Skip to content

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Room 4, Town Hall, Upper Street, N1 2UD. View directions

Contact: Peter Moore 

Items
No. Item

349.

Apologies for Absence

Minutes:

Councillors Doolan and Gallagher

350.

Declaration of Substitute Members

Minutes:

None

351.

Declarations of Interest

Declarations of interest

 If you have a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest* in an item of business:

§  if it is not yet on the council’s register, you must declare both the existence and details of it at the start of the meeting or when it becomes apparent;

§  you may choose to declare a Disclosable Pecuniary Interest that is already in the register in the interests of openness and transparency. 

In both the above cases, you must leave the room without participating in discussion of the item.

 

If you have a personal interest in an item of business and you intend to speak or vote on the item you must declare both the existence and details of it at the start of the meeting or when it becomes apparent but you may participate in the discussion and vote on the item.

 

*(a) Employment, etc - Any employment, office, trade, profession or vocation carried on for profit or gain.

(b)  Sponsorship - Any payment or other financial benefit in respect of your expenses in carrying out duties as a member, or of your election; including from a trade union.

(c) Contracts - Any current contract for goods, services or works, between you or your partner (or a body in which one of you has a beneficial interest) and the council.

(d) Land - Any beneficial interest in land which is within the council’s area.

(e) Licences- Any licence to occupy land in the council’s area for a month or longer.

(f)   Corporate tenancies - Any tenancy between the council and a body in which you or your partner have a beneficial interest.

 (g) Securities - Any beneficial interest in securities of a body which has a place of business or land in the council’s area, if the total nominal value of the securities exceeds £25,000 or one hundredth of the total issued share capital of that body or of any one class of its issued share capital. 

 

This applies to all members present at the meeting.

 

 

Minutes:

None

352.

To approve minutes of previous meeting

Minutes:

None

353.

Matters Arising from the minutes

Minutes:

None

354.

PUBLIC QUESTIONS

Minutes:

The Chair outlined the procedure for Public questions and filming and recording of meetings

355.

Chair's Report

Minutes:

None

356.

Scrutiny Review Flooding - Independent Review into Major Bursts - Thames Water pdf icon PDF 1 MB

Minutes:

The Chair welcomed the following representatives of Thames Water to present the findings of the independent review by Paul Cuttill into the recent major bursts of mains in London in the previous year –

Nigel Dyer – CEO Thames Water Infrastructure Alliance

Paul Cuttill 0BE – Author of Independent Review

Alex Nickson – Water Resources and Growth Lead

James Kingston – General Manager North London

 

Thames Water made a presentation to the Committee, copy interleaved, during which the following main points were made -

 

·         Thames Water outlined the background to the report following the recent major bursts in London

·         Thames Water stated that their priority is to get peoples lives and businesses back to normal as quickly as possible, do everything they can to repair the damage caused and minimise future risk of bursts and to keep in contact with those affected and engage with the local community moving forward

·         The Forensic Review was led by Paul Cuttill OBE who has 30 years experience in utilities and covered causes of each burst, asset condition, location and environment, and whether any patterns of failure could be identified, impact on customers, the wider community and cost, the immediate response what was done well and improvements needed and whether changes were needed to the network configuration, pumping and control regimes

·         Key findings included – improvement in the understanding of the network and improvements in managing existing data and knowledge, focusing on improving the management of planned works and better use of local knowledge. In addition there should be an acceleration of the roll out of monitoring units where bursts that may happen or have already occurred. Refresh how alarms are prioritised, increase capacity to analyse data and work with partners to develop new, innovative ways of assessing the condition of pipes, improve communication with both customers and within the company immediately after bursts have happened, improve the capacity to deal with multiple incidents and improve how Thames Water can better learn from incidents after they have taken place

·         In response to the review Thames Water welcome the findings and will focus on carrying forward the recommendations and identifying and fixing the mains at highest risk. In addition, Thames Water stated that they have already begun implementing the Forensic Review recommendations and are finalising an implementation plan to ensure the recommendations are delivered

·         In terms of investment Thames Water are committing an additional £97m into the trunk main network over and above what was in the 2015/19 business plan and this included the investment in Upper Street to reline the trunk main and deploying surveying and monitoring equipment at additional locations

·         It was noted that Thames Water were also moving forward with an innovative pipe testing facility in Kempton Park

·         Thames Water stated that in terms of customer care the Customer Incident Management Project is implementing the changes needed to ensure there is a world class recovery service for customers, and this will focus on customer communication channels, on site presence, after care and  ...  view the full minutes text for item 356.