To receive any apologies for absence.

Apologies for absence were received from Councillors Jesse Grey and Marius Gilmore.

To receive any Declarations of Interest.

Cllr Sharma – Declared a personal interest as he is employed by First Group.

To confirm the Part I Minutes of the previous meeting.

RESOLVED UNANIMOUSLY: That the Part I Minutes of the meeting of the Panel held on 31 January 2017 be approved subject to the following amendment:

Cllr Beer requested that the Borough take on the costs for road closures for voluntary organisation events such as the Old Windsor Carnival as the fees it costs to advertise the road closures etc. could make the Carnival procession unviable for the future.

To consider the above report.

Andy Jeffs, Head of Benefits & Business Services stated the paper detailed the review of emergency planning across six Local Authorities. The review highlighted issues such as there being a lack of resilience and multiple points of conduct. The report concluded that the six local authorities should seek to merge their service. West Berkshire would be the host authority with the Royal borough having one person covering its whole area. The budget for the emergency planning function was £71,000. The scheme would begin in October 2017 subject to the approval from the other five local authorities and the scheme would benefit residents and businesses constructively.

The Royal Borough was insisting on having one person from the emergency planning team stationed permanently in Windsor as the area was at high risk from events such as the flood risk, crowded spaces, ministry of Defence facilities, transport (Heathrow), VIP’s, public events, Ascot Races and the Horse shows.

The Chairman stated the previous arrangement had corporate resistance that logged all incidents and on page 12 of the agenda, there was a mention of the area having a lack of resistance. He wanted to know why the council was entering into the agreement and why the previous arrangement went wrong. The Head of Benefits & Business Services stated he was not sure the old arrangement went wrong, but the new arrangement would help the Borough to reinforce the current level of resilience. There was currently only one FTE member of staff with little to no resilience and the new arrangement would mean there would be more people available to coordinate and help during an emergency event.

Councillor Sharpe stated he was concerned regarding the whole area as there was little resilience overall and he was also concerned about whether or not the Borough would have sufficient resources to deploy to any emergency situation. He wanted to know if the Borough were putting enough resources into emergency planning and could those resources cope with all requirements. The Head of Benefits & Business Services confirmed that at present, there was one FTE with operations and CSC covering the out of hours side of things. He added that he was trained along with one other member of senior management in Bronze, Silver and Gold incidents.

The Head of Benefits & Business Services explained that the proposal was to try and help a major incident, an extremely large incident. There would be five people of senior level in the team to help bring a safe conclusion to any emergency situation.

Councillor Hunt asked for clarification regarding the two regional teams being deployed dynamically. The Head of Benefits & Business Services confirmed that the teams would be employed by West Berks but, deployed dynamically across the Borough. Councillor Hunt stated it was a very good idea, but she was concerned as the project would be based in West Berks. The Borough had a lot of high profile events and people. The Head of Benefits & Business Services stated the Borough would not sign up to the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 58.

To consider the following resolution:-

“That under Section 100(A)(4) of the Local Government Act 1972, the public can be excluded from the remainder of the meeting whilst discussion takes place on item 6 on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraph 1 – 7 of Part I of Schedule 12A of the Act”.

To consider the following resolution:

“that under Section 100(A)(4) of the Local government Act 1972, the public can be excluded from the remainder of the meeting whilst discussion takes place on item 6 on the grounds that it involves the likely disclosure of exempt information as defined in Paragraph 1-7 of Part I of Schedule 12a of the Act”.

To consider the above appendix