Agenda item

Report of the Director of the Built Environment.

The Committee received a quarterly update report of the Director of Built Environment detailing risks managed by the Department of the Built Environment that fall within the remit of the Planning and Transportation Committee.

A Member referred to the two red risks noted (the All Change at Bank public consultation and recommendations for on-street measures to enable the safe return of the City’s workforce and support COVID-19 recovery to come to this Committee in April). She questioned whether there was any risk of confusion when responses to the all Change at Bank public consultation were received as she confessed that she had looked at the consultation and had found it quite difficult to understand which temporary measures may or may not be in place as this came into place. She added that she had written separately to Officers on this point. She understood that the consultation was on the basis that temporary measures around COVID would be removed and she sought assurances that Officers had now made this abundantly clear as part of the consultation. Officers reported that the Bank consultation was now live and was going out in parallel with a review of the COVID on-street measures which had been in place for a while now. Some of these measures would be retained whilst others would not and a report on this would be submitted to the next meeting of this Committee. Officers did, however, reassure Members that both sets of works were being managed by the same team so that any potential overlap/conflict would be part of the assessment between what could be accommodated at Bank and in terms of any other measures that would be delivered. It was added that the key message here was that Bank still remained a priority location for this Committee and any on-street COVID measures would therefore have to accommodate whatever was needed at Bank Junction.

Another Member commented on the new presentation of the Risk Register and cited Risk ‘DBE-02 Service/Pipe Subways’ as an example of where this could be confusing given that the objective here was to ‘reduce’ the risk and yet the current and target risk rating and score remained the same.  Officers highlighted that this risk had been on their register the longest as they were being managed as a confined space and commented that it was a valid point to make that, provided that appropriate management protocols were being followed, the risk should be ‘accepted’. Officers therefore undertook to review this risk in further detail after today’s meeting.

Another Member questioned why COVID-19 risk number 27 – ‘failure to deliver the New DBE Finance (RECOVERY)’ had a higher target risk score than the existing risk score when the aim here was to ‘reduce’. He added that other forums had been using heat maps to show how the overall risks had moved so that all risks could be assessed against one another on a single grid and questioned whether it would be possible for this Committee to have similar going forward. Officers commented that this particular risk had a higher target score than the current score as the advice being taken from the corporate risk manager on this was that the risk had been set at the higher level this time last year where the organisation had listened to government guidance and had expected around 30-35% of their workforce being too sick to work due to COVID. After emerging from the second wave of the virus, this score had been reduced but the target had been kept where it had originally been set as it was recognised that there was currently still the potential of a third wave and this therefore needed to be kept under review. It was reported that the COVID related risks were currently reviewed every fortnight as part of the Public Service Silver Group’s work. With regard to heat maps, Officers undertook to include these as part of the next quarterly update. 

The Chair referenced Risk CR20 – Road Safety Reduction which currently had no owner listed. Officers reported that the Assistant Director (Highways) was now the new owner of this risk.

RESOLVED – That Members note the report and the actions taken in the Department of the Built Environment to monitor and manage effectively risks arising from the department’s operations.