or your employees.
Longer-term impacts of disruption may include:
- Additional pressure on revenues and profits
- Supply chain challenges
- Lending conditions becoming stricter
- Claims settlement potentially subject to delays or dispute
- Increased risk of litigation as claims are disputed
- Wellbeing issues or heightened concerns over employees affected by events.
Now is the time to consider your response in the scenarios most likely to impact your business. A primary responsibility is your duty of care to your employees. For example, let's say you employ shift workers, some of whom need to leave town centre premises safely after dark. How robust are your provisions to ensure their safe exit from the property in the event of unrest?
It's also time to check the procedures your organisation can trigger in the event of violent disorder, or a member of staff becoming involved in public disorder or inciting violence online. For example, how might you manage the HR implications of a member of staff being convicted of participating or inciting disorder actions?
Actions to mitigate the impacts of civil unrest
- Physical preventative measures include ensuring you have access to materials such as boarding or welded wire panels to secure your property or windows. Also, check your alarms are working and your staff are clear on your evacuation procedures. If your business is exposed to the risk of looting, you could consider recruiting additional security staff, however such moves may only be effective as a visual deterrent. It's also essential you have a 'go-to' list of emergency numbers for tradespeople, such as carpenters, glaziers, damage clearance and any other professionals you may require. Get these resources lined up and ready to activate quickly.
- Policy and procedure measures include evaluating how civil unrest is covered by your risk register and business continuity plans. Ensure your crisis management plan and crisis response structure is also clear and ready for you to activate at short notice (see below for more on effective crisis management planning).
Review your crisis management plans and media protocols
Generally speaking, your crisis management plan should cover the three phases of any crisis, such as being impacted by violent disorder and property damage: response, crisis management and recovery. The response phase should focus on protecting your people and limiting damage in the event of unrest. The crisis management phase is centred on reassuring staff and customers and managing media and other stakeholders, while recovery is about restoring normality as far as possible for your employees and customers.
Your crisis management plan should have clear triggers and escalation criteria and provide clarity on what procedures kick in when and who needs to act and how. Your plan should also define roles and responsibilities and provide clarity around which communications are allowed in and out of the business during an incident. This element of your plans should align with any communications response to manage relations with key stakeholders such as media, customers and insurers. Bear in mind, you may need to remind your people to not engage either with the perpetrators of disorder or the media and also that they should direct media or customers queries to the appropriate communications contacts.
Your crisis management plans should also specify the measures you'll take to deliver business continuity and how you'll close and learn from any incident. Think about converting your crisis management plan into a quick reference guide your people can keep handy and refer to with ease in the event of unrest.
Carrying out exercises to test your crisis management approach will help ensure it's fit-for-purpose. Testing your plan might involve a simple walk-through discussion, scenario-based approaches or full-scale simulation-based exercises, depending on the size and sector of your business.
Ensuring employee wellbeing in light of public disorder
Considering the wellbeing of your employees is crucial in crises such as public disorder incidents. You could consider issuing specific guidance for any incident, which may include advising your people to:
- Avoid gatherings and crowds when travelling to the office and bear in mind disorder could impact public transport and render networks congested
- Talk with their line manager about their working arrangements if they don't feel safe travelling to their place of work
- Be aware your organisation and its buildings may step-up security arrangements during this period, which might mean increased security checks on entry and reminders to never allow anyone to 'tailgate' behind them to enter secure buildings
- Understand that you recognise how public disorder incidents can cause stress and uncertainty and if your people need support, they can consider using any resources you may have available.
Consider any special requirements of your insurance cover
Review your existing provisions to understand exactly what is and isn't covered and where there are gaps you may need to address. Some specific factors you may want to consider include:
- While this unrest has yet to be classified as a 'riot' within the terms of the Riot Act, many policies carry short notification or submission periods for riot claims, sometimes as little as seven days or up to 43 days.
- Monitor whether the incidents are under consideration to be certified terrorism and the implications as to the relevant policy coverage. Review the extent of coverage for civil commotion and riots under your existing wordings.
- Be aware of the extent of coverage under your business interruption policy for early or temporary closure, whether this is enforced by a public authority or police, or a business decision to close to protect the assets. The time excess typically applying will be a key focus, as will whether the events are deemed as separate incidents or a single incident that persists over a number of days.
- You should be ready to notify insurers as to the risk management approach taken and seek agreement with insurers on what would satisfy 'reasonable precautions' conditions under your existing policies.
- Your policy may include 72-hour clauses or occurrence definitions containing riot, civil commotion, malicious persons, which means multiple incidents may be combined within one occurrence and one limit or excess or deductible may apply.
- You may also be entitled to compensation under the Riot Compensation Act 2016.
Please do review your policies and contact your WTW account team to discuss any notification periods or limitations of cover applying.
The content of this article is intended to provide a general guide to the subject matter. Specialist advice should be sought about your specific circumstances.