Agenda and draft minutes
PDF 188 KBVenue: Parkwood Primary School, Queens Drive, London, N4 2HQ
Contact: Tom Thorn
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Apologies for Absence Minutes: 1.1 Apologies had been received from Cllr Ozsen, who was at Licensing Committee.
1.2 Cllr Lynch was absent. |
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Urgent Items / Order of Business Minutes: 2.1 The Chair welcomed members of the public and guests, and thanked them for attending.
2.2 The meeting had been called following the latest flood in Hackney caused by a mains burst on Thames Water’s network; this time in the N4 area. The school in which the meeting was being held had itself been effected.
2.3 Local Ward Councillors were present, who she knew had played active roles following the flood. In addition, Commission Members themselves had visited the affected area at the weekend prior to this meeting, and had reviewed video footage of the immediate aftermath. This had helped to ensure that Members were aware of the scale of this incident, and had at least some appreciation of the hugely detrimental impact which it had had on the lives of those residents affected.
2.4 In terms of the structure of the meeting, the first substantive item would see Council Officers present on the Council’s response to the incident initial, and the latest developments around its work to both assist affected residents directly and to ensure that Thames Water were providing the required support.
2.5 The next would hear from Thames Water on this specific flood. This would seek to explore its causes, Thames’ immediate response, and its ongoing management of the aftermath. In regards to this item, she thanked residents for having added suggested questions for Thames Water to a number of display boards when they had entered the school hall.
2.6 These boards were each titled with different themes / topic areas, based on the broad concerns raised by residents in local meetings following the event which one the Ward Councillors - Clare Potter - had led on. To help best ensure that as many residents as possible could have their questions answered in this meeting, the Commission would give consideration to those added to the Board when questioning Thames Water.
2.7 The third substantive item would look at Thames’ performance on a broader level. This was given that this was the third time the Commission had heard from Thames in recent years, following previous main bursts and major flooding in Stoke Newington in 2017 and Lea Bridge in 2018. She hoped the Commission could explore why these incidents were being repeated, and what was being done to address this. Ofwat were in attendance for this item along with Thames Water.
2.8 The Chair wished to give particular thanks at this point to Cllr Clare Potter for her leadership following this latest incident. Cllr Potter had been particularly active in working to ensure that residents in her ward had had their concerns listened to and addressed. She invited Cllr Potter to make any opening comments.
2.9 Cllr Potter thanked the Chair. She thanked the Living in Hackney Commission for having organised this meeting. She welcomed formal scrutiny being applied to Thames Water. This would complement the local meetings held in the Ward following the incident which had focused – as had been needed - on ensuring that individual ... view the full minutes text for item 2. |
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Declarations of Interest Minutes: 3.1 There were no declarations of interest. |
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Any Other Business Minutes: 4.1 There was no other business. |
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Additional documents: Minutes: 5.1 The Chair welcomed the following guests for this item:
· Aled Richards, Director Public Realm · Andy Wells, Manager, Civil Protection Service
5.2 The item started with the Manager, Civil Protection Services giving an introduction to his service area before summarising the key events regarding the incident as identified by the Council, and the Council’s response. Fuller information was available in the paper provided within the agenda packs.
5.3 His service was responsible for a number of Council functions, including the arrangement and co-ordination of responses to emergency incidents. The paper made a number of referrals to ‘Silver’; this was an emergency services term used to identify the Officer who would hold the duty of Tactical Commander in the case of an emergency incident occurring. A rota arrangement meant that there was a designated on duty Silver Officer at all times. Command and control of these arrangements were managed through a dedicated Borough Emergency Control Centre, which would be opened following an incident.
5.4 The timeline detailed in the paper spanned from the point of the Council becoming aware of the incident at 08:04 on the 8th October through a radio message being received by Police Officers located in the Civil Protection Service’s Control Centre, through to 01:00 on the 9th October when the Silver Duty was handed over from the Original Silver to incoming Silver. This said, it was important to note that – given the severity of the incident - the initial response structures remained in place until 5pm on the 11th October.
5.5 Alongside this and within procedure, a Recovery Group was set up and put into operation, with a focus on longer term issues. This took over from the Borough Emergency Control Centre on the 11th October. The Recovery Group formed in response to this incident was chaired by the Council’s Director of Public Realm. This was in reflection of many of the services with roles to play in the recovery, falling within his remit.
5.6 Feeding in at this point, the Director of Public Realm made the following key points:
· As with those set up following previous floods, the Recovery Group was focused on both coordinating the Council's assistance to affected residents, and also ensuring that Thames Water were affective in dealing with issues and concerns
· This had been a very serious and event and significantly traumatic for those involved. The impact had been even greater than those seen in previous floods.
· As per points made by Cllr Potter, many displaced residents were yet to be able to return to their homes over three months after the incident. This was the case for 72 households.
· 34 of the 72 currently uninhabitable properties, were Council properties. Council Officers were regularly meeting Thames Water regarding these units, in order to ensure that repairs work started immediately following the drying out process being complete. Currently, 3 of the 34 units had dried out sufficiently to allow repairs and redecoration works to begin.
· The Council units ... view the full minutes text for item 5. |
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Thames Water Main Burst in the N4 area - cause of burst and response by Thames Water Additional documents: Minutes: 6.1 The following guests were in attendance for this item: · Steve Spencer – Chief Operating Officer, Thames Water · Kelly McFarlane – Director, Customer Experience, Thames Water
6.2 Invited to make any opening comments, the Chief Operating Officer, Thames made the following key points: · He was responsible for the operation at Thames Water. This included the operation and maintenance of all treatment plants and networks in the Thames Water region.
· As a first point, he wished to give his and Thames Water’s sincerest apologies for what had happened. It had been one of the most significant incidents to have happened on the network, and had turned residents’ lives upside down. There were obviously long term legacy issues to work through. Thames would not walk away until all affected residents were back in their homes and had had their issues resolved.
· He gave a summary of the incident, the cause of it, and the operational response, as available in a paper in the agenda packs.
· The pipe which had failed was a section of one of Thames Water’s trunk mains. These carried large volumes of water around London; in this case from a pumping station through to a reservoir. It crossed Queens Drive at a point close to where this meeting was being held.
· It was one of the larger trunk mains (36 inch). It supplied the reservoir which in turn served around 237,000 homes and important infrastructure sites including hospitals and prisons. On a normal day the pipe would carry 50 to 60 million litres of water between the ring main (going around London) and the reservoir. The volume of water which escaped was made worse by the pipe failure also causing a flow of water back from the reservoir.
· A number of connections ran from the trunk main into other mains. Investigations had shown that a pipe section of the main which crossed Queens Drive had split in two across the length. This was opposed to a hole or a particular leak causing the flood, which had typically been the case with other pipe failures. The failure occurred at 07:55 on the 8th October.
· Investigations had not been able to identify the exact reason for the failure of the pipe. There were joints between sections of pipe. Through the methodology used, it had been identified that between 25 to 50 years ago a repair had been carried out to one of the joints. There was a possibility that this repair had resulted in a weak point on the main which had then gone on to cause the failure. However, this was not certain.
· The year of manufacture of the section of pipe which split was around 1892. It was conceivable that there was a manufacturing fault, and that this combined with the impact of the joint repair and the weight of traffic at a junction at street level above, had led to the failure. However, it was not possible to reach a precise diagnosis.
· Following the failure, the full ... view the full minutes text for item 6. |
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Thames Water's performance and management of the network in Hackney Additional documents:
Minutes: 7.1 The following guests were in attendance for this item: · John Russell, Senior Director Strategy & Planning, Ofwat · Carl Pheasey, Director Strategy & Policy, Ofwat · Steve Spencer – Chief Operating Officer, Thames Water · Kelly McFarlane – Director, Customer Experience, Thames Water
7.2 Invited to make any opening comments, the Senior Director Strategy & Planning, Ofwat made the following substantive points: · Ofwat was the national regulator for the water sector. This meant that it regulated all public water companies in England and Wales, including Thames Water.
· Its main role was to set service standards and investment packages for these companies, and to hold their performance to account.
· Ofwat did not have a role regarding specific incidents. This said, they recognised the enormous detrimental impact of the event in N4 and - given the scale of the incident - they had visited the area and been in regular dialogue with Thames Water on its response.
· In regards to Thames Water, Ofwat had had significant concerns with Thames Water’s performance for a number of years. Thames Water was an outlier of poor water network performance, and Ofwat were requiring considerable improvements to operational performance and the effectiveness of its communications. It was engaging with Thames Water intensively; more so than was the case for most other companies. They had publically challenged Thames Water since 2017 to improve its performance.
· In 2018, an Ofwat investigation found Thames Water to have breached two of its legal obligations through poor leakage management. This resulted in a record £120 million package of penalties being applied, and the gaining of commitments from Thames to improve leakage performance. Ofwat were continuing to monitor progress closely and would take action where needed.
· Ofwat had now set the investment and service incentive packages for water companies for the next five years (the Price Review (PR) 19). This was setting strong improvement requirements for Thames Water including reducing supply interruptions by 53% and leakage by 20%. These were underpinned by large financial penalties which would be applied if targets were missed. Alongside this, Ofwat were allowing significant investment by Thames Water to improve the resilience of the London network. Ofwat saw the package as delivering a clear expectation for improvement and the investment capacity required.
7.3 The Chair asked if the financial penalties already applied and those Ofwat had reserved the right to apply in future, could be recovered by Thames Water through customer bills.
7.4 The Senior Director Strategy & Planning, Ofwat confirmed that any penalties incurred by Thames Water were required to be paid by shareholders rather than customers. For the last two years Thames Water had not paid dividends to shareholders, largely due to the penalties applied.
7.5 A Member noted the point around any financial penalties applied being expected to be funded through lower profits. However, it appeared from the paper that Ofwat were to conditionally allow up to £300 million investment by Thames Water to improve London water network performance and a further £180 million to investigate and mitigate risks ... view the full minutes text for item 7. |
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Follow up on aspects relating to 2018 flooding in Lea Bridge Additional documents:
Minutes: 8.1 The Chair advised this item related to issues apparently outstanding from the previous major flood in Hackney caused by a burst water main; in the Lea Bridge Ward in 2018.
8.2 The Commission had heard from Thames Water and affected residents and businesses following that flood. The outstanding issues had been raised by Cllr Rathbone in the Commission’s meeting in September 2019. Following this, she had written to Thames Water. Both the Commission’s letter and Thames Water’s response were available in the agenda packs.
8.3 Asked to make any opening comments, Cllr Rathbone wanted to flag the human impact that these incidents could have. He on a personal level had seen the suffering caused in Lea Bridge. One vulnerable resident he supported had had a breakdown following the flood. They had lost their possessions, and there had been a lack of taking ownership by both Thames Water and the resident’s landlord.
8.4 A separate issue was a new charity owner of a listed building in the ward not having been able to carry out the activities it had planned to raise funds for the building’s refurbishment, due to the flood. They had been unable to secure compensation from Thames Water in recognition of this, and had since walked away from the process and been left distrusting of Thames Water.
8.5 There was sometimes too much a focus on monetary value of items lost, and less on the human impact. He welcomed the Thames Water offer of £10,000 for the community affected by the Leabridge flood, but there needed to be fuller appreciation by Thames Water of the impact of its poor management. He challenged Thames to revisit its customer care and support offer following incidents such as this. Staff needed to be available to those affected, both immediately after the incident but also for the longer term.
8.6 Asked to come in at this point, the Director, Customer Experience, Thames Water wished to thank the Member. She did not disagree with the points he had made. |