I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but the term “business continuity” has been everywhere recently. And no, I’m not falling into the trap of some carefully woven pre-event marketing PR bunny spin around some dull, business continuity conference.

Only last week, I wrote a story on research from IDC and BT that found more than one in five (21 per cent) of UK big business lacks detailed business continuity plans in the event of IT downtime. More surprisingly perhaps, it found 71 per cent of businesses have no emergency IT and communications systems recovery plan.

Apart from it being common sense to plan for emergencies in our increasingly stormy and windswept, terror ridden and technologically dependent island existence, planning for disasters should also be part and parcel of good governance and security business IT strategies too. Having things like an up-to-date contact list so that you can track down employees potentially trapped in an emergency situation is a no-brainer. But that list is no good to you stored on a database when the servers or networks have gone down.

To this effect, it’s rare for a new British Standard to attract as much interest as the latest business continuity standard and certification, BS 25999, has attracted. The British Standards Institute (BSI) said it is the fastest ever selling British Standard, as well as receiving more downloads during the public consultation phase than ever before.

Echoing the findings of the IDC/BT research, a poll carried out last by Business Continuity Expo 2008 (oh dear) showed that 60 per cent of companies are now considering certification to BS 25999 – bringing business continuity planning and management right to the top of the corporate agenda for the first ever time.

As Britain prepares to batten down the hatches again this week, I can think of no better time to reflect that UK businesses are ignoring business continuity at their peril.