Issue - meetings

ES 18005

The report dealing with the Emergency Planning and Business Continuity Service Update was drafted by Paul Lehane (Head of Food Safety, Occupational Safety and Licensing). The update on the night was presented jointly by Mr Lehane and Laurie Grasty-- Emergency Planning and Corporate Resilience Manager.

The report had been written to update Members on the Emergency Planning and Business Continuity Service following an earlier report to the Committee on 18^th January 2017. The previous report had highlighted the limited resources allocated to the function and the need to review the Council’s business continuity arrangements.

Members were asked to note and comment on the report.

Mr Lehane stated that since the previous report, LBB was in a better place with respect to Business Continuity and Emergency Planning, and that much had been learned. LBB had provided assistance to the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea after the Grenfell Tower fire, and Ms Grasty had grown into her role as Emergency Planning and Corporate Resilience Manager. She was being assisted in this role by Sophie Olive, who was previously a graduate intern, but who was now employed on a full time temporary basis as Business Continuity Officer.

Mr Lehane said that a number of Bromley staff had volunteered to provide assistance with Ms Grasty at the West Way Assistance Centre, and that it was an awful experience and very stressful. The Grenfell incident had shown how a Council’s reputation could be destroyed with just one event where there was an inadequate response.

Recruitment had been undertaken for volunteers to help if an incident occurred; training was ongoing and crucial. The BRF (Bromley Resilience Forum) would co-ordinate local responses and would be chaired by the Chief Executive and by the Executive Director for Environmental and Community Services. The BRF is a multiagency forum that meets 3 times a year to ensure that known risks can be planned, and trained for in the borough with relevant training exercises.

The Chairman referred to section 3.12 of the report that outlined a series of exercises that had been undertaken to assess LBB’s practical ability to respond to incidents. She asked how the exercises went and what was learnt. Ms Grasty explained that one of the exercises had been run directly by LBB, and that was the table top exercise to set up and run a rest centre. LBB had been participants at the other exercises. Subsequent to each exercise, a debriefing report was produced, and any lessons learnt were incorporated into LBB’s emergency planning documentation. 

A Member asked if training was undertaken with the local emergency services and with other boroughs. Ms Grasty explained that London Resilience co-ordinated pan London exercises for all 33 London boroughs. Some joint borough training was undertaken for standardisation.

A Member asked if there was an incident that LBB would not be able to deal with. Mr Lehane responded that it was unlikely that any local authority would be able to respond to an incident of the magnitude  ...  view the full minutes text for item 64