Business Emergency Resilience Group

The Prince’s Business Emergency Resilience Group, Business in the Community

Following widespread and devastating UK flooding in 2013 and 2014, HRH The Prince of Wales instigated The Business Emergency Resilience Group to help communities prepare for, respond to, and recover from disasters. 

As a Director at Business in the Community, The Prince’s Responsible Business Charity, Joey lead and expanded membership of the The Prince’s Business Emergency Resilience Group. This responsibility for engaging C-suite leaders and attracting corporate funding, delivered one of the largest leadership groups in the charity’s history as well as attracted new resources to help small businesses and communities respond more effectively in times of crisis.

What we did

Joey established the C-suite leadership group, created engagement opportunities with a focus on natural catastrophes, cyber disruption and pandemics. He led an engagement strategy, attracted significant financial and in-kind support, developed corporate and public-facing campaign resources and showcased leadership successes. 

He achieved a bespoke public engagement campaign called Would You Be Ready with creative support from McCann Enterprise Group and the Ready for Anything disaster recovery information resource funded by Barclays. He forged a key partnership focusing on cyber disruption with support from the UK Government’s National Cyber Security Centre, part of GCHQ. 

Joey attracted C-suite leader buy-in resulting in campaign finance to employ several staff and attracted in-kind support for live national flood-resilient showcase projects. He also secured a seat at the UK Government’s Property Flood Resilience Industry Roundtable that resulted in new British Standards for Flood Resilient construction methods.

HRH The Prince of Wales championed the group which helped businesses, charities and government unite in times of crisis referencing the Group at key moments such as Grenfell Tower disaster in London and on visits to UK communities adversely affected by widespread flooding. 

The group attracted financial support from Barclays to develop emergency responses using virtual reality devices. Joey created campaign showcase events at several senior C-suite events throughout the year including at The 02 Arena, The Royal Albert Hall, BT Tower, and in the Barclays headquarters at Canary Wharf, London.

In 2020, Business in the Community referenced the campaign model to develop its Covid-19 response campaign, The National Business Response Network with support from Axa insurance, the London Stock Exchange Group, Covid-19 Support Fund, Assurant, Barclays, UPS, Big Lottery Community Fund and Nominet.