Care Home Forum 19 th May 2015 Sarah Chittock – Merton Civil Contingencies Officer Taryn Milton – Emergency Planning Manager – Epsom St. Helier

AIM To explore the local impacts of, and response arrangements for, a significant water disruption To understand the multitude of potential impacts derived from a water disruption To identify further planning requirements and/or local partnerships.

Why Water Disruption? The “failure of water infrastructure or contamination” is detailed as a high-risk within the London Risk Register (2014). The updated Water Supply Disruption Framework was released in May 2014.

London’s Water Supply 4

Risks to the water supply service:  Natural hazards: e.g. landslides, subsidence, earth tremor, flooding and drought – any of which may, or may not become more frequent or severe as a result of climate change  Man-made hazards: e.g. terrorism, plane crashes, theft, accidental damage and human error  Other: e.g. loss of power or other key resources resulting from either of the above  Hazards may occur individually or in any combination and this may change the scope, severity, and urgency of the response.

Risk Mitigation Under the terms of the Security and Emergency Measures Direction (SEMD) 1998 water service providers are required to have arrangements in place to ensure that their service meets set levels of resilience:  Protecting assets against failure and / or having processes and procedures to provide a timely recovery  Increasing the interconnectivity of the water supply network to reduce the impacts and increase the network options for restoring service  Contingency planning: putting plans in place for the provision of water by ‘alternative’ means. These measures are audited annually by Defra

Event (Incident) Response In the event of an interruption to water services, water companies will use all ‘reasonable and practicable’ means to keep the piped water supply running. This means:  Identifying the asset(s) and customers affected  Where possible changing network connectivity to minimise the number of customers affected – even if water is supplied at a lower pressure than ‘normal’ For those customers who remain out of supply providing water by ‘alternative’ means  Tankers  Static tanks  Bottles

Provision of Alternative Water Supplies SEMD Part 1 requires water companies to have plans in place for the delivery of a minimum of 10 litres of potable water per person in every 24 hour period to a population of a given size and within set time frames Requirements vary from water company to water company but:  Water companies have up to 24 hrs to deploy  Planning numbers include the use of industry mutual aid  Plans are for the company as a whole – and at the time of any outage resources may have already been deployed 8

Inject 1 It is 10:30 on a dry spring day and the London Borough of [INSERT] has just received a call from the Water Company stating that the piped water supply to approximately 120,000 people has been lost. The Water Company are working to reduce this number by rerouting supplies across the network. A further update will be provided as soon as possible.  Do you have plans in place to respond to this locally?  What are your immediate considerations and actions?  Who would you seek advice from/provide advice to in these early stages?

Inject 2 It is now 14:00 and you are informed that the Water Company has reduced the impact to approximately 50,000 people in your area and will source alternative water supplies within 24 hours. However, due to extensive repair work, service users will be without piped water supplies for a minimum of 48 hours. The Water Company are already dealing with a large scale water disruption and have requested assistance from the London Resilience Partnership. A Strategic Coordination Group has been called and the London Water Supply Disruption Plan has been invoked.  What would be your priority at this stage?  What could you do to mitigate impacts to clients and on emergency services?

Better ways of Coping? Given the impacts on NHS and Acute services how would you change your response? What can you do? Different approaches to hydration.

Planning & Validation Plans need to be developed that reflect your organisation and the services you provide Identify different mitigations and actions you can take Train your staff – does everyone know what the initial actions are? Exercise the plan – table top it or live?

Finish Thank you for your time and attention Please go back and review your plans