Agenda item

Councillor Wyatt, Chair of Task and Finish Group, to report

The Chair formally thanked Councillor Wyatt and members of the Cross Party Task & Finish Group (The Group) for their work in completing the scrutiny review on Emergency Planning.

 

Councillor Wyatt started his presentation of the report by outlining that  some of the ideas brought out in the review have been implemented already, as the Emergency Plan was a living document and it needed to adapt and be fluid enough to meet all eventualities. IPSC will want to monitor the recommendations which were made from a sound basis of information.

 

One of the reasons why the review was undertaken, were the Commission’s concerns over the strength, structure and the effectiveness of the plan in an emergency situation. The Select Commission Group was aware that lives could potentially be at risk in circumstances where the EP would be made operational and it would not be sufficiently robust.

 

The reasons for The Group undertaking the review were:-

 

·           The existing EP was out of date, the current version was dated September 2013 Amendment 35;

·           High turnover of staff in the Authority at a senior level over a short timescale;

·           High number of new Elected Members in the Council; and

·           The number of staffing changes in other organisations linked with the EP

 

The work on the review had taken over 12 months to complete. The Group were reassured to learn about the significant knowledge and skills the Forward Liaison Officers’ possess.

 

Councillor Wyatt expressed his thanks to Members and Officers in Stockton-On-Tees who hosted a visit by The Group to discover how their Joint Service Agreement operates in relation to Emergency Planning.

 

Rotherham’s Emergency Plan s part of a Joint Service Agreement with Sheffield City Council, but this was not the focus of the scrutiny review.

 

The aim of the review was to

 

Test the resilience of the Emergency Plan operation including examining the:-

·           Internal governance including meetings structure, attendance and terms of reference for all the groups involved.

 

·           Resilience arrangements networked within Directorates.

       (The existing group of Directorate representatives was no longer reflective of the current Council structure.)

 

·           Resilience of arrangements with external agencies involved in the EP process

 

The findings from the review identified

·         Circulation of a controlled document

·         Lack of joint meetings between Rotherham and Sheffield under the Joint Service Agreement

·         Overall management of the EP process due to changes in officers and Members

·         Primary operations room was not exclusively used for EP purposes but also as a training facility

·         The secondary operations room at Clifton Park provided limited resources

·         Requirement to recruit and train more volunteers

·         Lack of a corporate exercise for the service

·         Lack of information sharing between partner organisations

·         The need to provide training to Parish Councillors on the EP

·         No dedicated 4x4 wheeled drive vehicle

·         Procurement staff, over time has been excluded from the EP process

·         When the EP was operational, the Council effectively became an emergency service, a fact to be made known to the Council’s suppliers of goods and services

·         Corporate Risk Manager was employed by the Council and was available to provide a “critical friend” support to the EP Team when rewriting the plan

·        Attention was given to improving community resilience in the time of an emergency

·         Ward Councillors needed to receive training on the EP and to understand their role in the process along with supporting the Cabinet Member

·         The types of risk in the Borough could change – e.g. having the Advanced Manufacturing Park within its boundaries, this could be seen as a target for terrorism

·         All members of the Communications Team were proficient in dealing with all media types along with having access to all documents on a shared drive

·         All the Managers in the Communications Team had received training in the EP process

·         A member of the Communications Team was on call at all times and they worked closely with the Borough Emergency Co-ordinator when the EP was operational

·         The system currently in use in the Borough Emergency Operations Rooms (BEOR) was unsupported and further work needed to be done to establish the access codes for the system

·         Overall the IT systems relating to the EP needed to be examined and ultimately systems needed to be based in the Cloud, therefore eliminating the need for a BEOR

·         The IT systems were not part of the Shared Service Agreement with Sheffield.

 

The review took account emergency of an incident that happened during the period of the review, e.g. the fire at Kilnhurst.

 

Councillor McNeely raised concerns over recommendations 7, 11 and 14, all of which related to the Joint Service Agreement with Sheffield, which Sheffield were not complying to.  A request for the Leader, Chief Executive and the Local Resilience Forum to strengthen these recommendations as soon as possible.

 

Discussions took place after a point raised by Councillor Walsh over the identified unsupported IT systems currently in use by the Council and the urgency for this to be dealt with and to put data into the Cloud. Councillor Wyatt supported Councillor Walsh’s concerns noting that this work had been done on the IT systems some years ago but also raised the point not just about the resilience of IT systems but of resilience within the community and the work with Parish Councils and the use of community assets. Awareness of financial restraints but more joint working needed to be encouraged between the Borough Council, Parish Councils along with local people who volunteered for such tasks as snow wardens.

 

It was noted by the Chair that the pre-meeting also supported this idea.

 

Damien Wilson the Strategic Director for Regeneration & Environment commented that members of staff from his Directorate had been involved in completing the review. Assurances were given by Damien that what was reported to be an unsupported IT system was in fact an independent system within the Council’s framework. Work was underway to bring all IT systems and make them compatible onto the same platform.

 

The review was a good piece of work and by applying the principles of best practice, some of the recommendations identified by the review had already been implemented.

 

Councillor Walsh requested that a full scale training exercise based on the Emergency Plan be undertaken as soon as possible and the new version of the Emergency Plan (now known as the Major Incident Plan) be adopted and kept as a controlled document in one place.

 

Damien Wilson confirmed that it was important to the review the Emergency Plan due to the large number of new Officers in the Strategic Leadership Team along with the number of new Council Members. It was noted that in Damien’s view Rotherham experiences a high number of real live operations such as marches, fires and flooding.

 

The Strategic Leadership Team had not worked together as a team in an emergency situation.

 

Some joint training work has already started with the Strategic Leadership Team who recently received a presentation on the Major Incident Plan. A point to note that the type of potential emergencies Rotherham was likely to face had changed over the last 10 years and the Council needed to be able to react to these.

 

Recommendations from the review

 

Recommendations

1.     That the Major Incident Plan is reviewed bi-annually by a group of Members from the IPSC and this work forms part of the work programme for that year, however the document is to be reviewed by officers on a continual basis.

 

2.     Mandatory training is to be provided to all Members about the Major Incident Plan to increase their awareness and involvement in any major incident.

 

3.     Training relating to the Major Incident Plan should be mandatory to ensure all staff who volunteered are confident in the role they play in the management of the incident.

 

4.     An “out of hours” training exercise to take place once all volunteers have been trained. Full training exercises then take place on a regular basis.

 

5.     A targeted approach to recruitment from employees who can be “job matched” to appropriate roles in the operation of the Major Incident Plan.

 

6.     There are sufficient volunteers to staff the EP for at least two shift changes.

 

7.     A protocol to be developed to ensure that the partner organisations in the Major Incident Plan are notified as a matter of course when significant incidents occur in the borough and through the Local Resilience Forum, ways are to be identified and carried out on building relationships between partner organisations involved in the Emergency Plan – in particular to the turnover in staff.

 

8.     A facilitated meeting/away day involving the emergency services and RMBC major incident staff on the ground to promote team working.

 

9.     An on-going programme of training sessions for Parish Council members should be arranged to ensure any new members receive training on the subject.

 

10.  A representative from Procurement to be involved in the Borough Emergency Operations Room to facilitate timely ordering of goods/services and to provide information if the Belwin Fund becomes operational.

 

11.  Through the Shared Service Agreement funding is secured for a Community Resilience Worker.

 

12.  The Corporate Risk Manager is involved in the role of a “critical friend” any amendments  of the Major Incident Plan

 

13.  A flow chart to be designed detailing the Major Incident Process and highlighting how and when Members are to be involved in the process.

 

14.  The Chief Executive / Leader of the Council to inform counterparts in Sheffield of their concerns over the lack of meetings in relation to the Joint Service Agreement.

 

15.  The situation relating to the unsupported IT systems is rectified.

 

Resolved

 

(1)  That the report and recommendations from the review be approved. 

 

(2)  That the report be forwarded to the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board for their consideration.