Agenda item

Report of the Acting Strategic Director, Communities and Environment

The Committee were provided with a report to update in relation to the Strategic Resilience and Emergency Planning Framework.

The Emergency Response Team has been involved in responding to a number of incidents over the last eight months, including a couple of particular incidents in Gateshead - Regent Court Fire and Oak Square Fire – a members seminar is being arranged for 7 January 2019 to brief members on the learning from these two issues.

The team has also been part of several exercises both internally and working with partners.  Whilst there have been several table top exercises, in April May and July 2018 there was also a simulated fire-fighting exercise which took place in Crowhall Towers.  This was led by Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service in conjunction with The Gateshead Housing Company.  It involved the testing of a new firefighting procedure on high rise buildings.  This was successful and will be rolled out to operational teams across the region.  This highlights the excellent partnership working with TWFRS in the management of fire and tenant safety.  

All operations, exercises and incidents follow a debrief process.  This allows the Council to identify areas of good practice and enables us to learn from issues.

Updates from the themes within the Strategic Resilience and Emergency Planning Framework in the last six months include:

Building Resilient and Stronger Communities – working with businesses, the voluntary sector, partner agencies, communities and individuals to ensure they are better prepared for and able to recover from emergencies.

·         The resilience team has recruited two new Community Resilience Volunteer Wardens in different areas of Gateshead which takes the total to ten across the borough.

Future priorities include:

·         Further development of our arrangements for sharing and mapping information about vulnerable people, the use of the Cabinet Office Resilience Direct system, the prioritisation of assistance and identification of support that needs to be provided during and after an incident.

·         Developing an approach to explore and utilise spontaneous volunteering in an emergency or incident situation – regionally principles have been developed but this needs to be translated and implemented to a Gateshead approach.

Assessing Risk – identifying hazards and threats that may affect Gateshead implementing measures that may prevent an emergency or incident occurring.

·         Closer working arrangements are now in place and work is developing through the Risk and Resilience Group with the Corporate Audit and Risk Team to strengthen the approach to internal business continuity and critical services risks to the Council.

·         The Council is part of a Northumbria Local Resilience Forum Risk Working Group that is in the process of reviewing the methodology and regional risk assessments in line with national approaches.

Future priorities include:

·         Reviewing and adapting the criteria used to assess critical services within internal business continuity planning when there is an emergency or major incident in conjunction with the Audit and Risk Team in Corporate Resources

·         Reviewing the Council’s approach in relation to the revised CONTEST guidance (June 2018) and continue to assess risk of terrorism occurring.

Enhancing our partnership arrangements to respond and recover – the effective response and co-ordination of arrangements in the event of an emergency or incident occurring and achieving a rapid return to normality.

·         A number of the Council’s senior officers have recently completed the Multi-Agency Gold Incident Commander training with the College of Policing which had developed knowledge and skills of being able to have clear understanding and awareness of the strategic element of the response to an incident or emergency.

Future priorities include:

·         Review our humanitarian assistance arrangements and continue to develop relationships with voluntary organisations and community facilities, utilising the Government’s Aspects Guidance

·         Development of a further Strategic Emergency Response Table Top Exercise for Chief Executives.

RESOLVED -    (i)      that it be noted that the Committee are satisfied with the progress made within the last eight months.

                          (ii)      that the Committee agreed to receive a further update report in April 2019.