BOROUGH OF POOLE

EMERGENCY COMMITTEE

15 October 2012

EMERGENCY PLANNING LEGACY FROM THE OLYMPICS/PARALYMPICS

PART OF THE PUBLISHED FORWARD PLAN:No

  1. PURPOSE

The purpose of this report is toprovide Emergency Committee with an overview of the recent Olympic and Paralympics preparedness and how this has provided a legacy going forward for the Council.

  1. BACKGROUND

The Council over the last twelve months was actively engaged in all levels of planning for the games and this included exercising, training and the production of plans all to ensure the games were delivered in a safe way whilst protecting the public, the competitors and VIPs.

This was a very demanding time for the Business Continuity and Resilience Team and very resource intensive. Plans were put in place to ensure the Council could respond to any emergency or disruptive challenge as the eyes of the world would be upon us. This involved the provision of key response roles being allocated throughout the games period and officers standing by to facilitate this whilst supporting the overall wider Dorset response planning.

Officers at all levels were actively involved 24/7 throughout this period. This included regular teleconferencing twice a day at both strategic and tactical level. The command tool CLIO was also used throughout this period and was found to be invaluable again Poole had dedicated officers monitoring this and updating as required daily.Daily briefings were conducted in the Silver Coordinating Room for key Poole staff and Service Units reported daily to enable a borough wide response for the Situation Report (SITREP) to be sent for the Local Resilience Forum to compile for the National SITREP.

Although the Council and the Local Resilience Forum were not tested ‘in anger’ during this period the planning and preparations put into place ensured that the games were delivered safely. Poole’s engagement throughout this process was also recognised and we received extremely positive feedback for our contributions throughout including personal positive feedback from the Chief Constable who was ultimately responsible for the safe delivery of the games.

  1. AREAS TESTED & POTENTIAL LEGACY

Hazardous RiskSites

In the identification of risks all hazardous materials sites were reviewed against the Torch Relay Route, the Olympics and Paralympics and plans updated. The Health and Safety Executive as part of this process has informed the Council of a number of new (recent sites) these are now plotted on GIS and form part of our risk register and scenario planning.

Risk

The Community Risk Register is being reviewed in December to consider the risks highlighted for the Olympics/Paralympics and where relevant these will be incorporated into a revised risk register. Risk planning within the Local Resilience Forum has evolved and the inclusion of Olympic assessments and reviewing of the Community Risk Register will provide a lasting legacy of risk from which to plan moving forward across many organisations. From a Poole perspective this will also help considerably towards understanding local risks and the levels of support in mitigation we can expect. Prior to the Olympics such detail was not available.

Risks raised during the lead up to the games were used to inform Service Units and allowed them to develop their own continuity and resilience planning. Items of significance and relevance to units raised in this way are already integrated into‘business as usual’ processes.

Fuel Strike

The threat of a Fuel Strike during this time enabled us to develop our own resilience planning for Poole and we were the first Local Authority to complete our local part of the wider Local Resilience Forum Plan and are seen as the lead for such work. We are currently developing fuel contingency planning with Health colleagues which will continue especially with the work on the transition of Public Health.

Communications

One of the key pieces of work was to have an overarching Warning and Informing Plan and sets of specific messages against known risks. Leads from Communications in Poole with other communicators developed this along with input from the Business Continuity Team. These plans are available for the future and we in Poole are developing further messages such as humanitarian assistance messaging following a major incident. Many incidents require joined up communications and the legacy of the gamesis that draft planned messages exist and general protocols are clearly known.

Joint Working & Collaboration

Over a number of years and more intensively over the last twelve months the Council has widened its network of responders and contacts through joint working and collaboration. The Council has been able to share and explain its command, control and coordination (C3) structure and conversely understand those arrangements in partner organisations to consider best practice. Collaboration has led to a better understanding of the roles needed for response and recovery both in a corporate capacity and within Service Units.The legacy is we have a much enhanced understanding of how we will respond to, and recovery from, emergencies in the future.

Exchanging Information

Working closely with partners such as the Met Office, the Environment Agency, Resilience Emergency Division (RED) the Council now receives real-time intelligence on a number of key issues e.g. Industrial relations issues nationally including fuel strike, bespoke weather forecast for localised large events, detailed warnings locally for severe weather and so on. We also undertook a review of our Severe Weather planning ahead of the winter and now issue ice alert messaging to key service Units and officers as a result. The legacy form the games has been to adopt the ‘capture once use many times’ approach and to speed up information exchange whilst allowing officer to make decisions based upon this information

Training

Training during the lead up to the games was coordinated by the Local Resilience Forum through a Training and Exercising Group which the Council was an active member of. This was an extremely efficient way of pooling limited funds to deliver multiple training sessions at all levels on numerous themes for an investment of only £2,000 per year. The borough has trained a total of 54 individuals (2 x elected members and 52 officers) during this period in areas such as strategic training, tactical training, CLIO training, Local Authority Liaison Officer (LALO) training, loggist training, media training and much more. The legacy going forward is more joint funded training which will enable the Council to maximise opportunity to ensure competence of officers with limited funds.

Poole also developed an e-learning package on the Introduction to the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. Internally members and officers have benefitted from this briefing package. This has also been shared across the country. Further packages are in development decision making, vulnerable people planning etc.

Training & GIS

Emergency Committee members were included in training initiatives during this time; some came to see the Silver Coordination set up for the Council and a number attended a specific Local Authority Elected Members Workshop in Dorchester. Members also attended GIS training and now have an understanding of our capability. GIS is pivotal in our response and recovery, but also in our pre planning including scenario planning as risk spatially represented is far easier to comprehend. We are still actively involved in encouraging the sharing of GIS data with partners and hope to have working agreements in place very soon. Work with Dorset County Council GIS Team and our own GIS team have been ongoing throughout the games and has resulted in a sharing of relevant data which,in legacy terms, will further aid decision making especially cross borders in the future.

Web Page

In ensuring our own resilience for the games and indeed securing this as an on-going legacy benefit we have developed a web based approach to our response and recovery. This provides a single source for complex issues to be easily explained and broken down into subject areas easily understood. Documents from many sources are also signposted here as a one stop shop for the Council’s response and recovery. We were able to utilise this for the Torch Relay, the planned Fuel Strike and throughout the games. Moving forward this will be further developed and is already being seen by some Service Units as a solution to their own operational planning for day to day activities with the knowledge that escalation to corporate responses can be more easily applied.

Plan Review

In the run up to the games including the Torch Relay a suite of plans were developed by partners and ourselves. These plans are being reviewed again to ensure they remain valid and current. A plan template is now recognised more readily as a resultof the planning work undertaken to date and will further streamline the development of plans in the future.

Command

Officers in Poole were indentified early on in our planned response and recovery for the games. The rotas for Gold, Silver etc. were further developed and now run Thursday to Thursday to coincide with Bournemouth to avoid confusing handovers during a major incident in the conurbation. ‘Silvers’ have now reduced in numbers to a small cadre and the LALO trial, extended until mid January 2013, have all been a result of Olympic planning. The legacy will be a simple, lean approach to response and recovery with trained individuals working closely together.The command structure and arrangements will be finalised building upon our provision for the Olympics first quarter 2013.

Business Continuity

In developing the web based approach to our response and recovery we have been able to collect more relevant data about Business Continuity for our planning. For example, fuel planning and critical staff requiring fuel to deliver services was gathered during games time and this approach is seen as the way forward in developing corporate and unit’s resilience and Business Continuity planning.

Command Centres

The setting up of strategic and tactical command venues across the County was tested vigorously in the run up to the games and Torch Relay including our own. We also sent officers to Police headquarters to set up and run our local authority equipment and positions at the Strategic Coordinating Centre. The legacy from the games will be the coordination centre here in Poole and the equipment which can be used for day to day business as well as emergencies. The concept and equipment at Police headquarters will be available for any other emergency or large event such as the Air Festival.

Web/Teleconferencing

The Council has developed Web Conferencing alongside teleconferencing as an effectivecommunication solution when responding to emergencies. The approach was successfully and routinely used during the games and the Torch Relay event. This reduced the need for unnecessary officer travel time and costs to be incurred and enabled key officers to stay here in Poole keeping Poole safe and the business running. The further legacy is that many other organisations have seen how effective the response was and this can further benefit the Council in future as more partners also have the facilities to effectively communicate in this way.

CLIO

Throughout the Torch Relay and the games the command tool ‘CLIO’ was used and was very effective in command communications. This tool was developed by a small group within the Local Resilience Forum including officers from the Council. The legacy from the games is a command tool which we can use for any emergency or large event that is easy to use and more importantly extremely effective.

  1. LESSONS LEARNT

The Games and Torch Relay event were drivers to change and to improve learning for the Council. Our compliance with the Civil Contingencies Act and other legislation has been hugely enhanced.

Lessons learnt, from the exercises such as Black Chariot to the feedback each day on the Torch Relay, have been incorporated locally in Poole and across Dorset by the Local Resilience Forum into ‘business as usual’ activities.

The Council has gained immensely from this but at the same time many other organisations have learnt from Poole in how we plan and manage incidents.

5.FINANCIAL IMPLICATIONS

Funding was secured for the Torch Relay separately through Leisure Services. For the games an earmarked sum of £25,000 was set aside to fundthe Council’s command structure and necessary expenditure. To date approximately £19,000 has been spent. There are a number of individually small commitments outstanding still to fund, the anticipated final spend will be in the region of £23,000.

6.LEGAL IMPLICATIONS

None.

7.RISK MANAGEMENT IMPLICATIONS

The review of the Community Risk Register (starts December 2012) incorporating Olympic risks and where relevant these will be incorporated into the Corporate Risk Register and then spatially represented, using the IMAP system, to aid decision making at corporate and Service Unit level. The legacy will be a greater understanding of risks in and around Poole.

8.EQUALITIES IMPLICATIONS

There are no direct equalities implications. Howeverthe large number of plans developed need to be assessed for equality issues, work is underway to do this for Poole specific plans. Where plans were drafted by the LRF this process is still being discussed.

Responsible Officer:Simon Young, BCR Team Manager

Report Author:Simon Young, BCR Team Manager

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