Agenda item

6:10pm to 6:40pm

 

The Cabinet Member for Business Transformation and Customers and Executive Director attended to present a report about Covid-19 Emergency Planning/Business Continuity.

 

In 2005 Chesterfield Borough Council (CBC) had contracted with Derbyshire County Council to deliver its Emergency Planning and Business Continuity service. The Council benefited from joint working, gaining access to a larger, skilled Emergency Planning team and the provision of a dedicated Emergency Planning resource for 2.5 days per week.

 

To further strengthen the Council’s capacity and co-ordination of emergency and business continuity events, the Council identified two senior officers to act in emergency planning liaison roles. These staff members work alongside the Derbyshire County Council Emergency Planning team and with the Council’s Strategic Leadership Team and Corporate Management Team to respond  to an emergency or business continuity event.

 

The Council had detailed emergency and business continuity plans in place, which are regularly updated. Access to the plans could be obtained by authorised personnel through Resilience Direct, an online private network which enabled civil protection practitioners to work across geographical and organisational boundaries during the preparation, response and recovery phases of an event or emergency.

 

Dependent on the size and scale of the emergency or business continuity event, different types of strategic and tactical groups would be initiated to effectively ‘manage’ the event and this would be determined when an emergency or business continuity event was triggered.

 

At a local level, CBC regularly reviewed and updated service specific business continuity plans. The leadership team reviews, agrees and documents the priority services for protection and restoration in an emergency and this process would then inform the relevant activities which must be undertaken when the business continuity plan is invoked.

 

Individual Corporate Business Continuity Plans exist in respect of winter planning, flood planning and a flu pandemic.

 

On 23 March 2020, the government announced the first national lockdown. These conditions and restrictions were unprecedented and required the immediate implementation of business continuity activities so that the Council could prioritise the delivery of key services where it was legal and safe to do so. Whilst most emergencies or business continuity events would be short lived, the Coronavirus pandemic had been unique in that CBC has remained in a business continuity position for nine months and the end date is unknown.

 

In response to this, the CBC business continuity activity had been and would continue to be delivered in three phases:

 

1.    Response – the work CBC did to deal with the 1^st national lockdown.

2.    Recovery – the work CBC did to reopen business and bring our workforce back in a covid-19 secure way.

3.    Response and recovery – the work CBC has been doing to deal with the 2nd national lockdown whilst supporting communities and businesses in longer term recovery.

 

The following business continuity structure has been implemented to enable the management of the coronavirus business continuity activity across Derbyshire:

 

-       Chief Executive and Leader attendance at the Derbyshire Local Outbreak Board.

 

-       Executive Director attendance at the Local Resilience Forum Strategic Co-Ordination Group and Recovery Group.

 

-       Corporate Management Team attendance at the Local Resilience Forum Tactical Co-Ordination Group and at specific partner working groups which are focused on communications, community wellbeing including homelessness and workforce.

 

-       Tactical meetings of the CBC leadership team, initially held daily and reduced to twice weekly after moving into the recovery phase.

 

-       Regular communications in place between the Corporate Management Team and their respective portfolio holders.

 

-       Three task and finish groups have been implemented to deliver recovery activities. These groups are focusing on the economy, community wellbeing and the safety of our workforce.

 

The Covid-19 pandemic has presented CBC with unprecedented risks, disruption and changes to working practices. Whilst the business continuity plans have provided clear ‘structure’ and guidance on process, the Council did not have a ‘ready prepared’ business continuity plan which could be immediately followed and

has adapted to each situation as we have moved further into the pandemic.

 

During the initial lockdown period the Council had to temporarily close offices, services and facilities and many of our staff were asked to work from home or were redeployed into other roles.

 

The services which were closed during the response phase of the pandemic were detailed in the officer’s report. Many of the services were reopened from July onwards, in a covid19-secure way, but closed again in the second national lockdown from 5 November 2020.

 

There were a number of challenges in reopening services. To ensure CBC premises were Covid-19 secure customer and employee flow was redesigned, desk spaces were adjusted and additional safety screens and speech transfer systems were provided.

 

140 service specific risk assessments were developed to ensure safe ways of working. The risk assessments were developed alongside trade union colleagues, who were complimentary about CBC’s approach. This activity will not need to be redone as services reopen again as the Council took the approach of a robust design which would be fit for purpose on a long-term basis.

 

The following new activities were required during the response and recovery phases and have been coordinated through the tactical task and finish teams:

 

-       Provision of support to local pharmacies to deliver medicines and food parcels. Over 10,000 prescriptions were delivered by CBC staff.

-       Provision of marshalling at Covid-19 testing stations.

-       Delivery of the ‘keeping people in’ initiative.

-       Delivery of business grants to Chesterfield businesses, totalling £26.95m.

-       Delivery of further Test and Trace grants within the community to those on low income and need to self-isolate.

-       Delivery of the 2nd phase of business grants which were generated by the need for a 2nd national lockdown and movement to local tiered restrictions.

-       Co-ordination and live streaming of virtual meetings.

-       Development of new policies to support redeployment, furlough, flexible furlough and agile working.

 

In support of these activities, the Council developed a central list of available resources, co-ordinated by the HR business partners, and have redirected those staff from ‘closed’ or low priority services to support the new activities.

 

Work has taken place to mitigate the negative impacts of business continuity. Work was already underway to strengthen the Council’s ICT resilience and put the technology in place to enable staff to work from home. This underpinning work was critical in enabling the Council to maintain core service delivery and protecting staff during the pandemic. The ICT team continued to deliver the ICT Improvement programme as well as manage business as usual activity and support new activities generated through our pandemic business continuity work.

 

HR Business Partners worked with employees to support them with ‘new ways of working’. In recognition of the assistance that staff may need, HR launched an Employee Assistance Programme which enabled the workforce to obtain support by telephone. This service has been very positive for the few employees who have used it, but take up has been low and further promotion is required.

 

The Council implemented ‘test and trace’ procedures and it has been clear from the tracking data collected that the spread of infection had a much bigger impact on our workforce immediately prior to the 2nd phase of lockdown than it did in March 2020. 2% of our workforce have received a positive covid test and 4% are self-isolating because they have been in close contact with someone

who is positive. Implementation of robust test and trace activity across the workplace has been time-consuming and resource hungry. The Council has had no Covid-19 riddor reportable cases, which is testament to the hard work and rigour when developing risk assessments, safe ways of working and test and trace activity.

 

On 5 November 2020, the government implemented a second national lockdown and the Council responded quickly and effectively. Lessons learned exercises were completed at the end of the first lockdown and this learning has been used to support scenario planning for the second wave. In addition, work has been undertaken to review and revise risk assessments for Tier 2 and Tier 3 local restrictions so that the Council could implement relevant changes quickly.

 

A temporary grants team had been implemented to ensure that businesses obtain grant funding quickly and efficiently. During the 1st phase of lockdown, grants were administered manually, and the data collection process was very time consuming. For the latest set of grants, administration processes had been streamlined and partially automated using the Council’s CRM solution. The processes had been designed and built within a week and improved to allow for ‘faster payments’ to be made

direct to business bank accounts.

 

The officer’s report identified barriers to progress:

 

-       Further work was required to digitise paper based customer records. Completion of this activity would enable agile working to be completed effectively. The Council still issues a large amount of ‘post’. This requires office-based staff to print, label and post out documents to customers. Implementation of the Customer Portal, ‘My Chesterfield’, is the first step toward sending correspondence electronically for those customers who choose to receive their mail in this way.

 

-       Restrictions in availability of staff through isolating or shielding may mean some services need to be reduced or delayed, especially in some specialist areas, where it is difficult to share resources.

 

-       Implementation of a range of collaboration technologies, including the popular Zoom or FaceTime applications, will enable officers to effectively collaborate with community members who may not use Microsoft Teams as a preferred tool.

 

The officer’s report identified the CBC’s future plans to continue to respond to the latest set of restrictions, whilst also working on recovery activities.

 

Members noted that the second lockdown had felt very different and enquired what had changed to enable services and businesses respond more effectively. The Executive Director advised that there had been both positive and negative differences: there had been improved supply and communication but people were fatigued by the first lockdown which had impacted on compliance.

 

Members emphasised the need for customer records to be digitalised and enquired what information was still kept on paper. The Executive Director explained that some information needed to be stored for a certain period of time and some work cases were kept in hard copy.

 

It was noted that a need for the Council to be able to use Zoom and Facetime was not just important for community and voluntary organisations but also councillors. This was a key issue which the ICT Team were trying to resolve while ensuring security.

 

Members enquired how staff were coping with new and old roles. The Executive Director advised that it had been challenging with workloads peaking and troughing. The senior leadership team would be continuing to take a personal approach to understanding how staff were coping.

 

The Executive Director was asked whether there was a problem with a backlog of routine tasks from the lockdown. Members were informed that staff and tasks needed to be prioritised so non-priority tasks remained which needed to be cleared. This process was being priority driven.

 

 

Members enquired why CBC had provided the laptops to Arvato staff and the Executive Director explained that the primary reason was to ensure that all teams could work together and it was a pragmatic approach in the circumstances.

 

RESOLVED –

 

That the Covid-19 Emergency Planning/Business Continuity report be noted.