Agenda item

To consider the Operational Resilience Task and Finish Group Final Report.

Councillor Donald, as the co-Chair of the Task and Finish Group, presented the report on Operational Resilience. She said the waste disruption between 24 January and 6 February was unacceptable but the response from staff and the other organisations that assisted the council was good. The T&F Group had been impressed by the openness and transparency of the Leader and Chief Executive, and a great deal of information had been published in the public domain. She said the final costings had been confirmed as £75,000. The other issue the Group had looked at more generally was “single-points of failure” across the organization. She said this would be an ongoing programme of work and the Group would reconvene in 3 months time to review the situation. She said she was hopeful that from this disappointing and difficult situation the Council would ultimately emerge stronger.

Councillor Foley asked whether it would be appropriate to build into each council meeting a progress update relating to the risk register.

Councillor Sell, a member of the T&F Group, thanked members and officers for their support and openness. He said it had been a helpful exercise and lessons had been learnt. However, he said the review would have benefitted from an independent or external member and the time limit meant the review could not be as forensic as he would have liked. He said there had been a lack of political leadership throughout the episode.

Councillor Fiddy said an information campaign should be conducted on sorting different types of waste products for the pruposes of recycling. She said citizens in Switzerland had to pay for waste disposal and were required to recycle.

Councillor Barker said communication had been an issue throughout the disruption; she said that residents in the Rodings had not been included on a website list and therefore were left in the dark regarding their waste collections. She said it was important to build-up and maintain a local communications network between the council and local communities.

Councillor Freeman said councillors were reliant on officers to bring issues to the surface before they became critical. He said the Risk Register should be more visible to members.

Councillor Hargreaves said Cabinet members attended scrutiny for questioning when they had a relevant matter on the agenda. He added that there was copious amounts of documentation in the appendices attached to the report.

The Leader thanked the T&F Group for their work and stressed that their work would continue. She said lessons had been learnt from this disruption and recommendations had been accepted.

Councillor Reeve apologised for the disruption and said the service would now need to perform “above and beyond” in order to restore trust. He was keeping a close eye on this matter.

In response to a question from Councillor Church, Councillor Donald confirmed that the final cost to the council was £75,000.

In response to a question from Councillor Regan regarding Sunday collections and the resumption of normal service, the Chair said it was routine for the Service to collect waste on a Sunday if the collections had been missed during the working week.

In summary, Councillor Donald said a risk register would be on each council department’s agenda and some risks would remain confidential to prevent “bad actors” utilizing the information. However, the Task and Finish Group would reconvene and present an update to members. In regards to communication, she said this was currently being looked into and costings were being sourced in respect of an SMS system. She concluded by saying there ahd been a huge amount of information to digest but the council would learn lessons from this disruption and the monitoring of risks would continue.

The report was noted.

The meeting ended at 8.15pm.