((Chairman) To receive a presentation from the Council’s Contingency Planning & Corporate Safety Officer, Ms L Lipscombe, followed by a Members’ question and answer session.
Minutes:
The Contingency Planning and Corporate Safety Officer, Ms L Lipscombe, addressed members on the Council’s emergency planning and corporate health and safety arrangements.
Having previously worked for twelve years for Uttlesford District Council covering emergency planning, health and safety and fire safety, she had managed a number of high-profile incidents that had occurred during her time there. This had included helping to co-ordinate the arrival of over 600 evacuees from Lebanon at Stansted Airport in 2006. When 38,000 spectators had watched the 2012 Olympic torch relay, she had recruited and managed the 125-volunteer route marshals, and was a tactical command officer for the 2014 Tour de France through Uttlesford.
Emergency planning and business continuity included the responsibility of ensuring the Council could effectively respond to a civil emergency in the District. During 2019 she would be introducing a training programme for officers to cover strategic, tactical and operational roles.
The Emergency Planning Officer (EPO) liaised with the multi-agency Essex Resilience Forum that included various authorities, such as Essex Police, Essex County Fire and Rescue Service, and East of England Ambulance, plus a number of parish and community groups. She regularly attended ‘Working on Tuesday’ meetings at Essex County Fire and Rescue Service headquarters where countywide EPOs met to train, plan, network and risk assess. The EPO would help to identify risks specific for Essex by looking at the national risk register. Plans would then be prepared on a countywide, districtwide or individual basis. The Council had its own Rest Centre plan, but she would liaise with Connect Plus on the Bell Common Tunnel emergency plan and Stansted Airport on any incidents that could affect the District. She also attended parish council meetings to encourage them to make their own contingency plan and write a parish emergency plan.
Corporate business continuity would be reviewed with the new service directors in due course to encourage managers within the respective service areas to work together on a business continuity plan. She intended to organise a bespoke course on emergency planning for these officers to help them produce a management plan and updated business continuity plan. She intended to produce a full business impact analysis of the Council’s critical functions and produce an incident response plan.
On corporate health and safety, the Accompanied Attendance List would be renamed the Cautionary Contact List in October 2018 and be trialled for a short period alongside the current system to ensure all the information had been reviewed and transferred across. The list would come under her remit as the Corporate Safety Officer, be more efficient and user friendly, GDPR compliant, and would be reviewed every six, nine and twelve months.
All training had been completed for the Council’s lone workers using the Skyguard personal safety devices, and there had already been a couple of incidences since she had started working. Health and safety week from 22 – 29 October 2018 would focus on reminding managers to conduct regular updates of their lone workers’ risk assessments.
TagEvac, the new fire safety evacuation system, had been installed at the Civic Offices, and Evac chairs had been affixed in the stairwells. A number of new fire marshals had been trained and shown the areas under their responsibly in the event of an incident. The personal evacuation plans held for some specific staff had also been updated. The fire safety policy and emergency procedures for the Civic Offices were being reviewed. The Oakwood Hill Depot was also currently updating its procedures. Once this had been completed, the procedures at all the other Council owned sites would undergo a review.
On general health and safety issues, the accident report form was being overhauled to include near miss incidents, an expectant mothers/nursing mothers risk assessment had been introduced, and a revised staff health and wellbeing strategy was being produced.
The following questions were received from members.
Councillor J H Whitehouse asked if members could undergo safety training? This was also in connection with voluntary service work. The Contingency Planning and Corporate Safety Officer responded positively that she would be happy to provide members with lone worker safety training. The Chairman added that the Suzy Lamplugh Trust had a very good training programme.
Councillor A Patel remarked that she had a very large remit under her job role and asked how did she report back to the Council? The Contingency Planning and Corporate Safety Officer replied that she reported to the Service Director (Commercial and Regulatory Services), J Nolan. The Acting Chief Executive, who chaired the Corporate Safety Group, added that the Council therefore had a strong focus on health and safety.