At its meeting on 4 September 2018, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee recommended that the Council adopt the Scrutiny Review of Water Supply Outage report. The Committee also agreed that the actions would be reviewed in February with partners to be invited to see how they were progressing.

(Since the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting, the action sheet has been further updated and that revised copy is attached for the Council’s information).

41.1           Attention was drawn to the Overview and Scrutiny Review of Water Outage report, circulated with the Agenda at Pages No. 19-64. Members were advised that, at its meeting on 4 September 2018, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee had recommended that the Council adopt the report and that the actions contained therein be reviewed in February with partners being invited to see how they were progressing.  Members were also advised that, since the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting, the action sheet had been further updated and the revised copy was attached for the Council’s information.

41.2           In proposing the report, the Chair of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee explained that the water outage had significantly affected the Borough’s communities in December 2017 and the subsequent review was probably the highest profile undertaken by the Committee in recent years. The whole Committee had been involved as a Task and Finish Working Group and it was hoped that the content of the report showed the amount of work that the Committee and supporting Officers had put into the review. The review had sought to understand the impact on the community and local businesses, including agriculture, through consultation with businesses, the Citizens’ Panel and Parish and Town Councils and that information, together with obtaining a full picture of how the incident had occurred and the response from all relevant agencies in managing the incident, had enabled a detailed set of scrutiny questions to be put to partners at the public inquiry which had been held on 24 April 2018. The work had established a set of learning points which had been captured in the action plan at Appendix 3 of the report; that action plan would be taken back to the Committee early in the New Year to ascertain progress in implementing the actions. The actions related to key areas such as maintenance and infrastructure, water distribution, communications and impact on businesses. Overall, the Chair felt the review was an excellent piece of work and he thanked his fellow Committee Members and Officers for their contributions. He also thanked the representatives of Severn Trent Water, Gloucestershire Police, Gloucestershire Fire and Rescue Service and Gloucestershire Local Resilience Forum for their participation and the open and transparent manner in which they had responded to questions.

41.3           The proposal to adopt the report was seconded and the Mayor invited questions from Members. A Member thanked the Overview and Scrutiny Committee for the brilliant piece of scrutiny which had been undertaken. Referring to the review of the 2007 floods, he felt the resultant actions had not been followed-up effectively in all cases and he hoped partners would know that, if there were any actions left incomplete this time, the Committee would be going back to question them. In response, the Overview and Scrutiny Committee Chair confirmed that lessons had been learnt since 2007 and he completely understood the need to follow-up on action plans as did all of those involved in the review.

41.4           Accordingly, it was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 41

To approve the Scrutiny Review of Water Supply Outage Report and recommend it to Council for adoption and to agree how the Committee will monitor delivery of the action plan.

36.1          Attention was drawn to the report of the Head of Community Services, circulated at Pages No. 83-127, which attached the final draft of the Scrutiny Review of Water Supply Outage Report.  Members were asked to approve the draft report and to recommend to Council that the report be adopted, and to agree how the Overview and Scrutiny Committee would monitor delivery of the action plan going forward.

36.2          The Head of Community Services indicated that the Overview and Scrutiny Committee had been fully involved in the review.  The final draft report was attached at Appendix A to the Committee report and included an action plan containing 20 recommendations which had been identified during the course of the review.  It was noted that the action plan had been updated to reflect the current position.  Unfortunately, some of the partner organisations had not been able to provide target dates for their actions prior to the meeting; this was largely due to reduced resources over the summer period.  Notwithstanding this, he provided assurance that everyone was fully engaged and committed to delivering the action plan and Severn Trent Water had requested a meeting in October to discuss this further with partners. 

36.3          The Chair indicated that this was the biggest piece of work that had been undertaken by the Overview and Scrutiny Committee during this Council term and he wished to thank everyone who had been involved in the review and the production of the report.  He welcomed views on how the action plan should be monitored going forward.  A Member also wished to extend his congratulations to all involved but he pointed out that a report was only as good as its outcomes and it was crucial to ensure that the action plan was delivered.  The Head of Community Services suggested that the report be brought back in the final quarter of 2018/19, which would be a year after the water outage, and Members agreed that the February meeting would be most appropriate and that they would like all partner organisations involved in the review to attend in order to give updates on the actions relevant to them.  The Head of Community Services undertook to invite partners to the meeting when he met with them in October and indicated that he would report back if there was a problem with this date.  It was

RESOLVED          1.That the draft Scrutiny Review of Water Supply Outage Report be APPROVED and that it be RECOMMENDED TO COUNCIL that the report be ADOPTED.

2. That the action plan be brought back to the Overview and Scrutiny Committee meeting on 12 February 2019 and that all partners involved in the review be invited to attend.