Chichester District Council
Agenda item

Agenda item

Corporate Health & Safety and Business Continuity Management

That the Committee is requested to consider and note the council’s arrangements in place for monitoring and controlling the risks associated with health and safety and business continuity matters.

Minutes:

Mr Townsend introduced the item. He explained that the annual report is a position statement looking back over the last financial year and making comparison with the last two financial years.

 

Mr Townsend confirmed that a number of business continuity health checks had taken place with managers to plan for incidents lasting three days and three days and beyond. Suggested changes were taken into account and the relevant documentation saved on the x drive and uploaded to an externally hosted website. A critical staff list continues to be maintained and holds the details of around 100 members of staff. The document is accessible if IT were lost. The IT team have also been researching cloud storage for key documents however at present these documents are held on the desktops of the appropriate members of staff. Mr Townsend confirmed that the loss of the server room at East Pallant House (EPH) remained a concern as it could take up to three months to reinstate the council’s critical software. He clarified that software hosted offsite would not be effected. Current mitigation includes email continuity to provide staff with the ability to email each other, environmental monitoring of the server room (IT receive notification of any problems), security around the server room and a bespoke gas dosing system to reduce a fire quickly. Mr Townsend confirmed that senior managers were in the process of discussing the installation of a secondary server either at the Depot or at   EPH if the main server was moved to the Depot.

 

Mr Townsend and Mrs Belenger responded to members questions relating to business continuity. It was confirmed that applications and data are backed up on daily basis on site and stored offsite weekly. As part of business continuity plans housing benefit payments and staff salaries would still be paid (this has been tested up to the point of not transferring the costs involved). Mr Wilding added that a PID to implement a second server is due to be discussed by the Cabinet at its meeting in either November or December. With regard to the power feed into the building it was confirmed that there is a back-up generator. If the council were to suffer a loss of the building staff would, where possible, be expected to work remotely. In addition space for 50 staff would be created at the Depot and the Estates team would work with the insurers to find suitable permanent accommodation. WSCC would also provide a face to face interview room and reception area within the city centre. With regard to wider county/country wide problems they would be addressed by a wider emergency planning network as the CDC environmental health team only cover incidents within the district. With regard to critical staff on leave, each member of staff has a deputy or deputies.

 

Following a number of questions regarding cloud storage Mr Wilding outlined plans for a new IT Task and Finish. He explained that the idea for the Group had been raised at the Overview and Scrutiny Committee and members would meet to address specific IT issues. Mrs Tull suggested Mr Lloyd-Williams and Mr Hobbs be considered due to their IT backgrounds.

 

Mr Townsend then outlined the health and safety update from the report. He explained that in 2017/18 the total number of accidents, incidents and near misses came to 92 which was down 9% on the previous two years. Mr Townsend emphasised that the Health and Safety team actively welcome reports of near misses to help prevent future accidents. He confirmed that during the 2017/18 period the main cause of accidents had been trips, slips and falls with more incidents taking place for CCS staff. There were two RIDDOR’s which Mr Townsend explained is to be expected due to the nature of the work at the Depot.

 

Mr Townsend then outlined the Safety Watch scheme which has been running for a year. He explained that the scheme acts as a monitoring system to ensure compliance with procedures. In the past year the Health and Safety team have visited every Depot crew at least once. Each crew received an instant summary report and was issued with a colour coded card to indicate their level of compliance (green = good, yellow = areas to improve and red = areas of non-compliance). Mr Townsend was pleased to report no red cards had been issued to date. The next step would be to extend the monitoring to the Grounds Maintenance staff.


Referring to section 6.5 of the report Mr Townsend explained that a variety of health and safety training had been carried out either by the internal Health and Safety team or by external trainers including sessions with the new Divisional Managers.

 

Mr Townsend responded to members questions relating to health and safety. He agreed to note concerns relating to the procedure for handling broken pass activated doors following an injury that had been reported. With regard to comparing results with other local authorities Mr Townsend explained that he is part of a Health and Safety Officers locality network where results are compared anecdotally on a quarterly basis. With regard to section 6.3 the animal injury was confirmed as a wasp sting.

 

RESOLVED

 

That the council’s arrangements in place for monitoring and controlling the risks associated with health and safety and business continuity matters be noted.

 

The Committee took a short break.

Supporting documents:

 

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