13 July (Part 2) - Fire and emergency drills. Is Bexley ready for the unforeseen?
The second part (Agenda Item 7) of last week’s Finance Scrutiny meeting concerned ‘Resilience
Standards’, a London-wide initiative to ensure boroughs have
“the organisational preparedness, operational capacity and capability to respond to and recover from emergencies credibly and efficiently”.
Councillor Larry Ferguson (Labour, Thamesmead East) asked if any Department ever
does “dry runs” of emergency procedures. The answer was yes, there have been
Council-wide tests, the last one being held about six
months ago. It had concentrated on the dangers of fire and flood. No official
report was published afterwards which provoked critical comment from the Chairman.
Councillors need to know how well or otherwise things went.
Cabinet Member David Leaf said the internal feedback was generally critical
because no Council wants to say that everything is just fine and come a real
emergency an official enquiry makes it obvious that things were anything but.
The name Grenfell Tower was mentioned. Mr. Dan Stone, the responsible Council
officer, said there is always room for improvement.
There are occasional London-wide tests too.
Councillor Stefano Borella (Labour, Slade Green)
reminded everyone of three emergencies that have taken place in recent memory. The fire in
Grange House, “Orbit were appalling”,
the derailment on the bridge in Bexley Village and
a three day power cut which
affected much of the North Eastern part of the borough in 2009.
Councillor June Slaughter (Conservative, Sidcup) referred to the cyber attacks on IT systems such as the one
that recently brought the NHS to a halt. Mr. Stone said the loss of analogue
telephone lines was proving to be troublesome with all the eggs being
placed in the digital basket. Tests sent to staff showed that they were rather
too incautious about opening suspicious looking emails. Councillor Andrew Curtois (Conservative, Falconwood & Welling) thought that should be a disciplinary matter.