AGENDA

Meeting Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee Date Thursday 31 January 2019 Time 2.00 pm Place Chamber, City Hall, The Queen's Walk, , SE1 2AA Copies of the reports and any attachments may be found at www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/london-assembly/fire-resilience-emergency-planning- committee

Most meetings of the and its Committees are webcast live at www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/london-assembly/webcasts where you can also view past meetings.

Members of the Committee AM (Chairman) AM Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair) AM Gareth Bacon AM David Kurten AM

A meeting of the Committee has been called by the Chairman of the Committee to deal with the business listed below. Ed Williams, Executive Director of Secretariat Wednesday 23 January 2019

Further Information If you have questions, would like further information about the meeting or require special facilities please contact: Jonathan Baker, Committee Officer, Tel: 020 7084 2825; Email: [email protected] For media enquiries please contact Giles Broadbent, Communications Officer; Telephone: 020 7983 4067; Email: [email protected]. If you have any questions about individual items please contact the author whose details are at the end of the report.

This meeting will be open to the public, except for where exempt information is being discussed as noted on the agenda. A guide for the press and public on attending and reporting meetings of local government bodies, including the use of film, photography, social media and other means is available at www.london.gov.uk/sites/default/files/Openness-in-Meetings.pdf.

There is access for disabled people, and induction loops are available. There is limited underground parking for orange and blue badge holders, which will be allocated on a first-come first-served basis. Please contact Facilities Management on 020 7983 4750 in advance if you require a parking space or further information.

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If you, or someone you know, needs a copy of the agenda, minutes or reports in large print or Braille, audio, or in another language, then please call us on 020 7983 4100 or email [email protected].

Certificate Number: FS 80233

Agenda Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee Thursday 31 January 2019

1 Apologies for Absence and Chairman's Announcements

To receive any apologies for absence and any announcements from the Chairman

2 Declarations of Interests (Pages 1 - 4)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Jonathan Baker; [email protected]; 020 7084 2825

The Committee is recommended to:

(a) Note the list of offices held by Assembly Members, as set out in the table at Agenda Item 2, as disclosable pecuniary interests;

(b) Note the declaration by any Member(s) of any disclosable pecuniary interests in specific items listed on the agenda and the necessary action taken by the Member(s) regarding withdrawal following such declaration(s); and

(c) Note the declaration by any Member(s) of any other interests deemed to be relevant (including any interests arising from gifts and hospitality received which are not at the time of the meeting reflected on the Authority’s register of gifts and hospitality, and noting also the advice from the GLA’s Monitoring Officer set out at Agenda Item 2) and to note any necessary action taken by the Member(s) following such declaration(s).

3 Minutes (Pages 5 - 40)

The Committee is recommended to confirm the minutes of the meeting of the Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee held on 22 November 2018 to be signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

The appendix to the minutes set out on pages 9 to 40 is attached for Members and officers only but is available from the following area of the GLA’s website: https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/london-assembly/london-assembly-committees/fire- resilience-emergency-planning

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4 Summary List of Actions (Pages 41 - 42)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Jonathan Baker; [email protected]; 020 7084 2825

The Committee is recommended to note the completed and outstanding actions arising from previous meetings of the Committee.

5 Action Taken Under Delegated Authority (Pages 43 - 44)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Jonathan Baker; [email protected]; 020 7084 2825

The Committee is recommended to note the recent action taken by the Chairman of the Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee under delegated authority, following consultation with the party Group Lead Members, namely to agree the arrangements for the Committee’s site visit to the Control Centre, together with the briefing from the London Local Authority Co-ordination Centre on 5 December 2018.

6 Question and Answer Session with the Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience and the London Fire Commissioner (Pages 45 - 86)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Janette Roker; [email protected]; 020 7983 6562

The Committee is recommended to:

(a) Note the performance report from the London Fire Brigade, attached at Appendix 1 to the report, as background to the question and answer session with the Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience and the London Fire Commissioner.

(b) Note the report and the subsequent discussion.

The appendix to the report set out on pages 47 to 86 is attached for Members and officers only but is available from the following area of the GLA’s website: https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/london-assembly/london-assembly-committees/fire- resilience-emergency-planning

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7 Statement of Assurance 2017/18 (Pages 87 - 164)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Janette Roker; [email protected]; 020 7983 6562

The Committee is recommended to:

(a) Review the London Fire Commissioner’s draft Statement of Assurance for 2017/18

(b) Make a report or recommendations to the Mayor on the draft Statement of Assurance for 2017/18, in accordance with Section 327G of the Policing and Crime Act 2017.

The appendix to the report set out on pages 89 to 164 is attached for Members and officers only but is available from the following area of the GLA’s website: https://www.london.gov.uk/about-us/london-assembly/london-assembly-committees/fire- resilience-emergency-planning

8 Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee Work Programme (Pages 165 - 168)

Report of the Executive Director of Secretariat Contact: Janette Roker; [email protected]; 020 7983 6562

The Committee is recommended to:

(a) Note the work programme, as set out in the report.

(b) Delegates authority to the Chairman, in consultation with party Group Lead Members, to agree arrangements for any site visits, informal meetings or engagement activities before the Committee’s next formal meeting on 28 March 2019.

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9 Date of Next Meeting

The next meeting of the Committee is scheduled for 28 March 2019 at 2.00pm in the Chamber, City Hall.

10 Any Other Business the Chairman Considers Urgent

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Agenda Item 2

Subject: Declarations of Interests

Report to: Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee

Report of: Executive Director of Secretariat Date: 31 January 2019

This report will be considered in public

1. Summary

1.1 This report sets out details of offices held by Assembly Members for noting as disclosable pecuniary interests and requires additional relevant declarations relating to disclosable pecuniary interests, and gifts and hospitality to be made.

2. Recommendations

2.1 That the list of offices held by Assembly Members, as set out in the table below, be noted as disclosable pecuniary interests1;

2.2 That the declaration by any Member(s) of any disclosable pecuniary interests in specific items listed on the agenda and the necessary action taken by the Member(s) regarding withdrawal following such declaration(s) be noted; and

2.3 That the declaration by any Member(s) of any other interests deemed to be relevant (including any interests arising from gifts and hospitality received which are not at the time of the meeting reflected on the Authority’s register of gifts and hospitality, and noting also the advice from the GLA’s Monitoring Officer set out at below) and any necessary action taken by the Member(s) following such declaration(s) be noted.

3. Issues for Consideration

3.1 Relevant offices held by Assembly Members are listed in the table overleaf:

1 The Monitoring Officer advises that: Paragraph 10 of the Code of Conduct will only preclude a Member from participating in any matter to be considered or being considered at, for example, a meeting of the Assembly, where the Member has a direct Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in that particular matter. The effect of this is that the ‘matter to be considered, or being considered’ must be about the Member’s interest. So, by way of example, if an Assembly Member is also a councillor of London Borough X, that Assembly Member will be precluded from participating in an Assembly meeting where the Assembly is to consider a matter about the Member’s role / employment as a councillor of London Borough X; the Member will not be precluded from participating in a meeting where the Assembly is to consider a matter about an activity or decision of London Borough X.

City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA Enquiries: 020 7983 4100 minicom: 020 7983 4458 www.london.gov.uk v2/2018 Page 1

Member Interest Tony Arbour AM Jennette Arnold OBE AM European Committee of the Regions Gareth Bacon AM Member, LB Bexley Shaun Bailey AM Sian Berry AM Member, LB Camden AM Congress of Local and Regional Authorities (Council of Europe) Leonie Cooper AM Member, LB Tom Copley AM Member, LB AM AM Member, City of Andrew Dismore AM AM Florence Eshalomi AM Nicky Gavron AM Susan Hall AM Member, LB Harrow David Kurten AM Joanne McCartney AM Deputy Mayor Steve O’Connell AM Member, LB Croydon MBE AM AM Alternate Member, European Committee of the Regions AM Member, LB Dr AM Navin Shah AM Fiona Twycross AM Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience; Chair of the London Local Resilience Forum Peter Whittle AM

[Note: LB - London Borough]

3.2 Paragraph 10 of the GLA’s Code of Conduct, which reflects the relevant provisions of the Localism Act 2011, provides that:

- where an Assembly Member has a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest in any matter to be considered or being considered or at

(i) a meeting of the Assembly and any of its committees or sub-committees; or

(ii) any formal meeting held by the Mayor in connection with the exercise of the Authority’s functions

- they must disclose that interest to the meeting (or, if it is a sensitive interest, disclose the fact that they have a sensitive interest to the meeting); and

- must not (i) participate, or participate any further, in any discussion of the matter at the meeting; or (ii) participate in any vote, or further vote, taken on the matter at the meeting

UNLESS

- they have obtained a dispensation from the GLA’s Monitoring Officer (in accordance with section 2 of the Procedure for registration and declarations of interests, gifts and hospitality – Appendix 5 to the Code).

3.3 Failure to comply with the above requirements, without reasonable excuse, is a criminal offence; as is knowingly or recklessly providing information about your interests that is false or misleading.

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3.4 In addition, the Monitoring Officer has advised Assembly Members to continue to apply the test that was previously applied to help determine whether a pecuniary / prejudicial interest was arising - namely, that Members rely on a reasonable estimation of whether a member of the public, with knowledge of the relevant facts, could, with justification, regard the matter as so significant that it would be likely to prejudice the Member’s judgement of the public interest.

3.5 Members should then exercise their judgement as to whether or not, in view of their interests and the interests of others close to them, they should participate in any given discussions and/or decisions business of within and by the GLA. It remains the responsibility of individual Members to make further declarations about their actual or apparent interests at formal meetings noting also that a Member’s failure to disclose relevant interest(s) has become a potential criminal offence.

3.6 Members are also required, where considering a matter which relates to or is likely to affect a person from whom they have received a gift or hospitality with an estimated value of at least £25 within the previous three years or from the date of election to the London Assembly, whichever is the later, to disclose the existence and nature of that interest at any meeting of the Authority which they attend at which that business is considered.

3.7 The obligation to declare any gift or hospitality at a meeting is discharged, subject to the proviso set out below, by registering gifts and hospitality received on the Authority’s on-line database. The on- line database may be viewed here: https://www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/gifts-and-hospitality.

3.8 If any gift or hospitality received by a Member is not set out on the on-line database at the time of the meeting, and under consideration is a matter which relates to or is likely to affect a person from whom a Member has received a gift or hospitality with an estimated value of at least £25, Members are asked to disclose these at the meeting, either at the declarations of interest agenda item or when the interest becomes apparent.

3.9 It is for Members to decide, in light of the particular circumstances, whether their receipt of a gift or hospitality, could, on a reasonable estimation of a member of the public with knowledge of the relevant facts, with justification, be regarded as so significant that it would be likely to prejudice the Member’s judgement of the public interest. Where receipt of a gift or hospitality could be so regarded, the Member must exercise their judgement as to whether or not, they should participate in any given discussions and/or decisions business of within and by the GLA.

4. Legal Implications

4.1 The legal implications are as set out in the body of this report.

5. Financial Implications

5.1 There are no financial implications arising directly from this report.

Local Government (Access to Information) Act 1985 List of Background Papers: None Contact Officer: Jonathan Baker, Committee Officer Telephone: 020 7084 2825 E-mail: [email protected]

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Page 4 Agenda Item 3

MINUTES

Meeting: Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee Date: Thursday 22 November 2018 Time: 2.00 pm Place: Chamber, City Hall, The Queen's Walk, London, SE1 2AA

Copies of the minutes may be found at: http://www.london.gov.uk/mayor-assembly/london-assembly/fire-resilience-emergency-planning- committee

Present:

Susan Hall AM (Chairman) Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair) Gareth Bacon AM Leonie Cooper AM Florence Eshalomi AM David Kurten AM

1 Apologies for Absence and Chairman's Announcements (Item 1)

1.1 No apologies for absence were received.

2 Declarations of Interests (Item 2)

2.1 Resolved:

That the list of offices held by Assembly Members, as set out in the table at Agenda Item 2, be noted as disclosable pecuniary interests.

City Hall, The Queen’s Walk, London SE1 2AA Enquiries: 020 7983 4100 minicom: 020 7983 4458 www.london.gov.uk

Page 5 Authority Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee Thursday 22 November 2018

3 Minutes (Item 3)

3.1 That the minutes of the Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee meeting held on 10 October 2018 be signed by the Chairman as a correct record.

4 Summary List of Actions (Item 4)

4.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.

4.2 Resolved:

That the completed and outstanding actions arising from previous meetings of the Committee be noted.

5 Resilience and Emergency Planning (Item 5)

5.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat as background to putting questions in two panels.

5.2 During the first panel questions were put to the following invited guests:  Fiona Twycross AM, Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience;  Steve Apter, Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade; and  John Hetherington, Head, London Resilience.

5.3 A copy of the transcript is attached at Appendix 1.

5.4 During the second panel questions were put to the following invited guests:  Luke Miller, Archdeacon of London, and Chair of the Faith Sector Panel, London Resilience;  Simon Moody, Area Director London, Environment Agency;  Emma Spragg, Director of London, Independent Living & Crisis Response, British Red Cross and Chair of the Voluntary Sector Panel, London Resilience; and  Doug Patterson, Chief Executive, London Borough of Bromley.

5.5 A copy of the transcript is attached at Appendix 2.

5.6 Resolved: (a) That the report and answers given at the meeting be noted; and (b) That authority be delegated to the Chairman, in consultation with party Group Lead Members, to agree any output from the discussion.

Page 6 Greater London Authority Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee Thursday 22 November 2018

6 Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee Work Programme (Item 6)

6.1 The Committee received the report of the Executive Director of Secretariat.

6.2 Resolved:

(a) That the work programme, as set out in the report, be noted; (b) That the recent briefing from the London Fire Brigade as set out in the report and as agreed by the Chairman under delegated authority in consultation with party Group Lead Members, be noted; and (c) That authority be delegated to the Chairman, in consultation with party Group Lead Members, to agree arrangements for any site visits, informal meetings or engagement activities before the Committee’s next formal meeting.

7 Date of Next Meeting (Item 7)

7.1 The next meeting of the Committee was scheduled for 31 January 2018 at 2.00pm in the Chamber, City Hall.

8 Any Other Business the Chairman Considers Urgent (Item 8)

8.1 There was no business the Chairman considered urgent.

9 Close of Meeting

9.1 The meeting ended at 3.58pm.

Chairman Date

Contact Officer: Laura Pelling, Principal Committee Manager, Tel: 020 7983 5526; Email: [email protected]

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Page 8 Appendix 1

London Assembly Fire, Resilience and Emergency Planning Committee 22 November 2018

Transcript of Item 5 – Resilience and Emergency Planning in London

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I would like to welcome our guests: Dr Fiona Twycross AM, who is Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience; Steve Apter, Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance at the London Fire Brigade (LFB); and John Hetherington, the Head of London Resilience. Welcome, all three of you. I am going to start with the questions, if I may, and the first question is to the Deputy Mayor and John. Can you describe how changes to resilience and emergency planning arrangements in London over the past few years have strengthened resilience in the city?

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): There has obviously been a high number of incidents over the past year or so and it has really brought the role of the resilience group, the role of the [London] Resilience Forum, to the fore. People have thought much more about resilience and what it means in practice. From a governance perspective, obviously I now have resilience as a very clear part of my role and that enables me to have the remit to work much more closely than I might otherwise have done with the resilience group, look at what issues might need to be resolved and how we can really strengthen the team.

The previous Head of London Resilience, while an expert in the field with a really strong track record, particularly around the Olympics, as people know, was actually working part-time, and it was not sustainable. When we looked at recruiting his successor we felt it was really important, particularly in the current climate, to have somebody in the role who was working full-time and had the scope not just to do the immediate work around incidents but plan for the future. This is already paying dividends, to be honest. I do not want to embarrass John [Hetherington] in public but I am going to. It is already paying dividends in terms of the focus of the team. That is a change.

The other change - and I am sure John can go into the details of the work of the team itself - has been a shift generally in an understanding about what resilience is, away from it simply being about emergency planning to looking at what more you can do to prevent emergencies happening in the first place, looking at long-term resilience. We are embarking on a piece of work with the 100 Resilient Cities programme shortly and some of the issues we will be looking at in that will be streams of work that could prevent things happening. The team has already been looking at issues around drought and how you could strengthen community resilience. We have a steering group on community resilience. We are looking at resilience in its broader sense, building on what has been a successful team in terms of emergency and contingency planning over many years.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you. John, do you have anything to add?

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): Just to reiterate some of the points, the Civil Contingencies Act brought into effect in 2004 - still relatively recent legislation - looked at emergency planning. We have seen a shift in the last few years to more of a holistic approach through resilience planning, a move from what we would term as acute shocks or sudden-onset incidents to the chronic stresses that Fiona described.

Physically, we have also merged our two teams, one of which sat within the LFB, the emergency planning department there, with the London resilience team. We have a greater collective pool of staff and also, we have moved, are co-located and hosted by the LFB. We sit within the operational resilience department there Page 9 and have excellent working relationships with them to share and broaden the knowledge. This is testament to the marked difference in the way the partnership responds to incidents. If we compare back to 2011 and the public disorder through to today, our frequency, our style and the way in which we conduct strategic co- ordinating groups in response to emergencies has changed a great deal.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you. Steve, what role does the LFB play in developing resilience and emergency plans in London?

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): Chairman, as John has referred to, LFB in its own right is a category 1 responder under the Civil Contingencies Act, and John has already referred to that coming together of the teams. I quite often refer to ‘the resilience of resilience’. Certainly, in the time I have been here, that has enabled us to build more resilience within the team. I have a permanently seconded or embedded Group Manager within the team at John’s disposal to ensure that continuity of information flow between both sides of the resilience piece.

When we talk about resilience within LFB we talk about local resilience, but we also talk about national resilience. London hosts a number of national resilience assets. For example, within the chemical, biological, radiological and nuclear emergency field LFB takes the lead role on behalf of the partnership, but also nationally the London Fire Commissioner is now the National Fire Chiefs Council (NFCC) lead for counter-terrorism within the fire and rescue service and the resilience piece around that. I myself am the chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear and enhanced explosives (CBRNE) lead for the NFCC. What that does, it enables and ensures that London is able to influence and support the national resilience arrangements across the (UK), which has shown dividends in the events we had here in 2017.

Furthermore, within the specific remit we also work closely across a range of partners, with benefits to me and my teams within LFB. For example, having embedded officers within projects such as the Thames Tidal Pathway and others really does help us build resilience in at the preparatory stage so that we can prevent some of the potential response elements further downstream. Overall, there is a really well embedded process for resilience.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Are all partners coming to the table and happy to engage? You do not have issues with any partners that are not?

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): No. If I think about the Resilience Forum meetings, I cannot remember any partners not being represented. Everybody turns up to the formal meetings, which is important in terms of making sure you get people fully on board with the direction of travel around the protocols and strategies. They are there to sign off.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Good. That is good news. Steve, what sort of training and exercising is provided to support pan-London arrangements?

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): I will cover some of that and I am sure John will be able to expand further across the partnership piece. Training is a key requirement under the [Civil Contingencies] Act as well. It is one of our key responsibilities. Much of our training in the sphere of resilience operates within a multi-agency approach. Very rarely would we train individually. We work closely to the protocols of JESIP, the Joint Emergency Services Interoperability Principles, and across that we have a number of plans and training schedules developed by John’s team that LFB then contribute to. They can be based primarily on what the risk and the threat level is or what the risk picture looks like, training right across all elements of the risk register. At that point probably John will pick up some of the specifics. Page 10

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): As you can imagine, it is a huge partnership with over 200 agencies, each with their respective roles and responsibilities. A great deal of the training is in their individual roles. Our part is to make the sum of the parts greater than the whole. We provide the collective training, if you like, and collective exercising. Typically, per year we have a training exercising programme and contained with that we host at least three strategic summits that bring together around 90 leaders at a strategic level from across the partnership. I hosted one this week to look at the CBRN threat. Also, at the more local level we host sub-regional workshops. We host at least four of those per year, looking at incidents or topics in more depth for the local partners, the Borough Resilience Forums. There is an ability for them to come together, share, understand incidents and network.

In terms of training, we have recently brought into London Multi Agency Gold Incident Command training, which is a nationally accredited course. Rather than sending officers individually off to that, we bring it into London and host so that there is the opportunity for responders to network over the four-day course. We are also trying to pilot one-day and two-day courses to widen it out to more responders.

We as the London Resilience Group have a duty to provide training and exercising in the pan-London arrangements for local authorities as well. We do this through a series of exercises annually. We have a preparatory exercise called Exercise Preparer which is the run-up for local authorities and allows them to test their individual responses, their control rooms and so on, and then we bring all of it together in an end-to-end exercise for the Local Authority Gold arrangements in Exercise Safer City, which we host each year. Last year we expanded that out to include multi-agency partners through a Strategic Coordinating Group and that was a very successful exercise which probably reached well in excess of 600 participants across London.

In terms of training, we also provide training for Local Authority Gold Chief Executives and their Deputies, which is a fairly new programme that we have been running for about the last 18 months, and more specialist training where there is a need or where it would be repercussive across the boroughs, so for Loggists [the person who is responsible for capturing, through decision logs, the decision making process that might be used in any legal proceedings following an incident], or where there is a need for it to be standardised for Local Authority Liaison Officers, who would go to the scene.

There is a huge range that we lay on ourselves and then we also take the opportunity, as far as we can, to take part in national exercises such as pandemic flu exercises, Exercise CORVUS, back in 2016, or capitalising on individual agency exercises. The Service (MPS) ran a series of exercises last year, Exercise Raptor, based around Heathrow Airport, and we expanded that to include all partners and have a strategic co-ordination element on top of that.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): That is good. It is very reassuring to know that so much goes on. As a member of the [former] London Fire and Emergency Planning Authority (LFEPA), I had absolutely no idea there was so much behind this. I do not think you did either, Fiona, before you got involved.

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): No, I did not.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): I know Gareth [Bacon AM, former Chairman, LFEPA] was always very complimentary about what was going on on that side of things.

The last question in this part is to you, Fiona. Central Government is key to preparation and resilience. How do you ensure that it has a grip on the issues in London?

Page 11 Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): How central Government has a grip on the issues in London?

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Yes. How do you make sure that the Government understand our issues?

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): We have quite close working relationships through the Forum with the resilience and emergencies division of the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG). They have advisers who are dedicated to particular Local Resilience Forums (LRFs) and we have a very close working relationship with that. I think John and his team talk to them on a daily basis. I talk to them very regularly. For example, I had a conversation with one of the advisers yesterday. We have quite a frank relationship with them, which works both ways, but it is one of trust.

In terms of other departments, each of the agencies on the Resilience Forum will have their own relationship with their relevant department. A lot of it is through that. There would be particular issues or particular events where they would talk specifically about some of the resilience arrangements.

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Thank you.

David Kurten AM: Thank you, Chairman. I have a question for you, Deputy Mayor, if I could, about the goals and focus of the London Resilience Partnership. You are the Chair of the London Resilience Partnership and you have to make sure that the arrangements are in place for London to be a resilient city. How can you be sure that London’s arrangements are good and fit for purpose?

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): As the Chairman alluded to, we did not look at this in a huge amount of detail when the Resilience Group was first hosted by LFEPA. I have no idea why this was not the case. It was hosted for about 18 months by the Fire Authority. One of the benefits of the governance changes is, as I said at the beginning, that this is a very clear part of my remit as Deputy Mayor. There is more direct oversight, not just of the Resilience Forum but of the work of the Resilience Group. My role is both to challenge and champion the work of the Resilience Group and engage as fully as possible with the London Resilience Forum. I have regular meetings with John [Hetherington]. We probably have daily contact, I would have thought, particularly at the moment.

When I became Deputy Mayor I met with every single team member to get a really thorough understanding of what the London Resilience Group did. We talked about Members of the Committee coming down to see the Merton control centre. A large number of the Resilience Group team members are based there and I would encourage you to come along and meet them at the same time, so that you can talk through with them the projects they are working on and the types of challenges they face. This is one of the ways that I have been able to get an understanding for when I talk to John about his priorities and how he is refocusing the team, in terms of getting an in-depth understanding of what they do.

As I said, John’s role is now full-time. We have made his personal line manager a Director in Steve [Apter] rather than an Assistant Commissioner as it was before, which I think lifts the profile of the Group within the Fire Brigade family. Then I have also included John as a permanent attendee and contributor to my monthly Deputy Mayor’s Fire and Resilience Board, which means that he is at the table when I am discussing issues with the Brigade’s senior staff and also gets an opportunity to contribute about issues relating to the work of his team.

It is really important, though, that I do not step into operational issues, and there is always that balance between getting a good understanding of what people do and overstepping that line to starting to interfere. I do not do that, or at least I hope I do not, but I do need to get some assurance around performance, not just Page 12 of the team but of the partnership. This means that, for example, while I did not attend the multi-agency debrief sessions on Grenfell [Tower fire], I did push for them to happen and I also received a briefing about them afterwards from John which enabled me to discuss how lessons would then be implemented. It is about getting that balance right between making sure things are happening, and not starting to meddle in the detail in a way that would be inappropriate.

David Kurten AM: Thank you. Do you have any examples of successful working between the different partner agencies within the Resilience Group and how do you maximise those opportunities to collaborate between the different groups?

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): The project as a whole is probably an example of collaboration in its broadest sense because we have over 200 partners who are part of the London Resilience Partnership. Not all of those people sit around the table at the Resilience Forum but they will sit on sector panels, they will take part in desktop exercises and they will come along to some of the strategic summits that John and his team run.

If I were to pick out something in particular that is quite topical for the work of the Resilience Forum, I would say that going forward I would be looking at the community resilience steering group, which does have representatives on from local government and is chaired by a local government Chief Executive, which has the voluntary sector represented at the table, the Fire Brigade, community groups and things like that. That is what we should be looking at in terms of drawing together all the expertise, trying to make sure that we broaden people’s understandings of what resilience looks like. We could take our work on resilience and get examples of best practice for what community resilience would look like in terms of complementing the emergency services’ work, for example. What does that look like and how can they roll out that best practice across London?

David Kurten AM: If there were an emergency, heaven forbid - we obviously do not want one - how confident are you that the different groups would be able to work together effectively and quickly to deal with the emergency?

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): It is a really tested model. It is always important not just to learn lessons from what you do yourselves as a partnership but to learn lessons from other people’s incidents as well. One of the things that I know John [Hetherington] and his team did and the Fire Brigade did after the [Lord Bob] Kerslake Review of the incident in was to look at what the learnings were from that and see whether things applied to us. The Kerslake Review found that some of the arrangements involved too many people and took too long, and I think that the Strategic Co-ordination Group (SCG) arrangements here, where partners come together very quickly and actions are identified promptly, are attested.

One of the things that we can be confident of, unfortunately because we have had so many incidents in London, is that these arrangements work. The exercises that happened before we had the horrendous series of events last year meant that people were familiar with working with each other. Building those relationships on a long-standing basis and having a real understanding of how things work means that people are not just working through a tick-box list of names of people they have never met. These are partners who they have a very close working relationship with and whose protocols and procedures they are really familiar with. These things should work like clockwork. While we are talking about broadening it out and making it a more holistic approach, the core piece is how the response is co-ordinated in an emergency and that is central to what the team does. We have seen from how they have acted in the past that this works well and the partnership is pretty healthy in that respect.

Page 13 David Kurten AM: That sounds very good. You obviously have a very long and close working relationship between the groups but are there any areas where you think that needs to be strengthened that you are looking at?

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): It is about making sure you learn those lessons properly. One of the things that came through some of the incidents last year - there was a review commissioned by the Local Authority Panel into how things worked, particularly looking at things post-Grenfell. I cannot go into too many specific details about that, but one of the lessons from that was that we need to strengthen the borough resilience forums. Every single borough has its own resilience forum. Like any sort of structure in any part of local government, some are stronger than others, and one of the things that John and his team have been trying to do is identify ways to make sure that we give as much support as possible to the boroughs to make sure that every single borough resilience forum is fully equipped.

Was it last week we had the -- it feels like much longer ago than that. Last week we had an afternoon session for chairs of borough resilience forums where not only did they get information about what the current thinking was within the Resilience Forum centrally and trends within resilience, but we had examples of best practice. That is a really useful function for the Resilience Forum and for Resilience Group, to identify what best practice looks like and help share that information around.

David Kurten AM: Thank you. Thank you, Chairman.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): This question is for John and Steve. Can you describe how the risks to resilience are identified and assessed?

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): If I start that question, London has a London Risk Advisory Group which meets on a quarterly basis and takes practitioners from each of the relevant sector areas: all of the category 1 responders, all of the public authorities and emergency services, and also from the relevant category 2 and supplementary support, from the voluntary sector, central Government, the military and the utilities. We closely follow the national risk assessment guidance. We have prescriptive impact assessments of what the experts within Government have assessed to be the likely risks. They are generic risks as opposed to site-specific. We will not assess the risk for an individual transport hub but we will assess the risk for an attack on transport or the threat of an attack on transport more generally. It is a generic risk register.

That group meets quarterly. They have a two-year rolling programme to assess all of the risks on a timely basis so that they do not have to do them all at each meeting. Annually, we review or republish the Community Risk Register, which is then published on the Greater London Authority (GLA) website so that it is available for the public.

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): Just to carry that further, Members will be aware that the fire service has a statutory duty to develop an integrated risk management plan, the London Safety Plan, which has to take due reference to known risks and threats. The Community Risk Register obviously is key to that, as a part of the architecture of localised plans specific to the fire service but also the wider collaborative piece. I have to say, being able to link clearly to John and his team through having those embedded officers we have referred to earlier helps us to have a clearer analysis and assessment of that risk, to then be able to put into place the resources that we need to through the London Safety Plan and others. There is a clear, defined connection between the Community Risk Register and the London Safety Plan.

Page 14 Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): This is probably for John. What poses the highest risk to London’s resilience at the moment and what are the emerging threats?

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): The highest risk to London at the moment, as per our Risk Register, is pandemic influenza. In terms of the emerging threats, we assess our risks over the likelihood of them occurring in a five-year period and, as I said earlier, each risk is assessed over a two-year period, so there is not a dynamic change to the risk profile week-in, week-out. For more immediacy in terms of risks and hazards, we take an update from both the MPS and Government through MHCLG at each of our resilience forums.

In terms of emerging risks and threats, drought has moved up the Risk Register over recent years, a period of two successive dry winters as opposed to dry summers. We have seen that over the last two years and we held a strategic summit specifically around drought to look at that and raise its profile. Climate change is also an emerging risk, although not depicted on our Risk Register in its own right. We are seeing the increases through extreme weather, heatwaves, storms and gales, which are recorded on our Risk Register.

Cyber resilience is one that is also growing. As networks and interdependencies on cyber communications grow, so does cyber resilience. We are grappling at the moment with what that means as opposed to cyber security, which is an individual organisation’s risk to defend against attacks that way. As we have seen over the period of 2017, the threats and the risk from terrorism attacks and the crude nature in the way they can be implemented has also grown.

At the moment, obviously Brexit is occupying a lot of our time and in particular the planning for a no-deal Brexit. That is an extremely complicated risk and we are still working through that one at the moment.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): I will come back to the pandemic but I just want to stick on Brexit for a minute. Sorry about that. I saw that there was a summit on 17 September [2018] which produced a contingency planning for Brexit report with half a dozen recommendations in it. If I go through them, first, maintaining a bespoke Partnership board for Brexit preparedness. Secondly, undertaking further research to clarify planning assumptions. Thirdly, develop a London risk assessment for Brexit. Fourthly, develop bespoke contingency plans to address identified risks for which extant capabilities do not exist or need to be changed. Fifthly, develop and maintain a mechanism to provide assurance of Partnership preparedness. Sixthly, confirm strategic co-ordination arrangements for the period preceding and following 29 March next year [2019]. I just wondered where you had got to with each of those half-dozen recommendations.

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): As I said in terms of the risk, it is an extremely complicated and ever-evolving --

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): That is why you have half a dozen recommendations, I guess.

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): It is, absolutely. In terms of the contingency plans, if we work back from there, we cannot put a contingency plan in place until what we know what the risk and the planning assumption is. A great deal of our work at the moment is to determine that risk and to clarify the planning assumptions. As we alluded to earlier, we have daily contact with Government. We have written to Government to ask them to further clarify those planning assumptions and exactly what they mean. At the moment we have a short list and that is to a very selective audience. Information-sharing is a great difficulty in this topic due to the sensitive nature and the subjectivity in terms of opinion as to how they will promulgate. The difficulty we have is that we are not being shown the working out of the planning assumption and how we can therefore mitigate or put actions in place.

Page 15 At the moment, we have not changed any of our contingency plans. We are working towards the strategic co-ordination arrangements. We have a further meeting of the Brexit planning group a week on Friday. At the moment we are also doing a great deal of work to understand the nature and the risk of the impact of the border control issues and how that may affect food in particular, as a vital supply, to better understand that picture. At the moment, we are clarifying the picture still. The risk assessment is not as simple as you might think. We are looking at, in particular, vulnerability of supplies, both of food and also an emerging risk to the supply of fuel as well.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): I did not assume that it was simple, far from it - in fact, the opposite - but it is rather worrying that you are still flailing around somewhat in the dark because you have no assumptions, really, to work on. It is a bit of a finger in the air, is it not? If the Government will not tell you what is going on, how can you prepare for it? There are only five months to go. It does not give you very long to prepare for some things that could potentially - food shortages and medicine shortages because of transport problems at the border - be very serious.

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): I think we would agree with that.

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): Yes.

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): We have raised this. This has been raised, not just in this forum but it has been raised as an urgent need to know more detail. The Government is aware that not just our Resilience Forum but other resilience forums around the country think that we need to have a bit more detail, to put it mildly.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): You have had no indication of when that detail is going to be forthcoming --

[INTERUPTION]

Susan Hall AM (Chairman): Sorry, Andrew. You were interrupted.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): I was raising the issue of Brexit and the lack of information from the Government, and I was asking whether you had had any indication from the Government when you might get a bit more detail to enable proper planning to go ahead. Those six things that the summit identified are obviously quite major pieces of work, each of them, in their own right, and there is so little time to implement them.

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): We have sent a letter to our key contact at the MHCLG. John Hetherington, myself and John Barradell [OBE, Deputy Chair of the London Resilience Forum] have a meeting with them next week. We have sent them a list of areas with further information that we require, and we have identified some gaps that we need to fill in order to fully inform proper contingency planning. We are hoping that we can that at a meeting next week. As I said before, we actually have very positive relationships with the officials at MHCLG, so we are hoping that we can resolve it and get a sense of what lies under some of the quite scant planning assumptions we have been given.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): Can that letter be published?

Fiona Twycross AM (Deputy Mayor for Fire and Resilience): It probably cannot be, actually. It is categorised as ‘official sensitive’ at the moment.

Page 16 Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): Was it last year we had the Euro exercise, which was that major Fire Brigade exercise involving all the other organisations? I cannot remember if it was last year or the year before.

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): 2016.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): 2016, it was? I think the outcome was 2017.

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): Sure.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): To what extent will Brexit affect the ability to draw on other European Union (EU) countries’ resources in major incidents like that?

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): It is one of the items we are unclear of. We are working on a planning assumption that there are clear indicators that security arrangements continue and we continue to work with colleagues across Europe. In fact, only this week one of my officers, Assistant Commissioner has been hosting colleagues from across Europe, looking at future potential training and sharing of experiences and expertise. We have to work on a planning assumption that that will continue until we hear otherwise.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): It is another of those uncertainties?

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): Yes.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): Moving on from Brexit, you will be pleased to hear, Chairman. You mentioned pandemic, John. How ready are we to deal with a pandemic? I suppose there are two aspects. One is loads and loads of people getting sick, and the other is the impact on emergency services of their own staff getting sick.

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): It is our highest risk on the risk assessment, which is an exponential scale, not a linear scale. The impact would be absolutely huge if we had a pandemic to the worst possible planning assumptions.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): Would that be something along the lines of the 1919 flu outbreak?

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): Yes, or 1952 or 1957. However, we do have a good and strong Infectious Diseases Framework. It is taken extremely seriously across the country. Every organisation, by and large, has it. Every organisation I have seen has it on their corporate risk register and it is well annotated. There is also a great deal of work done by the and Public Health , and their national counterparts and indeed global counterparts, in terms of the surveillance for pandemic influenza, the antiviral distribution processes that they have in place, and the well-practiced and implemented infectious control systems and measures they have to mitigate the spread of a pandemic influenza. We saw in 2009 with the swine flu that it was contained reasonably well.

Because it is so high on the risk register, there are a number of national and local exercises. They have been practiced well and in 2016 we took part in part of the national tier 1 exercise, which was Exercise CORVUS, to learn those lessons. Are we well prepared? The impact will be absolutely colossal and we cannot prepare for every eventuality, but we have the processes in place and everything that we can do in place to mitigate it as far as we possibly can.

Page 17 Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): Steve, as one of the emergency services, how well prepared are the staff if they are on the receiving end of this?

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): Sure. Again, I go back to that point I made about one of the benefits. Colleagues around the country will be referring to their LRF for this kind of advice and support. We have that within our organisation. We are working to the Risk Register and then that translates across. For example, if there are early indicators, as John has referred to, there will be trigger points of information-sharing and we can then be in a position to tap into the wider London Resilience response to that. It is on our own risk register as an organisation and we benefit from being able to tap into the information flow from John’s team.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): You are prepared, supposing a third of the firefighters go down with flu?

Steve Apter (Deputy Commissioner, Director of Safety and Assurance, London Fire Brigade): We are working on a number of planning assumptions, yes.

Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): This is the last one from me, and I think one Leonie [Cooper AM] could come in on the back of. It is for John. How does the Partnership prepare for multiple long-running incidents, which would presumably include drought and flood?

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): The first point to make is that we do not have, nor will we ever have, infinite resources. We always have to manage the resources as best we can. Everything that we have in terms of our response arrangements takes a scalable and flexible approach. Each agency also has the same mandate and remit to look at their own resilience planning and degradation of staff accordingly, and they will do so in their own ways.

In the summer of 2017, in the space of three weeks, we dealt with the London Bridge attack, the , the Finsbury Park attack and also the evacuation of the Chalcots Estate. In any other time, each one of those, in their own right, would have been a huge incident that would have taken up the entire resources of my team. We did that over a three-week period, on top of which we had a General Election called and - probably unknown to most Londoners - in the midst of that we also had a scare of potential water shortage. That was quite a testing time, to say the least, at which the team did extremely well.

Following that, as I said, we have merged our resources and we have put in place greater training across the team. We have doubled our number of supervisor posts. We try to upskill all of our teams so we have two available at any one time on-call rather than one, which we had previously. We have cross-trained our senior managers, so rather than having four managers and three strategic advisers we have trained all seven of us in those roles so that we can cross-train or respond as we need to. We have also put in a number of practical measures, such as the ability for remote working and engaging with other partners to enable mutual aid.

We tried mutual aid in those circumstances. We brought in partners from other LRFs. That had its own challenges because our greatest strength is the networks that we have and the relationships that we have with partners. Some of our learning would be to go far more quickly to the private sector to bring in administrative skills that allow us to concentrate on the advice, the technical expertise and the support that we can provide to other responders.

It is always a challenge. I think we rose to that challenge in 2017 and I am confident that with the flexible arrangements, we would be able to again.

Page 18 Andrew Dismore AM (Deputy Chair): OK.

Leonie Cooper AM: My question is really about how you define the highest risks and why you have come to the conclusion that flooding is in the ‘very high’ category but that drought is only in the ‘high’ category. I have been working a lot with Thames Water and also with the Environment Agency and I am going to put some of these questions to Simon Moody [Area Director London, Environment Agency] later as well.

It is quite interesting that someone just got up and tried to make an intervention around climate change. You referred to “two dry winters” and talking to Thames Water about their Water Resources Management Plan, which they are looking at over the next 80 years, the issue with drought may be understated. We saw what happened after the ‘Beast from the East’ [cold weather system] and the situation with Thames Water trying to distribute bottled water in specific locations across London. I look regularly at the London Datastore information about the levels of water in the Lee [Valley], the [River] Thames and reservoirs, and there have been times when they have been at 60% of the levels at the previous time last year [2017]. We know that earlier on this year [2018], after two dry winters, we were in a very difficult position and that drought could have been imminent but luckily it started to rain.

I just wonder whether you are underestimating the impact of drought and whether it should be in ‘very high’ because the likelihood, given climate change, is increasing, and I am concerned - we have just talked about the impact on food distribution - that water distribution is even more vital because you cannot live without water after three days. I am concerned that you only have it as ‘high’ and not ‘very high’.

John Hetherington (Head of London Resilience): I completely accept some of your comments. It has moved in recent years from a medium risk to a high risk. As I mentioned earlier, we follow the Government local risk assessment guidance, which gives us our descriptor of the incident that we are likely to face. One of the discuss