Transcript

Okay, good afternoon everyone. We're still in the afternoon. Welcome to the Health and Safety Committee. I'm Councillor Laura Cunningham and I'll be chairing the meeting tonight. Shall we start by just going around the table and introducing ourselves. Councillor Best, would you like to start? We can't hear at home if people are talking. Oh thank you Councillor and hi Taylor. Did you catch that? There's a bit of an issue online. We'll just pause for a moment. Put your hand up if you start hearing someone. I can hear you Laura but if other people were talking I couldn't hear them. Okay just speak very clearly into the mic or use the other mic. Okay. Okay. Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Can you hear me? Okay. Okay good evening. Problem with the mics now resolved. I'm Councillor Chris Best, good evening. Good evening I'm Carol Webley-Brown, part of this committee. Thank you. Sarah Acebay, committee support officer. Would officers like to introduce themselves and then we'll go online. I'm Rich Clark, I'm the council's head of assurance which includes responsibility for corporate health and safety. Hello Marta Markovska, corporate health and safety manager. Okay and let's start with you Councillor hi Taylor. Good evening I'm Councillor Ayushala hi Taylor. And who else have we got? David Austin, acting executive director for corporate resources working with Rich and Marta. Thank you very much and let's start the meeting. Just a few reminders for people online, I think you know the drill. Please put your microphone on mute if you're not speaking and keep it muted until you're invited to speak. Turn it off when you finish speaking and use the hands function if you ask a question and the clerk will let you know you want to speak. For those in person, again raise your hand if you'd like to speak and only turn your microphone on if you're speaking and turn it off when you finish speaking. We don't have an expected evacuation tonight. If the firearm sounds please leave your belongings and exit the building quickly via the nearest safe fire exit and assemble opposite Costa Coffee on Catford Broadway. And as we have the health and safety team here we all feel in very safe hands. I've received one apology for the meeting from Councillor Bell and we might have a late entry because we are expecting Councillor Atkinson. Thank you. So we're going to start with item one the election of the chair and vice chair and I'm going to hand over to our clerk for this evening to start the next item. I now call for nominations for chair of this committee. I'd like to nominate Councillor Laura Cunningham. Would anyone like to second? I'd like to second it. Okay Councillor Cunningham has been nominated and elected as chair of this committee. Thank you very much. I will now call for nominations for vice chair of the committee and I've had one person who has been in touch to say she would like to be the vice chair so unless anybody else wants to put their hand up I'm going to nominate Councillor Chris Best. And I'd like to second it. Thank you very much. Okay on to the next item which is minutes of the last meeting. Does anybody have any comments or observations on the minutes of the last meeting? Excuse me. Councillor Best. Thank you. We obviously discussed the defibrillator policy and I know that's going to be in the updates but what I was particularly interested in was getting a comprehensive list of where all the defibrillators are on the council estate. As I recall, and it was back in November, we were going to talk to schools to ensure that every school had a defibrillator so it wasn't actually an action point but we discussed it. I can either raise it here or when we come to the corporate update and it's referred to in the sense that the executive directors were encouraged to liaise with partners so it's partly an update but partly arising from the minutes as to whether that has happened and whether members of this committee can have an update of a centralised list of where all the defibrillators are across the council estate and our partners. Thank you. Okay I think it's in the main body of the report, isn't it? So shall we take it then? I think that seems a sensible place unless you want to respond now. Okay. Can we respond to that specific point on the list? I mean I don't have it here tonight but a check on defibrillator units is part of the checklist when we send people out to do inspections of premises so we can gather a list from those records fairly straightforwardly, as I say looking at Marta. I'm happy to get that list together and circulate it outside of the meeting rather than wait until the next one if members wish. Are you happy with that Chris? Yep. Thank you very much. I think what's important is where we've got public spaces such as libraries such as adult learning, it's flagged where the defibrillator is so the receptionist knows and ideally it should be in the reception area so members of the public, should they need to call on it or indeed members of staff, it's accessible. It's not obvious, can I say, at the refurbished broccoli rice centre. Thank you. I think we can probably pick this up under the report but I'm I still think there's the issue of an awful lot of schools have got them and they're only open for part of the year and they're not open they're only open for part of the day so where we seem to have a most of them they're not accessible to the general public so I think I would be keen to see a bit more work done on that. Councillor Brown. I'd like to add to that because we should have it at the shopping centre because it's a public space and if we're encouraging our community to be conscious of saving life, protecting life, we could have that training across the board and it was something that was suggested many many years ago and most people enjoy having that training and being a responsible person in the community and it wouldn't be very hard to do that so I'd love it extended but obviously we could start with schools but in a public space like libraries as Councillor Bess has said as well but also extend it to our shopping centre. I think there's clearly more work to do and I think you've mentioned in the report there's more work to do on this so let's return to it in a minute as we go through the report but certainly note those points for action. Okay thank you. Anything else on the minutes? Chair if I may, I do have my hand up but I don't know if you're noticing. I just want to pick up two things under 3.2 in a minute with regards to the premises handbook and the training. Is there any update of when it will be rolled out? I do understand we've had a number of reelection periods and we're entering another but it would be nice for an update on that and the second point is under item 3.4, resolved, it says that the head of Assurance would contact Lucian Libraries to find out what specific arrangement they have had in place for managing threatening behaviour. If you could just provide an update on that as well please. Thanks. Thank you very much. Thank you for those questions Ayesha. I'll hand those over to you Rich. Thank you. On the premises handbook that's complete and has been circulated partly to some larger sites, it'll be circulated to all sites within the next month is when we get the training going out. As well as the general training it's also when we do the quarterly inspections and the people go around examining the sites, they kind of do top-up training as well, specific questions for premises owners on the handbook so it's not just the single exercise but we keep up the information sharing at each quarterly visit. On the second question about the threatening behaviour policy, that was updated at the last Corporate Health and Safety Board, I'm struggling to recollect now Marta, can I hand over to Marta, might know more specifics about that? Hello yes, so this policy was shared with directorate meetings and then the Corporate Health and Safety Board on the Health and Safety Board meeting as well and following which it was approved and it's now published on the intranet, so that was done in January as I recall. Thank you for that. My only point is about the just checking about whether the action on the Head of Assurance contacting adult learning centres for information about their evacuation procedures, has that been completed? Yes, it's part of the paper coming up, it's on our standard health and safety checklist and I've flagged the four or five sites where we found there hadn't been a recent evacuation but that's later on in the papers. That's great, okay let's move on if everyone's happy to move on. Do we have any declarations of interest? I'll take that as a no then and we'll move on. Okay, so I'm going to hand over to you Rich to introduce the report. Thank you very much for this, I thought it was very comprehensive and I like the fact that there was lots of data in it for us to interrogate, so thank you for that. Thank you Chair, I'll run through just the headlines of the report. Firstly we've already had a little bit of discussion about a defibrillator policy which this committee saw last year which has now been approved by the Executive Management team. Members will recall that the policy was primarily concerned with supporting sites who had or wanted to acquire a defibrillator rather than something more proactive and the council saying as a body corporate you should have one. The rationale there as I explained at the time was is that we we want to make sure that where we are placing devices we are leaving them in the custody of people who are prepared and ready to ensure that they are properly maintained so that they can be effective if they're ever called into use. So checking that the defibrillators are being appropriately maintained is one of the things we do on our routine checklist for those sites where we have them and so we do see in one or two places that those maintenance checks aren't being done routinely and obviously we raise that and it gets corrected but it does happen that the maintenance can fall away so I want to make sure that we have confidence that it will be maintained where we put in the device in. So what I proposed to the Executive Management team alongside the policy I'll come on to a bit later on in the paper some proposals I've circulated amongst officers for increasing and reorganising the resources we have to health and safety. So I've invited invited myself to come back to EMT next year once those resource changes are made with the proposal for are we now fit to have a more expansive policy in this area with more security in the knowledge that the maintenance resources is there to help support the units in place. So I'll certainly keep members updated on developments there but say the immediate situation is the policy has been approved it is pending publication on the internet it's just been finalised for that but also alongside that we were taking the opportunity to publicise a scheme that Councillor Cully originally brought to my attention the British Heart Foundation's initiative on every minute matters. I think we publishing the defibrillator policy strikes me as it strikes us as a good opportunity to also publicise that campaign and so yeah having having done the Heart Foundation's training myself using their app it's quick and easy and straightforward and you just need the app and a pillow to practice on and it helps you do learn how to do CPR so I can recommend that to everyone and hopefully that'll be part of the comms message when the defibrillator policies is launched properly hopefully next month. Thank you very much I'm going to invite people to ask any more questions if they want but before I do that I'd like to welcome Councillor Dawn Atkinson to the meeting. We will talk about start times later in the meeting so because I know it's tricky for people who've got full-time jobs and you know I'm very grateful for those of you who have got full-time jobs or had a very busy day for getting here for five o'clock I know it's not easy. Has anybody got any questions any further questions about the defibrillator policy or about the British Heart Foundation encouraging more people to learn how to do CPR or any observations on that? Just a comment if I may it's a really lovely training and it really is encouraging of everybody to have those skills and what many workplaces do is link it with their first aid so it becomes something that they do on a regular basis and in terms of maintaining those skills they always have to check it once a month or once every six weeks to ensure that they're still skilled up so I think it's a brilliant skill to have. I came across this just by accident because I wasn't very well and I was sitting watching a news bulletin and there was three footballers who I can't remember their names but well-known footballers one of whom had nearly died on the pitch and they're behind this campaign and and you know they gave a really good good account of you know five minutes training you could save a life and and they talk quite a lot about you know it's it's of all ages and that and I was quite shocked you know that the number of people who you know without immediate response could die and I felt we should I think they got it they've got a target of several hundred or possibly several thousand people the Bridger Hart Foundation want to support to be trained and I think this would be great if Lewisham could take a bit of a lead and maybe we could also get counselors to undertake the training so 15 minutes of your time is I'd really like people to encourage other people to take it up and people who work in the council to cancer action soon oh sorry huge apologies I missed that it having a D fib is something that we at evening community center been trying to get for the last year or so so I know we're very much aware that out in the community how much they are needed as well so that is something that we are very much that's great well watch this space I think counts best if you want to come in okay thank you I just wanted to express my disappointment that we're going to review the policy in a year's time because there isn't sufficient resource at the moment I think it's phrased as a lack of clarity on corporate resources so it's left to each directorate as it feels to me to decide whether they need it and I think I expressed this last time I think that we which is why I was asking for the list to see where the defibrillators are because I think it should be a corporate policy that each and every director at least has access to a defibrillator and it may be that you know the one in Lawrence house there may be one or two I don't know cover the whole building but certainly I do believe in public buildings such as libraries and I've said earlier about adult learning where the public are there it saves lives and therefore I do feel it's important that we when you do those inspections emphasize the need to have the defibrillators where members of the public are but also not to dismiss the value to staff so I'm I suppose I am disappointed with the approach that will we review it in a year's time when resources may or may not be available because I think saving lives is is just so important and they're not that expensive when we look at other areas of the council's expenditure I just wanted to say I think we should be prioritizing this and again asking officers when you do go back to EMT emphasize the importance that this committee has given to our defibrillators hence the policy but the policy is only as good as having them in place so I hope that you know we can minute the importance of it chair thank you thank you Councillor best would you like to respond to that rich yeah the issue isn't so much the acquisition cost it's it's making sure that there are these by resources it's more people but there's going to be someone there who can conduct the weekly checks and make sure those weekly checks are conducted so that the device remains in good working order and I think that's that's the resource resource question I really want to make sure that we've got a good answer to before we put devices in place I'm trying to move resources around to make sure that we can do that Councillor best cute I mean very briefly we would want to ensure we have proper fire evacuation procedures we would want to ensure we had appropriate fire marshals trained and that's something you know every workplace has to go through so it seems to me that it could you know where we've got other officers looking after specific policies we should again look at someone to look after these as I say you know we talk so often about fire marshals and making sure there's the band and everybody knows who the fire officer is and it's put up on the board I mean again it's a matter of calling for volunteers to add them if you wish to a list and yeah and I guess the weekly check you know we have one on our allotment it just doesn't take that long to press a button or two to make sure it goes beep really doesn't take that long I'm disappointed again by that thank you points noted rich can I ask that you take that one away with you and consider it with colleagues because I think it's a fair point about resources I do understand what you're saying but I absolutely understand but I think we have to look at the overall cost of it and that's not I'm not saying we shouldn't do it but you do have to factor everything in it's no good in having defibrillators if they're not being kept up to date because if they're not working effectively they do more harm than good so you do have to factor that in but I think it's also having given us a very good account of risk management the other night rich is thinking about well what about the cost if we don't do it and you know and that's that's not a welcome thought is it so can I leave you to take that away and take and take on board the points that people have made about the ramping this up perhaps coming back with some costings or talking to colleagues about costings and having a bit of a think again about time scales because a year a year away seems a long time so can I can I leave that one with you but thank you for your questions and thank you for your responses shall we return to the report if everyone's got finished with questions on that topic thank you the other continuing issue that's previously come to this committee is on emergency evacuations particularly in the camp complex we've continued with our approach of trying to have these more regularly and varying the days in which they occur to make sure we give staff who have certain days of the week in the office patterns the opportunity to participate compliance generally is good and we had the last one a couple of weeks ago but the next steps that we're looking to do there is to sort of consolidate our approach into a written procedure that we can then spread out to other sites in the Catholic complex and beyond and just keep up the continued monitoring and reporting back on how well the evacuation exercises go to the corporate health and safety board and other relevant officer groups within the council so that we can keep up attention on that issue I'll continue yep if anyone's got any questions let's do questions as we go along because it makes more sense so nobody's got any questions let's move on thank you chair the the next section of the report is about the matters that race at the corporate health and safety board the last of which was at the end of April just gone got some notes on the sort of standard agenda that that board covers but a couple of things to sort of pick out to the committee particularly given the committee's remit on ensuring that our health and safety responsibilities are met with respect to members of the public who come into our premises to use our services got a note there about the sorts of inspections that we undertake on all of our buildings I've only picked out the public publicly accessible ones here but we undertaken all of our buildings we've a pair of inspectors who undertake quarterly inspections around the whole corporate estate working through a health and safety checklist that includes things like asking about the frequency of evacuations and making sure they're documented checking on the maintenance schedules of defibrillators where the sites have them as to pick out a couple of examples and I set out on the sort of pages following a list of those sites where we visited and the number of remedial actions identified each of those sites so I would say this is in the context of an 80 item checklist so that where there's one item found there are 79 ticks on the checklist if you like and I'd also want to reassure members of the committee and others that there were none of these issues were sufficiently grave that we get the nest the need arose to close or modify our use of any of these buildings typically what we would do is we'd raise a remedial action leave it with the premises responsible officer to rectify and expect to see it having been resolved at the time of our next quarterly visit and these issues fall within that scope where issues are left unresolved we've now got a process for escalating those within the health and safety groups for each directorate and potentially onwards and upwards to the corporate assurance board and others where there is particularly particular delinquency or particularly a particular and especially grave issue that needs resolving so the ones that are listed on here are relatively minor but still need attention happy to pause for any questions there people may have any questions any figures that jump out um Councillor webby brown um rich i just wondered how um does it include all libraries because um the crofton park library in the front there's a tape around of a sitting area where somebody had to fall and bang their head and that tape's been around there ever since for over a year and i just took it for granted that because the taping was there that we were on on the matter as it were to get whatever caused that fall fixed and um i've been made aware because i was you know reading this i'm thinking that it hadn't been done or known of and i thought what happened with the manager at the library why wasn't it reported how does things get reported if something happens in a public area so thank you would you like to respond to that rich my understanding and i will check this take away your comments is that that's not on our corporate list of sites to check crofton park library so it wouldn't come up but uh i'm not familiar with the location myself and i will look into it for you having raised it but it's not on our list of corporate inspection sites as it stands Councillor best what we've got here a number of community libraries and crofton park is managed by b22 so um where we've got council-owned buildings on leases short leases i mean that's just a question as to whether they could be considered because torridom road library is one of those community libraries that is on the list so it's just real clarity and i think we had a look at the corporate list before i mean my question is is just also about um well i suppose looking at the larger numbers i know they might be relatively minor so i just wanted to check in you've got the ladywell day center on seven health and safety identified issues and the other i think it must have gone back to limo which has nine nine health and safety identified issues and three maintenance so again these are centers of adults with learning disabilities so they're quite um significant in the sense of being vulnerable but i didn't know how significant what you've recorded is and indeed whether it's rectified thank you thank you and one of the great advantages of now having this in a new software package which i should have mentioned is that that information is much more readily at our fingertips than ever it once was the ladywell day center the issues are that a door was wedged open that should have been kept shut a garden area has a formation of moss that should be cleaned and treated another door was wedged open and shouldn't have been a doormat had been removed and wasn't properly properly placed to avoid being a trip hazard a garden paved area was in the way of a fire exit escape route the keep clear signage needs to be remarked and we hadn't recorded our monthly check of the water tap temperatures were the seven issues okay thank you for that um counselor lahai taylor i'm sorry i've got a real glare on when you put your where you put your hand up so i'm sorry if you've been waiting but no it's absolutely fine it's absolutely fine and thank you chair um just about the asterisks on these inspections um according to the report these can include um the absence of documented by evacuation drills um haven't taken place in the last six months um out of those five um locations two of them are um community or children's center which i think is quite you know alarming because they are in frequent use are you able to provide an update if um after the inspections they did have um an evacuation drill taking place thank you for your question um can i hand over to you rich i'll be happy to provide an update for members on that when we complete our inspections in the next quarter so typically we would we would raise it in one quarter's inspection with the anticipation that the evacuation then happens by the time we come back to the site around three months later with these particular ones i'm happy to follow up and communicate to members separately to confirm that we did in fact see that evacuation or if we didn't what escalation steps are in place thank you and i think there's been some good questions and i think members have really honed in on where things aren't really up to scratch you know involving vulnerable adults and vulnerable young people so i think um we we'd like some feedback on um you know if we're going to see the data being a bit out of kilter there then how do you ramp that up to make sure people are as vigilant as they're meant to be okay thank you shall we move on if everyone's happy to go on i was going to make another point in that is that we introduced our new software in january it makes it a lot easier to track this sort of information so this is almost a baseline in some senses and i'd very much anticipate in future meetings of this committee to go into the detail into the information in a bit more of a way to identify what recurring issues we might be finding or to give the committee that sort of information as well but at the moment this is sort of largely a baseline position we're reporting um moving on with the report the next section that i mentioned is about health and safety resources which i mentioned briefly in the defibrillator discussion which was that um i recently put a proposal to management team which sought to reorganize our health and safety resources within the council particularly taking advantage of where there are some vacant posts and some opportunities to change job descriptions in a way to help support health and safety that proposal was was given the in principle agreement and i'm working it up into something more detailed but my hope is that it will greatly increase our capacity to be able to actually deliver health and safety improvements across the council i'm very pleased that i've been given the go-ahead to do that and say very much thanks to david who's still here and other members of the executive management team um and i hope to sort of bring more detail to members in next time you meet about how we've reorganized health and safety uh resource within the council to support our delivery of the aim thank you for that anyone got any observations otherwise i'll jump in no i mean but i think that's very very welcome and uh you know i think as i always say that health and safety is one of those things that people think well it's you know it's just something you do but actually if you don't do it or you don't do it well you can have you know um terrible things can happen so i'm i'm i'm very pleased that management are backing you to strengthen the resources and to get everybody responsible for taking responsibility for health and safety across the piece at all levels so i think it's very welcome move and i know how much work you and marta and and your colleagues have done to really move this forward when i think about when we came together as a health and safety committee two years ago and you and i met for the first time rich it really felt like you were starting from scratch on some of these things so i'm sure the whole committee can welcome the fact that you have done so much in driving this through so i'd like to congratulate you and the team for how much you've done so thank you for that shall we move on everyone's happy okay the next section of the report is on the incidents um sort of health and safety incidents the the way this works now at the council is that we asked managers of people who've had some sort of health and safety incident or near miss to report via our be safe software which has a a number of advantages to in analyzing this data um what the table at six point one displays is the quarter three and quarter four incident data mindful that the committee didn't happen in february which is when you would have seen some of that so it's sort of half a year put together um there were some significant changes in this which um we're still working with colleagues especially in schools to get to the bottom of to be honest because we saw quite a a decline in the number of reported incidents from schools especially as you can see in this data and i think our first instinct was well we've just moved to a new system maybe they didn't come with us as efficiently as might have been the case but we'd left the old system open for a while to to precisely to try and capture this sort of thing and once we added back the instance that come through the old system as well we were still showing a big decline in numbers so i'm afraid i don't have an answer for you this evening on this but it is something that we're following up with colleagues uh in that directorate just to try and understand what is that a real decline or a reporting elsewhere or was there a particular school that reported lots of incidents that's now an academy or what's what's driving that is is a live area of investigation i'm i'm happy to report back to members later in the year but it's not something i can answer for you tonight i'm afraid would an academy still not report the incidences you said unless they've become an academy because it is quite a significant drop but do academies still not report in the same way academies are free to make their own arrangements so if an academy decides to entirely bring its health and safety responsibilities within its own orbit of governance then it would do that there are still some schools who do report incidents to us and we're sort of in discussion with those schools about what responsibilities exist but certainly if an academy an academy is no longer obliged to report the incidents to us and so that was a potential avenue to explore about why the change has happened thank you i'm going to take Councillor Best you put her hand up first and then followed why don't we take the two questions together and Councillor Webley-Brown afterwards thank you i wanted to ask a bit about housing incidents and what you might think i mean a number of us as councillors you know our inbox is somewhat full with council housing queries and i've been dealing with a number of mold cases damper mold would they be considered as incidents i mean for example i've had one that's been reported to me where a resident's been hospitalised because of respiratory problems caused by damper mold of which you know they've sent me the photos etc so i'm just as housing's new in the sense that it's now insourced what would you consider to be a housing incident thank you Councillor Webley-Brown would you like to ask your question as well and let's take the two together i think variations is very important in terms of quality assurance because in some schools an incident such as bullying is not taken as an incident as such but if somebody trips that's an incident so the way people or organisations report the incident would affect the data so i don't know if there's a template that everybody follows or to ensure that we reduce the variation and if there is a difference in terms of what is presented or given as an incident we know exactly how much how much of that is is you know i don't know what i'm saying but i think you get my drift thank you we we get your drift thank you on this question on housing incidents what we're looking at specifically here is incidents that occur either to our employees or to the service users who are in public areas so it wouldn't include domestic incidents occurring in people's own homes to take your specific example so a housing incident might be and i don't think this is a real example is if we had a maintenance operative injure themselves while drilling a hole or something like that would be would be the sort of thing that we'd regard as would would feature in this sort of list rather than something that had happened to a to a tenant or or resident those sorts of things do get reported and picked up it's through the property compliance team within the housing directorate rather than coming through as a health and safety incident um on the question of review and variation there is a standard template that we ask people to report incidents on um and i'll sing the praises again of our new software in that previously these reports came in as almost like a virtual stack of paper so going through them manually was was the task necessary whereas now we're able to conduct much more analysis and indeed it comes in live so we can go back to people and say well we we've read what you've said and you've categorized it this way did you mean to classify it the other way based on what what we've seen so we can have those sort of discussions a bit more in real time it would also enable to do as you're implying us to to do things like look at the comparative amounts of incidents being reported on schools and start asking the question about is school b just safer or is school b not reporting as often as school a so we've got much more ability to get into the data in that sort of way and this is what we're starting to explore now that we've got that facility much um much more actively thank you are you happy with the answer i mean i think that's really helpful isn't it about being able to drill down into the data so obviously saving time having to having having the software means it gives you more time to look more deeply into the data so i think that sounds really good um anything else on the report how are we doing oh yes i can back to you thank you and and as well as the sort of the headline numbers of incidents on the table on paragraph 6.1 it's also flagging in paragraph six point or the table in paragraph 6.3 um this is the sort of things we've got on the standard report people picking from a drop down about what what type of incident is it that people have experienced and this is this is the full list of of the incidents that we had during this this quarter um this is a a drop down list i think it's taken from hse from the health and safety executive so we haven't decided these categories they are they are the standard categories that exist in this field um and i think this having data at this level of granularity and interest does give us a lot more opportunities and options to get into seeing the patterns of what's happening and where it's happening across the council in ways that we couldn't really do before so as i said earlier this is to an extent give giving you a preview of what we now have and i hope in future meetings to go into a little bit more detail about detail about what we've done with it as a consequence i think that'd be really helpful so we look forward to that and also the opportunity to where you're saying where you can look across the piece for example at schools and look at the outliers and and then drill down and think who's doing it well and who's not doing it so well so i think that'd be very welcome to hear more about that i hand back to you rich thank you i mean and the final section of the report is about the from paragraph 6.6 is about ridor incidents which are ones which um are more serious and require specific reporting to the health and safety executive um here we have numbers of the types of incidents that have fallen within that category within the last six months um it's a it's a fairly standard set of what we see every six months or so so i wasn't going to highlight the numbers to people particularly but i was going to add that one of the other changes we introduced alongside the software was to centralize our reporting to the hse of riddles so that we um just have a bit more consistency and quality and a bit more detail and investigative information about those sorts of incidents when we report them so that's something we've been doing since since january which hasn't made a great deal of hasn't made a great deal of difference to the numbers because incidents are still incidents but i think means that we are providing sort of more consistent information onto the health and safety executive should they wish to come back to us on any of these which i don't believe they have just looking to master the confirmation so we've not had the hse come back to us asking for further investigations about any of these incidents okay thank you has anybody got any other questions on the report i've got two but i will invite other questions first um counselor hi taylor i'm just checking you haven't got your hand up no okay my question i've got two one is um just coming back to um paragraph 6.3 and um the worrying number of assaults that have been picked up and is this something where there's a trend because there just seem to be an awful lot of angry people out there at the moment and um and you know what the data is telling you and are there particular things um that the council's picking up i mean you know assaults by a client on an employee and we do as counselors pick up where um you know residents have perhaps not behaved as well as they should have done shall we say so i don't know if that is leading to any change in practice very important that we keep we keep our employees safe that's one question and the second question um the second question i've just forgotten it might come back to me if that's you could address that one well tan this is a lot of this sort of detail not not so clearly enumerated came out in sort of directorate level discussions so for instance a lot of the assault by people currently employ a lot of those cases came out of passenger services where the sort of difficulties getting children on off-school transport for instance was sort of a classic one that came up quite a lot and we do indeed discuss those sorts of incidents in some detail both individual ones of note and the general category of approach we've already had a question this evening about the abuse and threatening behavior policy but it is something we address i mean so an issue coming out of the the particular directorate meeting that discussed passenger transport issues was encouraging the passenger transport manager to um discuss with neighboring boroughs about approaches to specific incidents of the types which had been discussed and i think our ability to to look at these incidents in detail and track the changes is only going to be enhanced now we've got this sort of level of numerical information to back it up but certainly we've always had through the incident reports the sort of qualitative information about these incidents that have fired those discussions within health and safety groups leading to improvements thank you and i've just remembered my second question which was raised by a resident actually and said oh i see your chair of the health and safety committee what's the council going to do about the pavements and it really struck me because i thought i don't i didn't know whether that came under our our remit but we do get a lot of people complaining about the state of the pavements and people tripping over and it's not just the elderly but i think we have brought this up and some people in this room we know have tripped over recently but it's something that comes up a lot on the healthier communities committee of what happens when people have a fall and it's not just them falling over it then leads to sometimes injury that can take a long time to get over people i'm on the pose that committee and people talk about the positive aging council and people talk there about once they've fallen over normally tripping over a paving stone or in on a hole in the pavement that it then reduces their confidence in going out and of course we want to encourage our borough to be healthier and safer and to walk more and i couldn't answer her question about where responsibility for that clearly responsibility and rest within people responsible for the public realm but if if we have lots of people reporting this to us just in passing in the street where does that sit within the council because it feels like it's the council's responsibility to keep the public realm in good order presumably but i don't know if you've had other people or whether we should be bringing that up with a different committee um what i i have a great deal of sympathy for this speaking for somebody who is still in rehabilitation from having uh a twist having severely sprained my ankle going over a pavement outside Waterloo station in february i'm still attending physio for that so although that's lambeth's pavements rather than louisham you'll be pleased to know um on the i don't know that it would be a matter for this committee but as it happens i also oversee the council's insurance team who i know deal with a number of incidents of this so an action that i'll take away is i will liaise with um colleagues in the insurance team about these type of incidents and how they're dealt with and um i'll aim to get sort of a note back to you since you've asked the question of interest and other colleagues who may be interested but because it's not taking place on council premises it wouldn't be a matter for this committee but i recognize your interest and will seek to answer your question thank you councillor webley-brown did you want to come in on the back of that or ask a different question um i i um spent many years in accidental emergency as a sister and we had streets that were very very very dangerous and many of my ladies in terms of patients did their hips in which meant that they were hospitalized for a very long time and every time i reported it to the council i won't say which one but i worked at kings um and um it it really resulted in in the pavement getting sorted out because it costs so much money and and um the insurance that's what reminded me um was phenomenal because it really did um cause a lot of hospital beds time and all of that so yeah i'm really sorry to hear about your yeah yes i mean that's a very valid point isn't it because if if we are as a council paying out more money in insurance uh to people and people are very quick to say i'm gonna i'm gonna write to the council and um ask for some compensation um uh it might suggest it's if we're paying out a lot in certain roads it might be cheaper to mend the pavements but it is the human cost i think you know we do see a lot and it does come up a post out there where people have had a ball it can impact on their life just as it has for you it's not like you pick yourself up and dust yourself down it can cause all sorts of problems for a long time and you do see sometimes with the elderly that their house their health overall drops off quite significantly so i think it is quite an important issue but i'll accept it may not be the right place to be talking about it but if you're kind kind of take it away with you and talk to colleagues that would be great thank you has anybody got any more comments on the report itself and if not we'll move on um so are is everybody happy to um note this report i'll take that as a yes thank you very much um i've got one any other business i've sort of got two actually let's start with the easy one um so we did we have talked about and i know you're new to the committee councilor at concern but people have found it hard um to to get here for five o'clock particularly if you've got a full-time job and i know people um have had to you know leave work early or move things and uh if you've got other commitments it's very very difficult but we do need to make sure we were core it and one of the reasons that the committee didn't meet very often two years ago is that they just couldn't make it core it i think they did actually meet a bit later but i do think it's an important issue i want to make sure that everybody feels able to come um at the same time i'm i'm very keen that i know officers work very long days so i would be what i'm going to suggest is that five o'clock doesn't seem to work for everybody so i you know at least two people find it difficult of actually three on this committee um i feel seven o'clock um if we can make it earlier i think we need to be mindful that officers also have a life outside of work and a home life and responsibilities so a happy medium might be that we meet at six and i just wanted to canvas views about that um one way or the other so can i hand it over for comments and then we'll take a group decision anybody like to kick off counselor atkinson sorry sorry huge apologies um i do have a full-time jobs which makes it very difficult to get in here um and sometimes i can move things around but 5 36 o'clock would be absolutely perfect i am very mindful that officers work full-time or work during the day and then expecting to be at meetings but that would be welcomed if the times could be slightly later thank you thank you any advice on any advance on 5 36 o'clock so i've got six o'clock from counselor best um let me hand over to uh counselor lahai taylor online thank you chair um i would vote for 6 p.m preferably um thursdays i tend to be in office and commuting from the office to um catford i will need at least an hour to get there on time so you'd be happy with six just to clarify i'm seeing you nodding your heads i'll take that as a six o'clock yes i'll be happy with um it starts like for 6 p.m okay thank you and counselor webley brown can i have your vote 5 30 or 6 would be fine with me right well then and uh and what about officers i'm very grateful for your for your concern but i i'm happy to to attend whenever members wish me to and marta i'm happy to attend any time as well well that's very flexible of officers but i think my vote is for six o'clock i think that makes for a happy medium i do think um the papers we're given in advance are very helpful and therefore we can focus in the meetings and people i like the fact that this committee does um read the papers in advance so it comes with the questions which makes us quite efficient in uh discussing business so um uh cannot can i suggest that we um um well that i i talk to officers and we look to arrange the next meeting for um a six o'clock start yeah can we action that thank you thank you very much so very final point um is uh i find this very helpful the papers and it very much dovetails with the discussions that go on in the executive the corporate so i think that's very efficient as well because it means officers do not have to supply different sets of papers and also the information we get are up up to date and sort of very very live um but i do want the committee to feel that if there is something else they feel they would like to bring to the meeting it seems sensible that we think about that in advance so it gives officers time to think about things and let us know if it falls within our remit or their remit or not and also to prepare any paper or advice in advance so i'm not suggesting that we throw ideas out here now but can i ask people to have a bit of a think about things that they've come across or they feel that their residents ask about or in the course of their work because lots of you work in different things and lots of you are involved in different community groups so i do think we are a committee where everyone i know on this committee is very hands-on in different ways so we'll come up with different issues so i'd really like to invite people to give it some thought um and maybe a month in advance of their next meeting which i don't know if anybody's got the date of the meeting to hand for the next meeting and then we could track back from it sorry i thought i'd written it down and i hadn't thank you sarah so 10th of october make sure it's in your diary for the next meeting so let's let's track back and early september i will canvas round for anything that you might want to put on the agenda for the 10th of october meeting and that will give officers time to reflect on that so is everybody happy with that great so i can't see anybody else with their hand up um i'd like to thank everybody for attending the meeting and uh um i'd like to thank council officers for a very helpful report and for everybody else for their questions so thank you very much and enjoy the rest of the evening