Agenda item

To report the outcomes of the review conducted by the Storm Arwen Task and Finish Group.

The report detailed the outcomes of the review conducted by the Storm Arwen Task and Finish Group.

The report was presented by Councillor Reid. He thanked everyone who had contributed, the members who had been involved and Sean Nicholson and Helen Hinds. This was a good example of how members of all parties could work together and come up with some meaningful recommendations. Efforts had been made to ensure that the recommendations were things which could actually be done. Scrutiny would be revisiting the recommendations in future to monitor how they had been implemented and he hoped other task and finish projects would follow. The main problems had been caused by trees and tree management might need closer investigation. He moved the recommendations and encouraged Scrutiny to come back to them to ensure that they were implemented, and to progress identified actions with other organisations. This was seconded by Councillor Mather.

Councillor Dickinson thanked the Group for its work. It had shown how well Task and Finish Groups could identify the important issues and how members of all parties had different communities to represent with their own different issues to deal with. He paid tribute to Communities Together staff and Council staff and everyone who had mobilised to help communities, as well as the communities themselves. He agreed the recommendations needed to be monitored, and organisations needed to be pressed to ensure that all work resulting from the storm damage was completed. He wanted to see more of this excellent type of work.

Councillor Hill felt this was a constructive report with good actions identified. Regarding the relief effort, she felt there were resources which should be available to help the outlying areas as towns had better resources and were less likely to be cut off.

Councillor Murphy commented that the Plan needed to be adaptable across all weather conditions as extreme heat could also be very dangerous and was becoming a more regular occurrence.

Councillor Horncastle agreed that staff needed to be commended for their efforts but was very disappointed with the criticism Council staff had received from the public which had been totally unfounded. He had witnessed the lengths that staff had gone to support residents in all types of conditions and he wanted to place on record his thanks to all of them.

Councillor Dunn supported the recommendation for the retention of the Community (COVID) Support Officers. They had been very effective during the pandemic and would be invaluable going forward. It was also vital to recognise the value of town and parish councils, and communications with them should be strengthened. Looking forward, some areas were regular flooding spots so a long term plan was needed to improve the current failing infrastructure.

Councillor Robinson felt that the power companies should be looking to improve their infrastructure, rather than maintenance, to improve future resilience.

Councillor Mather reported that he had enjoyed being part of the Task and Finish Group and he endorsed previous comments made regarding the Council’s staff. He had been critical at the time regarding decisions about calling a major incident, and the investigation had showed that it was the lack of communication between the Council and other bodies that had let things down. The report went some way to addressing that and the companies who had taken part had agreed that communication failings had affected the decision making, and if all information had been available at the time then the decisions would have been different. He paid tribute to Helen Hinds and advised that a meeting had already been held in his division to look at how town and parish councils could work more effectively with the County Council in emergency circumstances.

RESOLVED that the recommendations in the report be agreed.