"The adoption sets in place the final step to ensuring council is agile in its response and capabilities to maintaining essential services during an undesirable event," ARC general manager James Roncon said.

Council staff have been formalising a Business Continuity Plan, in particular the council's response to the current Covid-19 outbreak in NSW.

Mr Roncon said unfortunately ARC's response and actions to COVID-19 last year were never formally documented and did not follow an established business continuity plan.

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"Even though council managed through last year's COVID-19 outbreak and essential services were maintained, an established plan of action has not been available to the organisation until now," he said.

"Each council department has completed a business continuity sub-plan that focuses on our response at three levels of escalation to guide the organisation through what is required to maintain essential services if the COVID-19 outbreak deteriorates and our region has to respond to changes to the public health orders."

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Mr Roncon said he applauded the work of council staff and councillors' adoption of the business continuity policy.

"Completing this essential planning will give confidence to the community and to the organisation that we can now act quickly and consistently in the event of the Public Health Order changing for our region, at any time," Mr Roncon said.

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