There were no apologies for absence.

In accordance with the Members’ Code of Conduct, Members are requested to declare any interests orally at the start of the meeting and again immediately before consideration of the matter. Members are reminded to specify the agenda item number to which it refers and whether the interest is of a personal or prejudicial nature.

Members are also reminded of the requirements of Section 106 of the Local Government Finance Act 1992 that they should declare and not vote on specified matters if they are two months or more in arrears with their Council Tax payments.

Councillor Stockley declared a personal and prejudicial interest in agenda item 6, LIBRARY STOCK SUPPLY AND EFFICIENCY, by virtue of one of her company’s customers being Askews Library Services.

To consider and approve the minutes of the meetings held on 7 September 2010 and 15 September 2010 – attached.

RESOLVED that the minutes of the meeting held on 7 September 2010 be received and approved and the Chairman be authorised to sign them.

To inform the committee of the background to this item, to enable informed and reasoned questioning of representatives from Thames Water.  Senior representatives from Thames Water will be in attendance for this item.

Report of the Senior Democratic Services Officer attached.

The committee thanked Liz Sale, Local and Regional Government Liaison, and Jerry White, Head of Control (Operations) for attending the meeting on behalf of Thames Water.

The committee was given some background information on Thames Water’s operations in the region and details of the treatment process that water went through before it reached customers’ homes.  The Hampton pumping station was the key supplier of water to the London Borough of Richmond upon Thames and around 500,000 people.  The Hampton site was also a strategic location for Thames Water as it was directly connected to the London ring-main.

Mr White said there had recently been a number of incidents, beginning with the high profile supply failure on 23 June 2010.  This outage was caused by a failure in EDF Energy’s network, which provided power to the Hampton pumping station, which was discussed at the previous meeting of the committee.  On this occasion, the standby power generation on the site failed to operate.

Before the water supply could be resumed, Thames Water had to re-establish the water treatment process from the beginning in order to ensure customer safety.  In order for this to happen, EDF needed to be present at the Hampton site to reset the circuit breakers which were there.  There had since been a system put in place by EDF to enable them to do this remotely, as they had come to an arrangement with Thames Water over the safety aspects of reconnecting the power supply.

The fault in Thames Water’s backup system had now been identified, although it was still needed to be remotely started in the event of a power failure.  Thames Water were currently engaged on a project to install systems which started power generation at its Hampton site automatically in the event of a power failure.  This facility was due to be rolled out by January 2011, although work was taking place to build further resilience into the system.  This included a focus on the more vulnerable sites and a new connection to the London ring-main.

There had been other water supply failures as a result of burst water mains and the committee was assured these were always dealt with as quickly as possible.

Following questions from members of the committee, the meeting was advised that:

• All of Richmond upon Thames was supplied by Thames Water and all of the borough had no water, or a reduced supply, on 23 June 2010.
• Hampton treated around 650 million litres of water per day, so around 4 hours of that capacity was lost during the 23 June outage.
• There were very few water storage facilities around London, capable of storing treated water.
• Thames water was confident that the same fault could not happen again in the future.
• The 23 June failure was unforeseen, but the circumstances had been subjected to a review.
• The energy supply to the site had previously been resilient, with this sort of occurrence never happening before.
• The soon to be installed backup systems at the Hampton pumping station would be tested without any resultant disruption to customers’ water supplies.
• Thames Water were working to improve their response in the event of an incident.  They would be working with the borough’s contingencies unit, with further communications links being established if they were desired.
• The generators at Hampton were diesel powered.
• A desalination plant had recently been commissioned in east London, which was designed to react to water shortages in the London area.
• Thames Water was running a project in Oxfordshire, which was looking at the construction of a new reservoir.
• In the event of a long term water outage, Thames Water would respond by supplying bottled water and standing tanks in streets.
• A lot of Thames Water’s network was aging and in difficult to access locations.

The committee thanked Jerry White and Liz Sale for attending the meeting.

To hear details of the proposals from officers on the project team.

A senior officer from Thames Water will be in attendance for this item.

Richard Aylard, Project Manager for the Thames Tideway Tunnel, attended for this item.

Mr Aylard said that a working group was set up in 2000, which was tasked with looking at how the number of discharges of raw sewage into the Thames could be limited.  Thames Water, in the meantime, had been working to ensure that new developments were built with sewage systems of a certain standard.  This left a network with sewage systems of varying standards, as older properties did not meet newer requirements.

This meant there was a need to formulate a new system which could accommodate older properties, which is where the demand for the Thames Tideway Tunnel came from.  It was proposed that it could intercept sewage before it was discharged into the Thames.  It was to join together all of the remaining active discharge points in order to store sewage until it could be treated.

Thames Water had been working with local councils in all of the areas affected, in order to devise a methodology for selecting sites to contain infrastructure.  Of the original list of over 700 sites, there was now a shorter list of preferred sites, one of which was at Barn Elms.  There was public consultation happening around these sits until December.

The tunnel was planned to be at a depth of 60m at the western end and 80m deep at the eastern.  The target date for the project to be in service was 2020, with a second stage of consultation taking place during summer 2011 and construction starting in around 2013/14.  Thames Water were proposing the additional cost of this project would be included on customers’ bills from 2013.  Each customer would experience a rise in their bills of around £1.00 per week.

Following questions from members of the committee, the meeting was advised that:

·        22 shafts were planned, which intercepted 34 discharge points along the Thames.

·        Hammersmith pumping station was currently responsible for more discharges than any other site along the Thames and it was noted that if a discharge happened at the right time, raw sewage could reach the Richmond upon Thames in two hours.

·        Materials removed from such sites would be offered to people who had uses for it, with the aim of transporting as much material by river barge.

·        It was planned for there to be around 10-12 barge movements at Barn Elms each day.

·        It was currently not known who would make decisions around planning, although it was likely to not be local councils.

·        There was a need to work with the government to formulate conditions around construction.

·        Thames Water were inviting as many comments as possible in order to ensure there was a suitable legacy for the project.

·        The tunnel was aiming to be a solution for London for at least 100 years.

·        Barn Elms was selected as a preferred site because it was next to a discharge point and it was a good location next to the river.

·        The proposals for Barn Elms would include a structure extending into the river and the construction of access routes.

·        The final structure would be relatively small and in-keeping with the surrounding environment.

·        The St Paul’s Boys’ School playing fields had been considered at one stage.

·        It was expect that construction would happen at Barn Elms for around seven years.  This was longer than most other sites at the tunnel was being driven from this location.

·        During construction, around 2 to 3 football fields would be unavailable.  Thames Water had made a commitment to work with local organisations as much as possible around this.

·        Thames Water were, where possible and commercially viable, the legacy as a result of the works at each site was being looked at.

·        There was discussion taking place with experts about the impact on any local wildlife.

·        There still needed to be discussion about traffic issues that may be caused by a site at Barn Elms, particularly along Rocks Lane in Barnes.

The Committee thanked Mr Aylard for attending.

[Councillor Avon left the meeting.]

This report outlines the Council’s current contractual arrangements for the acquisition of library stock, and outlines the proposed approach to delivering better value for money through the effective management of library stock.

Report of the Head of Culture and Services Improvement attached.

Councillor Stockley declared a personal and prejudicial interest by virtue of one of her company’s customers being Askews Library Services and left the meeting for the duration of this item.

Following questions from members of the committee, the meeting was advised that:

·        Stock selection would be done by the suppliers, based on a specification given to them by the Council, with the supplier’s librarians using their knowledge to do this.

·        There would be some quality checking by the borough’s librarians and they would still be responsible for reviewing the supplied stock and acting on specific requests for titles.

·        The new supplier selection process would be informed by data held on the library management system and a new stock management module called Smart SM.

·        Supplier selection would release librarians’ time so that they can work on other projects.

·        There were significantly larger discounts on buying books through the consortium due to increased buying power.

·        This was part of the wider strategy to modernise the library system, while also delivering efficiencies.

·        There were no redundancies as a direct result of this work.

·        The buying consortium was retendering its contract in August 2011, although it was now larger than when the existing contract was negotiated, so further discounts were hoped for.

·        The consortium would, in the future, be supplying further services such as e-books and periodicals, which were currently supplied elsewhere.

·        Amazon was used to supply some titles requested by customers.

RESOLVED that the report be noted.

This report gives details of the proposed work programme for the remainder of the municipal year 2010/11.

Report of the Head of Democratic Services attached.

RESOLVED that:

·        The letter received about street trees be passed over to the Strategic Cabinet Member for Environment and Planning for investigation and response.

·        Councillors Elengorn and Naylor be appointed to the Housing Task Group.

·        The following changes be made to the committee’s work programme:

1. A special meeting be considered to look at the London Waste Plan and waste collection services.
2. The following items be received at the next committee meeting:

o       Fees and charges

o       The budget for the next financial year

o       Draft Community Safety Plan

3. The following items be received at the committee meeting on 24 March:

o       Update on Climate Change Strategy

o        Report back from the Drugs Misuse Task Group