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UNCORRECTED TRANSCRIPT OF ORAL EVIDENCE To be published as HC 484-iii HOUSE OF COMMONS ORAL EVIDENCE TAKEN BEFORE THE SCOTTISH AFFAIRS COMMITTEE POWER OUTAGES IN THE WEST OF SCOTLAND WEDNESDAY 10 JULY 2013 ELMA MURRAY, ALISTAIR SPEEDIE and IAN CARRUTHERS Evidence heard in Public Questions 234 - 319 USE OF THE TRANSCRIPT 1. This is an uncorrected transcript of evidence taken in public and reported to the House. The transcript has been placed on the internet on the authority of the Committee, and copies have been made available by the Vote Office for the use of Members and others. 2. Any public use of, or reference to, the contents should make clear that neither witnesses nor Members have had the opportunity to correct the record. The transcript is not yet an approved formal record of these proceedings. 3. Members who receive this for the purpose of correcting questions addressed by them to witnesses are asked to send corrections to the Committee Assistant. 4. Prospective witnesses may receive this in preparation for any written or oral evidence they may in due course give to the Committee. 1 Oral Evidence Taken before the Scottish Affairs Committee on Wednesday 10 July 2013 Members present: Mr Alan Reid (Chair) Mike Crockart Jim McGovern Graeme Morrice Pamela Nash Lindsay Roy ________________ In the absence of the Chair, Mr Reid was called to the Chair Examination of Witnesses Witnesses: Elma Murray, Chief Executive, North Ayrshire Council, Alistair Speedie, Director of Planning and Environment Services, Dumfries and Galloway Council, and Ian Carruthers, Dumfries and Galloway Council, gave evidence. Q234 Chair: Thank you all very much for coming to help us with our inquiry into the power cuts that happened back in March. Would you start off by introducing yourselves, please? Ian Carruthers: My name is Ian Carruthers, member of Dumfries and Galloway Council and Chair of the Planning, Housing and Environment Committee, which this subject lies under. I am here to take on any political views or points. I have Mr Speedie here to take care of the detail and such like. Thank you very much for inviting me. Alistair Speedie: I am Alistair Speedie, Director of Planning and Environment Services for Dumfries and Galloway Council. I have a number of responsibilities in my portfolio. With respect to events such as the snow we had in March, I chair the recovery group. During a response to such an event, I am very much responsible for business continuity, and once the response hands over to the recovery, I then chair the recovery group. Elma Murray: Thank you, Chair and Committee, for inviting me here today. I am Elma Murray. I am the Chief Executive of North Ayrshire Council. As such, I take the lead role for any management of civil and emergency control matters. Q235 Chair: Could you start off by explaining what your council’s priorities were after we had the snowfall back in March? It does not matter who leads off. Elma Murray: From our perspective in North Ayrshire, when the emergency starts, clearly, the police take the lead because the police, as far as emergency planning is concerned, will take the lead during the emergency stage. The council kicks in to take the lead during the recovery stage of any emergency or civil contingency matter. In terms of our priorities during the emergency stage, they were twofold. The first was predominantly to clear roads to allow access for any other services. The second was care of people. 2 Alistair Speedie: It was very much the same for us, Chair. Our priorities were to deal with our communities under such circumstances, particularly identifying vulnerable people in need, etc. Obviously, to get to these people and communities, we had to clear the roads very quickly to achieve a response. Q236 Lindsay Roy: What plans did you have in place to deal with severe weather, and how fit for purpose were they, on reflection? Elma Murray: We have a generic civil contingency plan in place which is well tested and well used. We did not just have severe weather this year; we have had severe weather in other parts of North Ayrshire over the two preceding years during which I have been chief executive, so we have put our plans into action on more than one occasion. In terms of the situation in relation to Arran though, which I believe is what the Committee’s attention is focused on today, then clearly we had an extra matter to consider which was in relation to the fact that it was an island community and getting services to and from the island also presents its own specific challenges. The emergency planning procedures worked well, in that the police did take the lead in terms of the initial emergency response, together with all partners, including any of the wider partners. Obviously there was SSE, because that was one of the major issues that we had on the island. The community, the health board and so on were also all part of our emergency response. We ran the emergency response as a standard emergency, where we had a number of emergency meetings. In fact, on the very first day, we had between five and six emergency meetings. That was on the Friday. We reduced those slightly over the weekend, as we started to make progress in terms of dealing with particularly the roads issue and providing access to other services. Later on in the week, when the council took over lead responsibility for the recovery, that was again very well documented as part of our civil contingency procedure. Our emergency planning procedures worked well and we followed those. We have undertaken a review of our emergency planning procedures. There are lessons to be learned, as there always are with any emergency. We believe that we can always make improvements and that we should use any event to learn from that and see how we can improve. We have done that and there are two or three issues that we have identified and that we now want to take forward following that. Q237 Lindsay Roy: I will come back to you on that in a minute once I get a response from your colleagues. Alistair Speedie: Dumfries and Galloway Council operates a major emergency scheme, which is well tried and tested. It goes back a number of years in its development, especially after the Lockerbie air disaster. It has been well tested through foot and mouth and obviously through a number of major snow and flood events. The support mechanisms include the council’s emergency centre in Dumfries, the emergency response environment that we have, local response team arrangements and the council emergency centre information cell. That is a cell that we deploy whenever we have a weather warning. It is a graduated response and the implementation plan we operate depends on whether it is a yellow, amber or red alert. We have support arrangements that we cascade into functional teams. The benefit of these generic plans and functional teams means that we have the same people in charge of these functional teams giving us continuity and familiarity. We have a single-room management. We have communications links with Government in these situations. We have Government support and operate and deploy mutual aid where required. I would say that it is very fit for purpose and it proves very successful in these situations. 3 Q238 Lindsay Roy: In essence, then, your emergency planning procedure is fit for purpose. The generic and slim-line planning approach seemed to be appropriate. What lessons were learned in addition to the framework you already had in place? Alistair Speedie: If I may say, Chair, in this case, we did not call a major emergency scheme. We did not deploy that in this case. It was very much concentrated in the west of our area, so we operated it through local response teams, with the council’s emergency centre co- ordinating in Dumfries. Maybe we should have deployed the full emergency scheme, but we didn’t. It lasted from Friday 22 March and it was mostly over by the evening of Monday 24 March. We deployed the recovery group on 26 March. Q239 Lindsay Roy: So that was a judgment call? Alistair Speedie: It was a judgment call, yes. Q240 Lindsay Roy: Have you reviewed the way in which a judgment call would be made in future? Alistair Speedie: Yes. These events are all very different. That is the essence of having a generic plan and having a flexible scheme that addresses whatever event comes along. Again, yes, we will look at that very closely. Of course, the whole environment is changing with the single police force. Before, we had co-terminus boundaries with the Dumfries and Galloway constabulary, so we will review that element as well going forward. Ian Carruthers: I would make a small comment on that. One of the things we did pick up on was that we got a yellow alert from the Met Office. We thought that that was maybe a little bit of a weak response from it. If it had been an amber, we probably would have gone to major. Q241 Lindsay Roy: Have you been back to the Met Office about that? Ian Carruthers: I am not 100% sure about that. You may have picked up on that, Alistair. Alistair Speedie: Yes, these are issues that we constantly discuss with the Met Office to update the information it gives. Basically, we need it on a risk-assessment basis. With snow in a certain area, that area may be familiar to heavy snowfall, but certainly the very west of our area was not used to such heavy snowfall.

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