Agenda item

The Panel will receive a report on the updates made to the Gas Safety Management Policy and the Electrical Safety Management Policy.

Contact: Eric Hughes – Head of Assurance and Transformation

The Panel received a report in respect of the updates made to the Gas Safety Management Policy and the Electrical Safety Management Policy to ensure alignment with Council policy and terminology, and to reflect legal and regulatory requirements.

Naz Parkar - Service Director, Homes and Neighbourhoods, Eric Hughes – Head of Assurance and Transformation and Asad Bhatti – Head of Asset Management attended to present the report and respond to Members’ questions.

It was noted that all policies had been standardised in response to the feedback from the Panel at the previous meeting.

Questions, comments and responses were put forward as follows:

·       In respect of the process for checking the technical content of the policies generally, and, for example, if there was a change to the relevant legislation, it was explained that all policies were checked by the relevant in-house teams as a first line of defence. The second line was through submission to the Building Safety Advisory Board (BSAB) and, currently, the Ad Hoc Scrutiny Panel, and the third line was when they were audited.

·       A decision was to be made about whether the named individual/role, with responsibility for compliance with statutory health and safety responsibilities, as required by the White Paper, would be the Service Director for Homes and Neighbourhoods or the Strategic Director, Growth and Regeneration.

·       In order to assist in achieving 100% compliance, it was anticipated that some predictive analysis would be undertaken to establish if there were any patterns in respect of no-access properties.

·       There was a separate data management policy which was applicable to any of the operational safety management policies. This policy provided guidance in respect of the use of personal data.

·       If any personal data was used to undertake analysis and identify trends, this would be anonymised and not processed in a way that would breach the relevant legislation.

·       Detail in respect of how the compliance data would be recorded, managed and validated would be included in the underlying procedures.

with the following revisions or amendments to the policies being recommended:

·       Corrections to paragraphs 4.1 of both policies, 4.4 in the Gas Safety Policy and 4.7 in the Electrical Safety Policy to refer to ‘gas’ or ‘electrical’ as appropriate and an addition to paragraph 4.7 of both policies:.’…where all other attempts to gain access have failed…’.

·       Add appropriate wording to all policies to confirm that remedial actions will be undertaken within the relevant timescale (and as set out within the detailed underlying procedure), in order to be clear that this is a requirement and as a matter of good practice.

·       Add a statement to all policies to the effect that the Authority will handle the recording, management and validation of compliance data to ensure that it enables accurate and reliable reporting and offers assurance to the appropriate places.

·       Inclusion of a list of the key performance measures that will be used within the policies, with how they will be calculated and any further detail being included within the underlying procedure. This would assist in providing a golden thread through policy to procedure to performance.

·       Policies to be explicit about the cycle/timeframe for monitoring and audit.

·       Paragraph 5.5 of the Gas Policy amended to include the title of the Director within Homes and Neighbourhoods who is to be notified.