Place Scrutiny Committee - Tuesday 3 November 2026, 7:00pm - Epping Forest District Council webcasts

Place Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 3rd November 2026 at 7:00pm

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Cllr Joseph Parsons

1 WEBCASTING INTRODUCTION

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Cllr Martin Morris
Fabrizio Ferrari
Laura Kirman
Cllr Joseph Parsons

2 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

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3 SUBSTITUTE MEMBERS

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4 DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

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5 NOTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING

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Minutes Public Pack, 01/09/2026 Place Scrutiny Committee

6 EXTERNAL SCRUTINY OF THAMES WATER

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Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Lisa Morgan
Thames Water
Cllr Lisa Morgan
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Sheree Rackham
Thames Water
Cllr Lisa Morgan
Thames Water
Cllr Lisa Morgan
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Mary Dadd
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Barbara Cohen
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Lisa Morgan
Thames Water
Cllr Lisa Morgan
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Kaz Rizvi
Thames Water
Cllr Kaz Rizvi
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Darshan Sunger
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Louise Mead
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Will Kauffman
Thames Water
Cllr Will Kauffman
Thames Water
Cllr Will Kauffman
Thames Water
Cllr Will Kauffman
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Mary Dadd
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Lisa Morgan
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Stephen Murray
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr James Small
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Thames Water
Cllr Joseph Parsons

7 WORK PROGRAMME

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Work Programme Place 26 Oct 2026

Cllr James Small
Fabrizio Ferrari

6 EXTERNAL SCRUTINY OF THAMES WATER

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Lisa Lipscombe
Cllr James Small
Fabrizio Ferrari
Cllr James Small
Fabrizio Ferrari
Cllr James Small
Fabrizio Ferrari
Cllr Joseph Parsons

7 WORK PROGRAMME

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Work Programme Place 26 Oct 2026

Cllr James Small
Laura Kirman
Cllr Mary Dadd
Laura Kirman
Cllr Mary Dadd
Laura Kirman
Cllr Mary Dadd
Laura Kirman
Barbara Beardwell
Cllr Mary Dadd
Barbara Beardwell
Cllr Janet Whitehouse
Laura Kirman
Cllr Janet Whitehouse
Laura Kirman
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Stephen Murray
Cllr Joseph Parsons
Cllr Sheree Rackham
Cllr Lisa Morgan
Cllr Joseph Parsons

8 DATES OF FUTURE MEETINGS

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Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

start the meeting, I'll just read the webcasting introduction. I would like to remind everyone

1 WEBCASTING INTRODUCTION

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:00:05

present that this meeting will be broadcast live to the internet and will be capable of

repeated viewing. Therefore, by entering the council chamber and using the seating area,

you are consenting to being filmed and to the possible use of those images and sound

recordings for webcasting and or training purposes. So welcome everybody to tonight's

meeting of the Place Grootany Committee on the 3rd of November. I'm Councillor Joseph

I'm the chairman for tonight's meeting.

I'll just introduce the panel here with me.

So to my right, we've got my vice chairman,

Councillor Martin Morris,

Cllr Martin Morris - 0:00:41

and to my left we've got Fabrizio Ferrari,

the service manager for communities.

Fabrizio Ferrari - 0:00:45

And then to my vice chairman's right,

we've got Laura Kerman,

Laura Kirman - 0:00:49

who's our democratic services officer,

and Steve Mitchell, webcasting the meeting.

We're also joined online by Barbara Beardwell,

the monitoring officer,

Jen Gould, the deputy chief executive,

and Lisa Lipscomb, who is the Corporate Health and Safety Contingency Officer.

We are also joined by a number of members of staff from Thames Walter,

and I know they will introduce themselves when we get to that item.

So, next item is apologies for absence.

We have received apologies for absence.

We have received apologies for absence from Councillor Abbott,

from Councillor Bassett and Councillor Bromwich,

although Councillor Bromwich has decided that they will attend the meeting,

but not as a member of the committee.

To make that clear, because Councillor Lisa Morgan

will be substituting for him.

Thank you, and that's item three.

Number four, any declarations of interest?

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:01:40

No, perfect.

2 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

And we've got the item five,

3 SUBSTITUTE MEMBERS

4 DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

the notes of our previous meeting on pages three to five.

Are members happy to agree those minutes?

5 NOTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING

Perfect, thank you.

Okay, so onto item number six,

which is extratermal scrutiny of Thames Water.

6 EXTERNAL SCRUTINY OF THAMES WATER

So this is our substantive item and we did ask for questions in advance and I think things

have been sent over generally.

So I would like to let members know that we will be asking for or we'll be having questions

or written responses received after the meeting.

So I'll pass over to Martin from Thames Water.

Thames Water - 0:02:22

Hello my name is Martin Puddly, I am the Water Director at Thames Water.

Hello everyone, I'm Stephanie from Thames Water and I'm Head of Service Excellence for

Operational Service Centre.

Hiya, I'm Natasha and I am the local engagement manager. I support with managing relationships

between elected members and Thames Water.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:02:50

Thank you. So we've got a number of pre -prepared questions that a number of members have submitted.

So I think if we go through the numbers in order...

Oh, sorry, did you want to press the chamber first?

Yes, I would if that's okay.

Thames Water - 0:03:03

I mean, first of all, my heart goes out to everyone affected by the most recent incident.

I think in these situations we all find the true value of water

and I am truly sorry on behalf of the company.

We recognise the significant inconvenience

and impact on customers, and as I say,

we're very sorry for it.

I do want to thank customers for their help,

understanding through what was an incredibly difficult time,

and I particularly want to thank the council,

its officers, counsellors, and other stakeholders

for helping support with what was a very tricky time,

and I think it shows the value and importance

of those local arrangements.

So thank you very, very much for that.

Thank you.

Okay, so I'll pass over to the members

that have submitted questions.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:03:52

So we'll go through them in order

and then we'll go to committee members

and then non -committee members.

So if we start with Councillor Small.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you

to the Thames Water Representatives

Cllr James Small - 0:04:03

for coming this evening.

Like other members, I submitted questions in advance,

but I would like to say a few words first, please,

if it might just a couple of minutes.

So my criticism and feedback is not on the engineering work itself.

I appreciate that was challenging and we had exceptionally dry hard ground from our repeated

heatwaves and the challenges in certain parts of our district trying to reinstate water

pressure with our terrain in mind.

So my criticism is how water distribution to residents was handled.

Number one, through the priority register for home deliveries and number two, through

the bottled water stations or lack thereof.

So throughout this whole outage, I was crying out for a water station for Buckhurst Hill,

or at least a pallet drop in different locations in the night of my ward being very densely

built up.

So this never came, and my town was the only one affected that never got a water station.

Loughton was also left on the limb for some time until they finally got a water station,

but not for long.

As some know, I had to resort to buying water in a supermarket and hand delivering it around

to vulnerable people in my ward.

which I knew of personally,

but through others contacting me for water.

What I delivered was barely touching the tip of the iceberg

in what was needed.

Not everybody can drive to other towns

where the water stations were based,

whether real third, Jigwell,

or the one time station in Elter.

So I saw some very vulnerable residents

who did not know about the priority register

at Thames Water,

and could not get to the shops to get water either.

I hate to think what would have happened to them

had I not not to given them bottled water,

but especially in that exceptionally hot weather.

It was an anxious and distressing experience

knowing there were more vulnerable people out there

I did not know about and could not get water to.

A large number of these vulnerable residents

did not know about the project register, as I said,

and I helped sign them up on the spot on my phone.

For those that were signed up,

some told me they got no bottled water delivered at all

during the water outage.

For sites such as independent living sites

and nursing homes in my ward,

I either got no bottled water deliveries for days or no deliveries at all, according to

them.

I also kept checking on those sites and taking bottled water I had got in the supermarket.

I also had residents of the State, they were on the phone for over an hour or more trying

to get help.

So this water outage had a huge impact on residents, especially the vulnerable, and

on small local businesses who relied on a water supplier.

Thank you for hearing my few words there.

So I'm going to now read some of my questions that were prepared in advance.

can we see Thames Waters own contingency plans

if they actually exist for Epping Forest District, please?

Well, first of all, I just want to apologise

Thames Water - 0:06:43

hearing you out there.

It's not something you want to hear.

And I'm very, very sorry that that happened.

I'll just start with explaining our response.

I think it's worth starting there,

specifically around the alternative water strategy.

So our strategy for the response,

customers getting water back on is our ultimate strategy

for this particular incident.

So we had that at the forefront throughout the incident.

When it comes to alternative water strategy,

there's various things that we consider.

If I start with the bottom water stations,

so we look at the supply system as a whole,

and we look at where the outage was,

and was becoming to be a changing picture

with the multiple bursts that we had.

So we look at that and we have to scope out various different sites.

We do that with a number of different checklists that we have in place to make sure it's a

safe site to open.

So we have a number of different things that we look at to enable us to open a site and

it is very difficult to find sites that are large enough, have good entry and exits.

So that is quite a challenge for us.

But that being said, we did work with Epping Council

to find various different sites

across the whole water supply zone that was out of water.

So we did work with Fabrizio at the time

throughout the incident and the other councils

to try and find suitable sites.

So we have a lot of different considerations in mind

when we open the sites.

We also have a tanker strategy.

So we have a fleet of tankers that we did deploy

on this particular incident.

We had up to 20 tankers out.

Our absolute priority is to support the hospitals

and the prisons, if there are any.

That's our tier one categories.

And then we look at supporting reservoirs

or sort of boxing off various areas

to bring those customers back into supply.

You mentioned the PSR register.

So it's something that we use in an instant.

We pull that off of our database

and then we prioritise our critical medical dependencies.

And we do have a tiered approach

to how we get water to those customers.

And I can only apologise that some of those didn't get water.

You mentioned care homes and we do pallet deliveries

and we did do pallet deliveries on this particular incident.

But our data isn't perfect and so we want to work with the council

to share vulnerable customer lists.

And we did do that in the incident but we absolutely recognise

that we can do better with that.

And subsequent to the incident, we've had a multi -agency debrief

that was run by the police, and that was actually hosted here on the 29th September.

And we've got fire and rescue police, we've got voluntary sectors there around the table,

and we're working on proactively building these plans up to enable us to better respond

in the future.

We do have our own incident plans where we absolutely get those trained and exercised

so we can respond better in the future, and again, we continue to build those.

We are working directly with the Essex Council, we have been since May, on a water outage

plan.

We will continue to build that out, learning from this particular incident.

Thank you.

I was just following on about potential sites.

Cllr James Small - 0:10:04

I was suggesting if you could have added a number of smaller sites running concurrently,

pallet drops.

Yes.

I also had, for example, Church's approach,

me offering their grounds,

and I never heard back from anybody,

whether it was the council or Thames Water.

Okay, it's a very good point,

and I think one thing we did do differently

Thames Water - 0:10:24

with this incident was working with Fabrizio,

we did open a smaller site, a Girl Guides site actually,

which if it was just Thames Water,

we wouldn't have opened that site on our own checklists,

but we actually agreed that it could be

If it were a council -owned site, we would deliver the water there.

We would have volunteers and sort of hands -on sites, but it would be run by the council.

So we did try to do things a bit differently to try and get some smaller sites set up

in local sort of village areas, recognising that the bigger ones were getting quite

busy.

And so we were trying to do things a little bit differently there.

And what about pallet drops?

For example, we could have been on the main shopping strips.

You could have put some here, some there, let people help themselves.

Was that not feasible?

We did consider that and we did do that with some care homes in the outage area.

But we have to consider a water quality aspect of the water.

Thames Water - 0:11:17

We always have to have eyes on the water until it gets to the customer's hands and into their homes.

Martin, do you want to build on that?

Yeah, it's worth adding that the regulations that control water from Thames Water and all other water companies

are actually a lot stricter than bottled water that you might buy in Tesco or anywhere else.

Quite rightly, in my view, it's protecting public health.

So the chain of custody we have to have

between us distributing it is the same

when it's bottled water compared to a piped water supply.

So the facts that we have to have eyes on,

it's just the way that the regulations work, I'm afraid.

And it's there to protect public health.

Okay, thank you.

Let's have a look.

Okay, so just going back

Cllr James Small - 0:11:58

to some of these independent living sites.

I know the Council won.

Council 1 .1 was signed up to your register, which I was pleased. Thank you to the Council

that the staff there were conducting welfare cheques, thanks to that team. Although the

Private E1 establishment is responsible for ensuring they're signed up to the register

as an entity, is there a way we can communicate to and cheque with all places, whether Council

1 .0 or not, that they're signed up to the priority register? I'm talking about independent

living sites and nursing homes. I mean, obviously, the Private E1 places should have responsibility

to do it, but can we still get a message out there and double cheque all these sites?

I don't know the answer to that one because we do have competition laws and things in

Thames Water - 0:12:36

place for non household, I don't really know where that would classify.

Let me take that one away though and we can certainly get back to you on that one specifically.

Cllr James Small - 0:12:46

On that last point, I requested that you re -mail the whole district to remind them about the

priority register, whether it is a paper letter preferably and also for those that can use

technology to have a backup email.

Because I was struck by how many people didn't know about the register, especially the elderly.

Understood.

And I think one of the things we are doing, actually, as I speak and run up to Christmas,

Thames Water - 0:13:14

is looking at all of our literature that we send out to party services customers, recognising

we can definitely do better to make it clearer on our offering.

I mean, it's just like this, an emergency nine -pound event.

So let me take that one away and try and build it into the plan that we've already got going

when it comes to a party service register.

Okay, I've got one final question, please,

Cllr James Small - 0:13:33

and the rest are gonna be for Epping Forest later.

So Thames Water was clearly overwhelmed

and may not have had enough staff

to help with the water distribution,

and that of course have the telephone lines.

Could we maybe have a list of volunteers ready

who could help?

It's a fantastic point, and again,

Thames Water - 0:13:49

it's been part of our, when we had our multi -agency debrief,

we had Red Cross at the table,

and I believe the councils did work with Red Cross

in this incident.

I know that Redbridge Council certainly did,

and I believe Epping may have as well.

We are working on a plan from an alternative water perspective

to work directly with the voluntary secretary as well.

So we are scoping that out as we speak.

And I would like, as a council that's been involved,

you know, in order to help in these emergencies in future?

Cllr James Small - 0:14:15

Yes.

On the ground to helping the water like others on the other side?

Absolutely.

And I think in this particular incident,

it was classed as a level four,

Thames Water - 0:14:22

which is our highest incident, run by Gold Command.

and we have regular interaction with the council directly.

So that's the right sort of media channel, if you like,

to be able to speak directly into the council

and vice versa.

And we do have our public information office,

which is also sat stand side by side

with our Leonty Panning team,

who are directly liaising with any sort of council

or MP interactions that are coming through that channel.

But we would much prefer just a one channel

where we can use directly with the council

through the SCGs that we had set up and other calls before that.

Cllr James Small - 0:15:03

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:15:06

Thames Water - 0:15:10

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:15:13

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 0:15:18

That is my question for the

I've got a few questions.

Do you want me to do them all separately?

I'll just tell you the whole lot.

You might be able to answer some of them.

Do them separately.

How do you feel you want to do them?

That's fine by us.

Please, can you provide a list of all Thames Water assets

that do not have a permit and which you're aware

have discharged sewage into the river or the streams?

It's, sorry, I should put actually my reading glasses

I'm rather than driving glasses, but you'll have to bear with me.

Anywhere in the EFDC area over the last five years,

when please provide the source and sources of the sewage and the pollution,

e .g. the misconnection, cross -connexion or other.

Please state the volume and concentration of the sewage from each outfall.

OK, well, I haven't got that information to hand,

but we can certainly get back to you.

Would you like me to read?

Thames Water - 0:16:20

Because a lot of them ought to do with the same thing.

So if I read all of them, is that better for you?

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 0:16:28

For all the unpermitted outfalls discharging sewage

in the EFDC area, please state by what date

and what means the outfall will no longer

be discharging sewage.

Yep.

How many unpermitted combined sewer outflows, CSOs,

are there in the EFDC area?

And could you please provide details

of every permit application submitted to the EA in respect of these.

Environmental Agency, sorry.

For those who didn't know what EA was.

For permitted CSOs in the AFDC area,

please can you specify their environmental harm to the river

by stating the sewage load on the river caused by each outfall

load being determined by the volume of discharge

times ammonia concentration of discharge,

times annual number of hours of discharge.

Sorry, I thought you'd have these questions beforehand,

but I'll give you the form afterwards.

The Lower Voting Water Quality Project

by the River Voting Trust and Thames 21

have identified the Cascade CSO in Buxtill

as the most damaging CSO on the Lower River Voting.

Due to the concentration of sewage up to 50 parts per million ammonia,

volume of sewage 80 to 100 litres per second,

the hours over 400 hours of discharge per year.

The sheer volume and concentration of sewage means that when the CSOs

is discharging ammonia levels of five parts per million,

toxic to aquatic life and humans have been recorded half mile downstream

at Hornbeam playing fields for the Cascade CSO.

Could you please state, given that this CSO spills every time it rains, do you agree that

the CSO is spilling outside the terms of permit and thus illegal? How long has the CSO been

spilling with such frequency? Do you agree that it's been at least decades and if not

exactly when it started spilling into the higher frequency? What is caused of this CSO

spilling so frequently? Is it a fault in the system or long -term lack of capacity in the

system. What remedy or remedies has Thames Water identified to reduce the number of spills

from this outfall to below 10 per annum? When exactly will this work be stated and finished?

Improvements, e .g. less raw sewage discharges over the last six months. It is noticed some

nearby STWs aren't responding at all. Onga is expecting to increase its household by

about a third over the next few years,

with new homes already finished

and started to become occupied.

What, that's not my, that's yours, sorry.

That was it, sorry.

I've suddenly gone on to somebody else's.

I got very excited there.

So if I can pass this over to you.

I suddenly thought, I don't remember writing that bit.

Thank you, if you can come back to me,

I do appreciate that you won't have those,

that it is something that I'm sad I do go out

And I used to paddle in the roof of Odeon quite often,

so I suppose the ways that you found here,

I find it really sad when I go down there now

and find Ethel and going past.

So thank you, I look forward to hearing from you.

Thank you, we'll definitely tell you those

and we'll get back to you, no problem at all.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:19:55

Thames Water - 0:19:57

I mean, we do take this stuff,

I mean, under water direction,

not the wastewater direction,

we do take this very, very seriously.

And we do take environmental obligations very seriously.

I mean, we were the first company to make publicly available all discharges.

I mean, most companies now do it, but we were the first by quite a long time, actually.

So, but we can definitely get back to them, there's no question, no problem at all.

Thank you very much.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:20:23

Thank you. So, I can see Councillor Sunger and Councillor Mead online.

I will come to you once we've gone through the questions we've already got.

So, next member is Councillor Dadd.

Thank you, Chairman.

Cllr Mary Dadd - 0:20:37

And thank you, Councillor Morgan, for starting it.

I have looked at the Thames Water website,

but I also saw a recent independent case study for Thames Water series treatment capacity

by M Hull and others in 2025,

and I've got a link here for you, is called Gubacqua Case Study, 10 Swarters

Sewage Treatment Capacity.

It looked at 10 swarters, 351 sewage treatment works in 2024, and found that 181 sewage

treatment works had inadequate capacity.

Excuse me for reading this.

I want to get my facts straight.

So inadequate 80, so that's 80 % of all the works

with known capacity, including around Onga North Wield.

I'm Councillor for Onga Ward.

The data set showed the number and duration

of untreated sewage spills from Thames Water assets

each year between 2019 and 2024.

The data sheet also shows protected population trends,

sorry, projected population trends

for each sewage treatment works,

and the population served in 2015 and 2020

and projected growth until 2024

using calculated required capacities.

But of course EFDC in their local plan

has an increase in the district of 4 ,600 homes.

North Weald sewage treatment works has an upgrade planned, but no timing is available

on Thames Water website.

It's expected to meet the government targets to storm overflows by 2030, but there's

no information of capacity.

The Stanford Rivers sewage treatment works has an upgraded plan with no details

of increased capacity and no timing.

and similarly at Thornwood sewage treatment works.

I've chosen those three as the nearest ones for Onga.

Willingale, which is also close by,

has been upgraded to increase capacity,

but still has untreated sewage discharges

during storm conditions and other times,

including this year.

With such a large percentage increase

in the population in North Wilde and Onga area,

on was expected to increase by about a third,

and there's a lot more around the Northwield upstream,

if you like.

From just the allocated sites

and the continued discharge of untreated sewage discharge

into the local rivers, we are very concerned.

And there's a few questions I'd like you to give me

some answers for.

I realise you won't be able to do it tonight.

Why has the upgrading of these local sewage treatment works

not yet been carried out?

The need was noted in the infrastructure delivery programme

of the local plan and called as critical.

Who is paying for the existing improvements?

And while the developers are allocated sites,

many already with planning approval

and agreed to the section 106 agreements,

not seemingly have something in the S106 agreements

to pay the appropriate contributions.

Now I'll come to that at the end.

To pay for the additional capacity

due to the increased households within their planning.

And I looked in there about, I've got a link to it too,

it's called improving our environmental performance.

And in reference to Thames Waters recent reports

in May 2026 on improving the environmental performance,

which followed off what's enforcement order, why is Onga area not showing any improvements?

For example, there doesn't seem to be any less raw sewage discharges over the last

six months.

It is noted that some nearby sewage treatment works aren't even reporting, so I'd

like to know why they aren't as well.

As you say, ongoing expectation to increase by about a third in the next few years, but

new homes are already being finished and starting to become occupied. So what assurances do

residents have that the issue, issues that remain over the summer will be addressed and

the capacity increased in the sewage water treatments as a matter of urgency and before

many more new homes are finished and occupied.

And I've got an example in a minute.

But lastly, reading about Oxfordshire having problems, is the FTC going to have similar

situation where parts of Oxfordshire had new completed homes which were unable to be occupied

because the sewage treatment works by Thames Water were inadequate?

I've got one example of a development around Onga, which, get the right one here,

this relates to land north of Chelmsford Road in Onga, the Persman Development,

129 dwellings.

You replied in September 24 that following initial investigations Thames Waters

an inability of the existing sewage treatment works infrastructure to accommodate

the need of this development, and it required a condition that they shouldn't

be occupied until such good works have been done.

However, six months later, in February 25, there was a letter to the case officer

saying we have done some additional work to understand the requirements, and it's

come to light that the condition is not required, which assumes that there is the capacity.

So I'd like to understand what's happened there, because as far as ONGA is concerned,

we haven't seen any difference, and we still have the sewage outages as well.

Thank you.

I don't suppose there's anything you can respond to today, and I'm sorry you didn't

have it in your office.

No, no, it's absolutely fine.

I will definitely take that away

and we'll definitely get back to you.

That's no problem at all.

Thank you very much.

Thames Water - 0:27:18

Thank you.

So the last member is Councillor Murray.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:27:24

I know I'm not on the committee,

but he's sent some questions in.

Thank you, Chairman.

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:27:30

Yes, I did respond to the request for earlier questions.

I'm not, I'm going to make a very, very short comment

before I move to my questions.

I would agree with everything that Councillor Small has said.

I've been a representative in Loughton for over 40 years and I would say that this is

one of the major things that I've had to deal with, like other colleagues.

It took over my life for the period of August that the service was affected.

I'm really glad that you made the comment that you made right at the beginning about

understanding the impact and the inconvenience to residents.

And I take that, as you said, I'm not sure everyone in the postcode I represent will be quite as, you know,

accepting as I am, but I will judge that on how you answer two of the questions that I'm going to come to.

I'm going to try not to repeat ground that's already been repeated,

but maybe just ask you to be explicit on a few things.

So from your point of view,

why did it actually take so long

to set up a walk to station in IT 10?

And can I just clarify,

my questions are really talking about

the main walkthrough outrage.

We did have a later outrage which affected less houses.

It was still bad,

but I'm talking about the main one

that affected Chigwell, Buckhurst Hill and Loughton.

So why did it take so long to set up a water station in IG10?

Thank you for your question.

Thames Water - 0:29:18

I think, to be honest, we did scope several sites across the Outage area.

And we did, whilst liaising with the New City College,

we agreed to open that site and subsequently had to close it

because of the A -level results day.

but it was a moving picture in terms of the outage.

So we prioritised setting up sites in certain areas

based on where the large amount of outage was,

and then we were able to set up new city college in IG10.

So I don't know if you want to build on that at all.

Yeah, I mean, these things,

you know, they don't take us by surprise,

but they're difficult to respond to,

and it's difficult to identify bottled water stations

And you might think, well, that's a strange thing to say.

But as I said earlier, you have to be,

the way the regulations work quite rightly

is that we have to protect the water course.

So we have to have a chain of custody.

We seal the water.

Now, when we set a bottle water station up,

we think very carefully about the logistics

and how it works for people.

And it's surprising how many sites are not appropriate.

So for example, we set a site up in one of the Tesco's,

I forget what exactly the location was.

And that wasn't suitable because it just gummed up

So you have to have sufficient access and egress

for people to get in safely.

We're very sensitive to this,

but we had a bottle wall station,

it was a couple years ago in Guildford,

where one of our colleagues got their leg broken

because somebody ran into them.

Complete by accident, I'm sure.

So we have to make sure that it's there

to protect the health and safety of our colleagues

who are volunteering to come and do that,

water, but it is actually more complicated than you might think to set these up.

I think one thing I would say is that maybe there's an opportunity as part of the learning

from this lesson to identify those potential locations in advance so that should this unfortunately

happen again, that we've got those ready to go.

I think that's the learning for me.

I know I'd absolutely like to build on that because we had, I've got five locations in

front of me that we did sort of scope and weren't suitable all in IG10.

And I know there was a particular car park that we were trying to use as well that was

working with Fabrizio on again wasn't suitable.

So I just want to get across, we did scope so many sites in IG10 and were able to get

New City open, but we were really trying very hard from the get -go to get those sites open.

And just to build on what Martin said there about sort of prearranged sort of plans in

place, that we've got those sites available to us.

That's certainly something we discussed in the multi -agency debrief that we want to have

in our water outage plans and our joint ownership

of those plans going forward.

And we want to sort of train and exercise those

so we're ready to go in an unfortunate event

if it does happen again.

And we've been working similarly with Redbridge Council.

And we had a session actually two weeks ago

where we talked just about bottled water stations.

And to the extent of some of the sites were suitable

but we couldn't get Arctic lorries in there,

they decided to take a bollard out and half a wall.

So we can get in there next time.

So that's the sort of detail we want to get into and are willing to get into with the councils.

I'll help you with regards to my other questions.

My final two questions on the walkthrough outreach,

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:32:36

about what you have learned and what steps you have actually taken.

So I am going to explicitly ask you about that.

So my next question, based on the experience that I had and my other colleagues in Alton,

why as a local councillor did I receive numerous complaints from residents on the priority list,

both during and after the water outgrades,

that they did not receive any water delivery.

And maybe you've got some evidence about the percentage

of residents that were on the priority list that were missed

and the percentage that some waters were delivered.

But I got a constant complaint from residents

that knew about the priority list,

that were on the priority list,

and it didn't actually make any difference.

Yeah, and I'm happy to take that question.

I think my mic's still on.

So with the priority services register,

Thames Water - 0:33:27

I just want to recognise that we have a tiered approach

with critical medical dependent being the top priority.

And there's various different categories

within those tiers.

And to be completely open and honest,

we weren't able to get bottled water deliveries

to all four tiers in this incident

because of the widespread outage.

And that's something that we are working on internally

to make sure we have a better response plan going forward.

And that's where we started to work much closer

with the council throughout to try and get more water

out to those customers.

An example in Redbridge was we opened up

a bottled water station within the transport depot

and they started to deliver water.

And then we reopened the Girl Guide site with Epping

as another example.

So we were trying to do unique things

to try and get more water to those customers.

but we did also cross -share information in this incident,

again, an area that we can do better on next time.

It was clunky and it was difficult

and we were also getting complaints

coming through our call centre.

So, as another way to get an escalation through,

we were getting escalations through the councils

and the MPs as well with various different...

And I would say that our vulnerability criteria

is different to the councils.

So, again, there's some variations there.

All of the things that we want to work through

in peacetime so that we can better respond should another incident occur.

Thank you. I think it's reasonable for me to ask one quick follow -up on that.

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:34:59

Out of the four tiers, what tiers did you reach?

And then I've got some other questions.

Thames Water - 0:35:10

We were able to get to all of tier 1s and 2s and we started to get to tiers...

..some of tier 3 and 4 as well through some of the days.

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:35:20

Another precise question because I know people who had family in residential homes in Loughton.

Why were residential care homes left waiting for days for a water supply?

I just cannot understand how this is acceptable and why they weren't prioritised.

And they were waiting days for a water supply.

I can think of two care homes in Louton,

and I think it would be wrong for me to name them publicly

because I haven't asked their permission.

But that to me just didn't seem acceptable.

No, and it's not acceptable, and we sincerely apologise for that.

Thames Water - 0:35:56

We run what's called a trace internally in our database

to pull all of the customers off and we then prioritise them.

They do flag up if we've got care homes or vulnerable housing

and things like that.

We also were working with the council

if there were any that didn't come up on a mapping,

for whatever reason that may be.

So we run that trace, we were able to do some pallet drops

to care homes throughout this incident.

There were care homes that we didn't have on our information

that were flagged to us, and as soon as they were flagged

to us, we tried to get bottled water deliveries

to those care homes.

So sincere apologies that from the get -go

we couldn't get the pallets there,

but as soon as they're flagged to us

through either a call centre call or through the Council from an MP, we prioritise

them appropriately and get the pilots out there as soon as possible.

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:36:50

I do accept that these, I'm not going to wrap three questions into one, and I do accept

that part of the question you might not have the answer to, and the other one is a matter

of principle.

So I'm looking here around compensation for what was a major issue.

How many individual compensations payments have been made to customers?

What is the monetary total of these payments?

And then the general principle one is, has any thought been given to some kind of community

compensation payment?

I would suggest a mechanism of the parish councils, because both Buppersfield,

Shigwell and Louten have parish councils.

they probably would be the best mechanism to have some community compensation towards

a community project.

So it's how many individual compensation payments, what's the total of those payments, and have

you given any thought to a community compensation payment?

Thames Water - 0:37:48

Thank you.

Yeah, I can answer all of those.

So we've made circa 3 .4 million pounds worth of compensation

payments as of today, which totals roughly 20 ,000 properties

that receive payments.

And just to set a bit of context on what those payments are

paid for, so we have what's called a customer guaranteed

scheme.

So once a property has sustained 12 hours of water outage,

we make a £50 payment for household customers

and a £100 payment for non -household customers.

For the household customers,

that payment goes into the Thames Water account.

It does not go to their personal bank account.

And the eligibility is all automatic.

So there's no forms or anything that that customer needs to fill out.

We will make that within 20 working days of the incident.

For the non -household customers,

that's made directly to the retailer for that customer.

So that again doesn't go into any accounts, it goes through to the retailer and the retailer

then makes payment for the non household customers.

And again the same logic applies, it's for 12 hours of water interruption and every 12

hours thereafter payments will be made to those customers and that's what's called our

customer guaranteed scheme.

We do have an enhanced offering, so in previous years we measure pressure in bars and if the

customer received 0 .3 or less they would get a payment.

Now we have an enhanced offering which is one bar of pressure because we recognise from

a customer experience perspective one bar is much more likely what they are used to

receiving.

So that is what our compensation payments are paid for.

We have also got our claims and if there was any damage caused by the water in this instance

for any vehicles or the properties that they were living in.

That is a very separate process for our insurance.

I think just to build on that, I mean the point three bar just to put just to make that real for everyone that means if you open the valve in the street the pressure, the water goes three metres in the air, that's what it means.

The one bar is 10 metres in the air so that's the to use sense of what the pressure is.

We're regulated as you all know very tightly by a number of government bodies including Ofwat and the point three bar that Steph just talked about is the legal requirement.

We recognise that's not what customers actually appreciate,

experience in an instant.

And so we have this one bar which is over three times more

than these tax remittance, because we recognise that.

And if you look at the number of customers that,

strictly speaking, if we just followed the government guidance,

we'd have paid 13 ,000 customers compensation.

Actually, we paid 34 ,000 customers compensation

with our enhanced scheme.

We should have paid £2 million, we paid £3 .4 million.

So we have, and we've done that over the last year,

I think now.

So we do recognise that the customer's experience

is very important, and we're interrupting the supply.

It's on us to recompense customers.

But we go well above what's actually required.

And well above many other companies, I might add.

And just on your last point around sort of

the community compensation, and I have given this

some thought.

And one thing we've done, I used to work as a customer

manager in South London, and we would look at sort of

areas where customers dissatisfaction was high,

and we'd do something what's called give back and repair.

So we have a time to give scheme in terms of water,

where we were able to give time back to charities.

So what I was going to suggest is maybe we could work

with you as a collective, and maybe there'd be some

charities or sort of some recommendations of where we could

maybe give some time as a company back and into those charities that are close to the

Councillors or the community's hearts as a suggestion.

We would have to take that away and understand if that's something we can do in current circumstances,

but that would be my suggestion for that particular question.

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:41:56

That's good and unlike other members, I could suggest good things in each of the three locations

that I used to have in companies in and would welcome that offer.

I mean, there's a Tigwell Riding Trust for Tigwell.

There's a nature reserve for Loudon.

Bucker Steel doesn't come immediately.

So we welcome that.

We take it up and I'm sure members will come forward with ideas.

So my last question on the water outrage, because I am going to turn to the upgrade

programme in Loudon as well, which at the moment is unique to Loudon.

So my last question on the water outrage, and I think in some ways this is the key

question, particularly in light of your apology, I called it an apology because I think it

was.

What are the key lessons you have learned from this walk to our rate?

What's the clear message you want to give to our residents?

What are the key lessons you have learned?

And once you've learned the lessons, what concrete steps have you taken or are you taking

to be better prepared for the future?

Okay, thank you very much.

I mean, I think we all recognise, don't we,

the impact of climate change.

Thames Water - 0:43:04

And I'll just give you some numbers just to illustrate

the size of the problem,

and then I'll answer your question directly.

So, two years ago, we had our last normal,

in inverted commas, year.

It wasn't too hot, it wasn't too cold.

And we turned it wasn't a drought.

So, back in 20, between April and September,

we had 22 of these massive mains,

we call them trunk mains,

these massive truck lanes that supply areas.

So we had in depth 22 of those that burst

over the entire region.

In August of this year, which is the year,

this is the month that affected, we had 21.

So we have the same in one month as we had in five months.

And if I look year to date, so year to date,

we've had, as I just said, 22.

We had 22 two years ago this year, that number is 77.

So the amount of, and then if I look at visible leakage,

and that's the leakage that customers report to us

in the street, that last normal year was 7 ,300,

which would cost the whole of Thames Water,

between April and September.

This year, it's only 7 ,300, it's 11 ,500.

The climate is changing, and that is making it very

difficult for all water companies to respond.

It's particularly difficult in the southeast,

And it's particularly difficult in this part of the world because of the nature of the

soil, which shrinks in contracts.

And we saw that in the winter.

It wasn't that cold, but we had quite a big – I'm sure everyone will recognise we had

quite a lot of bursts in response to that.

So what are we doing about it?

So to transfer your question directly, so last – the way, as I'm sure you know, we're

regulated in five -year periods.

We're funded in five -year periods.

So in the period 2020 to 2025, we replace 220 kilometres of water main.

This year and a half, last year and a half, we replace 100 and we replace 550 by the time

we get to the 2030, and that's the period.

And what we are talking about, the government regulates for a moment, is increasing up to

1 ,000 kilometres between 2030 and 2035.

Now that is not without difficulty, because we all know this part of the world is very,

very congested, and unfortunately for everyone,

these massive manes are under the main arterial routes.

So when you, so digging them all up,

even if we have the money to do it, which we don't,

would be impractical anyway for customers,

from a customer perspective.

So we are working very closely with councils,

working very closely with our regulators

to actually increase our rate of replacement

of both these massive Trump mains, but also distribution mains, the smaller mains that

supply customers' houses.

Now I think I'm just going to get my, just if you don't mind, I'll refer to my notes.

So we, within this area, we will carry out, we'll spend £30 million in this period on

network improvements, and as I'm sure you already know, we're working in trap sale,

pliers lane, retro lane, Marjoram's Avenue, Kings Hill, and we have a further amount of

that we're currently scoping out

to see which is where the best place to do that.

And we do that, when we replace mains,

we do it on the basis of where they burst the most.

And it's very difficult to actually predict

where they're going to burst.

There is actually no way of predicting

where a main will burst.

Now, in the south, in the southeast,

we have a different problem to the rest of the country

with water mains.

In the north, for example, where water is very, very soft,

the water mains degrade from the inside.

It's actually very easy.

I'm nice working at Northern Water Company.

This is my third water company.

So it's very easy to find where the water main

is going to burst because you can send a camera down

and see it from the inside.

Here, because the water is so hard, it's very passive.

It doesn't corrode.

You look at most bursts,

the inside of the pipe is actually not corroded.

But the soil is incredibly corrosive.

It's the most corrosive soil in the country.

So the water mains corrode from the outside in.

And the only way to tell whether that's happened

is to dig it up.

And so it makes our job in the southeast very, very tricky.

But to answer your question directly,

we're already replacing mains within the area.

We've got a further programme replacement

and we'll spend within this area 30 million pound

over the next five year period.

And the preparation for when there is a future outbreak?

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:47:39

Yes, I can take that one.

Thames Water - 0:47:44

So, I mentioned a couple of times the multi -agency debrief,

and it was a really, really good session.

It was a two -hour session held here at the end of September,

and we came up with, throughout that session,

we came up with a series of learnings and recommendations that we all agreed on.

And I've got six of them here in front of me,

And I won't list them all off, but one of them is about what we've talked about quite

a lot today, which is that PSR register sharing the vulnerable customer information.

So for me, this is a massive learning for Thames Water in how we can do better in this

space and we're proactively working with the councils to agree a process of how we better

share that information going forward.

That will form part of the council -owned water outage plan, but also it will form part of

terms waters processes and agreements that we have in place.

So that's one of the key learnings for me.

And that joint working during the incident

was a real win for us, it was a real positive

of the incident and we've continued

that working relationship going forward.

Because in all honesty, we don't work a lot in this area,

we do have quite a small proportion of the area

in terms of water supply.

So this incident really sort of built those relations up

and we'll continue to use those going forward

and to have a better response plan.

From an alternative water response, again, the same applies.

So we talked about those pre -agreed sites being in place.

We'll continue to work with the councils

to scope out the sites and pre -agree those.

And a lot of the sites that we found,

the business owners don't want us to come onto the site.

Fair enough.

It's a big footfall, or lots of people going in and out.

So if we can kind of build an understanding beforehand,

help them understand what it would be and what it's for,

hopefully we'll be in a better stance

if it were to happen again.

And then finally the communications element.

So this was both sort of a pro and a con for me

in terms of the response personally.

I think it was, we did some things we haven't done before

and we set up a communication cell

with all the different agencies and councils

so that we can give one aligned message into that.

As soon as we came off the incident call,

we went into those comm cells and we gave that information.

So it was as fresh as it possibly could be.

And then we updated our website straight away

with that same aligned message.

So that was a real positive.

Some of the things we need to work on and be better on

is the communications to our PSR customers.

So I think we can do more there.

We do have a dedicated PSR line,

but it absolutely got bombarded with this incident.

So we know that we need to put more resources into that

going forward and how can we make that more tailored

so we get to the most urgent cases first.

And then I want to talk a little bit about

our non household programme

and which is us working with our tier 1 prisons and hospitals

to build out an alternative water response plan.

So we have a programme of work where

we are going on site with all the prisons.

So we look after 11 or 12, where we supply water

to 11 or 12 prisons across our water supply area.

And we have over 150 hospitals as well.

So we're working directly with the NHS in a priority way

to go and build out those plans with the hospitals.

But next on our list is very much the care homes that we've talked about today and those

other sort of key businesses that are helping these scenarios and we want to work with them

to build up those plans.

So I would say those are sort of my key points and learnings from this incident.

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:51:16

We will obviously judge if this happens in the future, how much of that actually happens,

but that is really positive.

I'm very aware that people have been patient, members have been patient, and I did have

I am going to roll my three questions on the upgrade programming layout into one chairman

so that you can move on to other members of the committee.

So this is to do with the infrastructure work and the upgrade is welcome because people

want to see investment in necessary infrastructure.

But to the general public it doesn't appear to have been particularly well planned.

In fact, the man in the street or the person in the street,

so it seems almost to have been planned

to cause the maximum amount of disruption.

So how would you answer that question?

Why did some parts of the town of Loughton

lose two or more through routes at the same time?

We can't quite understand why.

You know, we can understand why we might lose one through route,

but we're losing two through routes at the same time,

which maximises the disruption.

and the one that really annoys people, because these are planned works, so a planned programme,

and part of the planning must involve allocating the workforce.

There are still long periods of time where roads are shut or junctions aren't operating

properly and there still isn't any work being completed, and this is planned maintenance.

So why is that still occurring?

Thank you, and thank you to other members who have been very patient.

Okay, thank you very much for that.

I mean, as I said a minute ago, it's very difficult, isn't it?

Thames Water - 0:52:58

Because all of these massive mains that we've got are under the arterial routes.

That is the reality of where they are.

And so we have to deal with that as we find them.

I do agree we can do better in terms of planning the upgrades.

I think we were quite keen to move quite quickly.

and maybe in hindsight there was more that we could have done to have planned.

We do talk very closely with the officers of the Council when we plan these.

We don't just go in and plan them.

In terms of your comment on the time and the access,

people not seeing work on the highway,

I share that frustration, if I'm honest with you.

We're doing a lot of work at the moment on our time on the highway programme,

where we're actually trying to minimise both the planned work

but also for leak repairs, so repairs that we respond to on a regular basis,

in terms of getting in there, doing it quickly,

and then getting the reinstatement completed and the traffic management taken down.

That is work that we're doing at the moment,

and we are talking to both TfL and the Council.

But I do take the challenge, and you're absolutely right,

and I share the frustration.

Thank you.

Thank you, Chairwoman.

Thank you, fellow members.

Thank you for your questions and your answers so far.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:54:18

That was all of the questions sent to us in advance.

I will now go to committee members.

The first name is Councillor Rackham.

Thank you, Chair.

Cllr Sheree Rackham - 0:54:30

I would like to thank the chair for coming tonight.

I know it has been a hard time for you.

I think I have had quite a few conversations with Natasha, I believe.

I have a ward colleague of Councillor Murray over there, and we were inundated with residents

calling us about various issues.

Councillor Murray has brought up about the traffic issues we have had.

I mean, I had residents screaming that they couldn't get from one part of Louton to the

other part of Louton.

So at one stage, both parts of Louton were completely blocked, so no one could get down

the high road and that was affecting businesses as well.

And I mean, if we can learn something from this,

then perhaps we can look at, you know,

our infrastructure and how we go forward with shutting off roads

in the future, because I know that it was very,

very difficult for many residents.

The other issue I'd like to bring up as well is not only did

our residents not have water to drink,

but they also didn't have any water to have showers or baths.

And we have vulnerable residents.

You know, we have older residents, we have people with young kids, and this was a real

issue, because a lot of our residents, if they are vulnerable, they can't go around

to other people's houses, they have to stay at home.

And there was a lot of alienation because of this, because they were stuck at home.

They didn't have any water to drink, but worse, even in that hot weather, they couldn't

even have a shower.

And this was sometimes up to about five days that they didn't have a shower or a bath.

And that was really stressing out some of our residents as well.

And we haven't really mentioned that tonight to say that there was another issue to this.

It wasn't just the drinking water.

It was the fact that they had their facilities taken away.

So I wonder if we can going forward look at these issues and see what we can do.

I mean, the other thing I'm going to bring up is the pavements.

I don't know if anyone's seen the pavements around where we are.

We did have a very hot summer,

and obviously a lot of the pavements are cracking as well,

which is dangerous for our residents, but that's another issue.

And I wonder how that may affect Thames Water's work in the future,

if this is going to be something, if we have this soil here,

is that going to be something that affects how we go forward with Thames Water?

Are you going to get more outages?

Are you going to get more pipes bursting because of this?

So I just wondered what strategies we are putting in place

for these various issues that I've mentioned.

Thank you very much.

Yeah, I mean, thank you very much for your questions.

Thames Water - 0:57:13

In terms of the traffic issues, as I say,

we do try and minimise that.

I will take away the particular issue

of mounting with the project team myself.

Often what disrupts residents is the fact that we have,

that we've got a planned net, we've got a planned work,

and then we'll have some unplanned leak repair

that we just have to, and that compounds the problem.

And I do apologise if that's affected

any residents or customers.

I will take away that issue in the latter moment,

and speak to that, I'm not free with every single hole

that's been dug in my name, I'm afraid,

but I will go and share that.

In terms of the impact on facilities, I agree with that.

I think it's worth sort of stopping and reflecting.

How much water do we supply into this area?

So in this area, there are 72 ,000 properties

that were affected in the area,

and every day we supply 45 million litres of water.

We've talked a lot about bottled water.

The reason we have pipes is because it's the most

efficient way to distribute 45 million litres of water

every single day.

So, and when you take that away, as you say,

the impact is immense, and as I said at the very start,

nobody thinks about water until it's not there.

And then when it's not there, it's a huge inconvenience.

And I want to reiterate my apology,

it was an apology at the start,

to residents for the impact that we had on their lives.

And it's, as I said, we were dealing

with an immense number of births.

And in fact, in September, it was equally bad.

So we have been dealing with an immense number of births.

In terms of the ground movement,

it's quite interesting, actually.

We actually monitor leakage by a number of means.

You may see people overnight looking for leaks.

We actually use satellite technology too.

And we look at ground movement

because that gives us an indication

where the leaks will be.

And I saw a piece of work recently

comparing ourselves to Manchester.

I don't know why they chose Manchester,

maybe because that's the company I used to work

before I came to Thames.

And the ground movement over the summer

was two millimetres.

The ground route in London was 10 millimetres.

And that, along with the shrinkage,

causes an immense pressure on our pipe work.

Our pipe work in London is predominantly cast iron,

not very flexible, and as a result,

you start moving the ground a lot,

and it does cause more burst.

And I gave some numbers earlier

to illustrate the amount of burst

that we've been dealing with.

So you're absolutely right.

As I said earlier, we are all dealing

and responding, aren't we, to climate change?

I mean, I've been in this company now six years,

and in those six years, I've dealt with three droughts.

Last year was a one in 40 year drought.

This one is worse.

I don't know what it'll be until it's over.

The one two, three years ago was a one in 60,

I think it was, drought.

There's something wrong with the stats

if I'm dealing with 71 in 40s in three years.

So, and bits of response to climate change,

but you're absolutely right.

This is a major issue for both the council

in terms of pavements, but also for ourselves in terms of the infrastructure we are managing.

You might have to build on that, Steph?

Yeah, and I just wanted to pick up your point about the showering element of it,

because we absolutely recognise that that is a basic need, a basic human right,

and I think there was lots of instances of people with medical needs,

you know, just over and above that, where they need to be able to wash and things like that.

So I just want to recognise that is unacceptable.

And we do prioritise drinking water.

And we absolutely have to make sure everyone's got that in the first instance.

And it's something that's widespread as this.

That was our focus and our strategy, and I will have to be open and honest with that.

But going forward, we do consider things like that in our planning.

But just to be very clear, for this, it was prioritising that bottled water and drinking water element.

Thank you.

Thank you. Councillor Morgan.

Thank you.

I'd like to first say that our local engagement manager,

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 1:01:26

during the six days of no water in our area

and up to his departure at the end of August from Thames Water,

was absolutely fantastic.

He was really, really good.

It was bad.

We had... On the Monday and Tuesday,

I had hundreds of communications from local residents

that were really distressed, that were vulnerable and without water.

And they were.

Like Councillor Vachen just said, we had people that had to change dressings daily

and had to wash them and they didn't have water, didn't know what to do.

In fact, I actually...

I'm not saying I'm fantastic, but I actually cut my holiday short.

I was only in Cornwall.

Cut my holiday short, filled my car with water that I purchased

from the local supermarket and headed home

because my residents felt that they weren't being supported by Thames Water.

They needed the help, so that was the easiest thing to do.

I did get to finish my holiday, by the way.

A local encouragement manager for the public affairs in our area

was available late into the night and got water delivered

to one of our local care homes in Grange Hill.

They hadn't been delivered water by 7pm on the Tuesday evening,

so I spoke to the gentleman.

I won't say his name because I don't know if I'm allowed to,

but he was really, really good.

And he stayed in contact with me the whole time,

which probably was good for me

because it cut my sort of journey short

while I was travelling home.

But he was on the phone till eight o 'clock that night

when they finally got the water to leave.

And I believe Thames Water actually went over and beyond

what they needed to do in this instance.

So for that, I'm really pleased and thank you so much.

He kept all of the local counts up to date

on a daily basis.

sometimes at least twice a day during the water outage

and with ongoing works in Grange Hill and Chilco Road.

Thames Water were very good at allowing me

to continue to fill my car with the water

at the filling stations to take out to people.

And for that, I couldn't say anything apart from thank you.

That was really good.

They didn't have to, they could have just said,

no, I'm sorry, you're allowed X amount and that's it.

So that was really, really good.

I'm gonna leave everything else about the comments

about the water for my neighbouring Councillor,

Councillor Visvi, because he has not only had the problems

that we had with six days of water in his area,

he's had them a lot longer,

I think something like 30 or 40 days.

But my issue is with the water usage

for the upcoming AI data centres.

The water usage that's required, in fact,

the issues we have during the summer

highlighted this even more. Last year over 6 million litres of sewage and contaminated

water was dumped into the River Boden. That's equivalent to about 240 Olympic swimming pools.

160 sewage dumps from monitored Thames water sites last in hundreds of hours, the majority

coming from unpermitted and previously unmonitored outfalls and sewer misconnections. The average

household has approximately 150,

you'll be able to say that I've clicked on this,

but it's just what I've been looking at,

150 litres of wastewater, which is roughly 33 gallons.

A large AI data centre needs between 3 .8

and 19 million litres of water per day.

This will cause more water,

will this cause more water outages for us?

Because with the waste age of 20 to 30%,

that equates to over 9 ,000 houses.

But in our area, we don't have one but three new data centres that are coming in.

That's the equivalent of a large town.

Will this affect water outages in the future?

And what will it do with our sewage as well?

Because at least 30 % of their intake of water is going to be put for sewage.

And where's that extra sewage going to go?

I know you're not a consultee for planning,

which I think you should be,

because it is a major developments that we're having

and you're not consulting.

And it's, I really do think that we need the government

to allow you to come in and be a consultee.

And does Thames water have the waste infrastructures

to cope with this extra usage?

And how would that affect the dumping of the contamination

of the water into our local rivers and streams?

that I appreciate I've just put on you

and you may not be able to answer straight away,

but if you cannot send your part back

and Councillor Rispy will definitely talk about

the problems we've had in Chigwell Row

and other parts of Chigwell.

Okay, well first of all, thank you for the comments

Thames Water - 1:06:10

on our response and our communication with you.

It's one of the things we've learned over the years

in terms of, you know, every time you have one

of these big instances you learn things

and the key is to respond, is to actually learn from them

and actually do something about it.

but one of the things we have done

is actually put a permanent public affairs office

within the control room,

which is able to do what you've just said.

Secondly, thank you for helping residents as I do,

I really appreciate that.

I think in terms of your comments on statutory consultees,

I agree with you.

I think it is odd.

It used to be, we used to be many, many, many, many years ago

it is odd that we are not.

We as an industry are quite concerned about the water use

and data centres, that's a matter of public record.

For two reasons, one because obviously it affects

the amount of water I've got to supply.

You know, every day in terms of water we supply

2 .6 billion litres of water.

It is an enormous amount of water.

In the summer, we were supplying 3 .1 billion litres

in the heatwave of water every day.

So anything added onto that, and that was very hard to do, I might add.

So anything on top of that is a problem for us,

quite apart from the impact it has on my colleagues who run the wastewater system.

So I share your concern that we're not a consultee.

I think we should be, and we have asked on many occasions as an industry

to be such consultees for these sorts of things, but the two not successfully.

In terms of the impact on the discharge, I don't have an insight of need to hand, but

we can take that away if that is okay.

Thank you very much for that. I am pleased to hear that you have been working to try

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 1:08:03

and get back as a consortee for building projects because I think it is really important. Thank

you very much.

Thank you.

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:08:15

And just very quickly, just wondered with your vulnerability list whether you've actually

conferred with the energy suppliers, because my husband, for example, his class is vulnerable,

and also doctors may also, and it probably is if you haven't mentioned it, so I think

it might be something about coordinating with other utilities would be useful.

Yeah, I've been in the industry, as you can probably tell, by a long time.

Thames Water - 1:08:45

And back in the early parts of our privatisation, the watercombs actually used to go on a regular basis

and confer with the local electricity companies on just what you just said.

And in those days, before GDPR, that was perfectly acceptable, and I would argue, good for customers.

Obviously GDPR has made that harder to do.

We would love to do it.

We used to do it as an industry,

and it was, I thought, quite successful,

but I'm talking about probably ancient history, frankly.

But Stephanie, you want to build on that?

Yeah, no, it's a fantastic point.

I think it's something that I don't have an answer for

directly.

I'm not entirely sure on the sort of cross -sharing

between utilities.

So it's something that we can definitely take away

and understand.

I think that that would be used,

it is common sense really, isn't it?

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:09:39

The other very quickly is interesting you talking

about climate change.

But of course, what we mustn't forget is that a lot

of the main sewers were Victorian

and have taken a long time for you just to decide

that you need to replace them.

And of course, in this area and the London area,

you've got heavy clay soils, which is also compounding issues.

So I don't think it's just climate change.

But going on to that,

Onge High Street, for example,

is quite frequently having burst pipes.

And I'm wondering whether your programme of what you're doing,

when you're going to be doing it,

is going to be shared with EFDC, please.

Yeah, absolutely.

I mean, as I said earlier,

we, I mean, it's no secret.

we haven't replaced as much mains as we could have done.

Many of the companies replaced more water mains

historically than Thames Water did.

The reason for that is actually really simple.

The driver to replace water mains is quite hard

to prove the need to replace water mains

with our economic regulator.

But it's very easy if you've got a water quality problem.

And I mentioned earlier some of the other companies

had internal corrosion which caused discoloration

which made the case easier.

we never had that in Thames.

So as a result of that, we've got an older infrastructure.

Don't forget, of course, this area was the first

to have piped water, so we've got an older infrastructure anyway.

But we're trying our very, very best to catch up.

And in fact, we've got, we spend the most money

we've ever spent currently in our biggest upgrade.

I think I'm right in 150 years.

But yeah, we replaced 200 kilometres last five -year period.

This five -year period is 550 kilometres,

and the next five -year period we look into

replace 1 ,000 kilometres.

Thames Water - 1:11:28

But that will take a lot of coordination

between the company and the local authorities

to make sure we don't cause chaos on the roads

as we mentioned earlier.

So you're going to let EFDC know what your programme is,

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:11:42

how it was going to affect EFDC presumably?

Of course, yes of course, yes of course.

Thames Water - 1:11:48

And very quickly, have you considered using bowsers

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:11:51

when you have outages, because you haven't mentioned

and things like that and I've just thought

that that might be useful.

Yeah, I'll start and you might want to build on it.

Thames Water - 1:12:00

So this is quite a complicated answer

which I'll try and simplify.

So as a company, we used to do that a lot.

There are two issues with it.

Issue one is how can we be sure

that we maintain the quality of the water

from it being collected by customers

and into their home.

And of course, the requirements on us

on the water quality perspective are identical

if we supply, however we supply water.

So if we supply water in the form of a bows,

which is what we did in the 70s, for example,

when we had the last massive drought,

then the requirements are much stricter now,

quite rightly, in my view.

The second issue with bows is that the line in

is no longer, is fallen out of approval

for being in contact with drinking water.

There was no lab, it's a long storey,

that there was no lab in the UK that could do the testing.

That's now resolved.

There are now two labs that can do the testing.

We're very hopeful that that will actually allow

more lines to become available.

But Steph, do you want to build on that?

What I really meant was browsers for non -drinking.

Ah, okay.

I can build on that.

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:13:09

And that's something that where we did have a point blank,

Thames Water - 1:13:12

no on using them at one point.

In recent time, we've actually got approval

for our water quality team to use them

for agricultural uses, for example.

So we'll have strict signage on the bowsers to state that.

And we have used them in instance for agricultural uses.

But in this incident, we didn't use bowsers.

We didn't have a huge amount of farms on our list at that point in time.

And we were prioritising the bottled water distribution,

the pallet drops to get homes done then, obviously the tanker strategy.

But we do, we have used bowsers for agricultural uses.

Not for household now.

Do you intend to in the future if you have outages for things like showers or washing anyway?

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:13:56

Thames Water - 1:14:01

We can't say to customers, right, use this water only for showers.

We have to, the water that we supply has to be to the same drinking water standard.

That's just the law.

So, but as I said, we've also got this problem with the non -approved material, which we're hoping to get approved.

We keep it in the constant review.

That is really interesting, thank you very much.

Thank you.

Councillor Cohen.

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:14:22

Thank you, Chair.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:14:25

My question is a more practical one.

Cllr Barbara Cohen - 1:14:29

I drive around Loughton a lot and thank you so much for fixing our water.

But there was always a lot of barriers, large areas of barriers, with very few people working

in them.

They were working in one section of the Cordoned Off area.

And really large pieces of land

was cordoned off for a long time.

Also, there was never ever more than two people working

at any one area.

And they worked, sort of, finished at three,

that were the most started,

they didn't work very long or at weekends.

And because there was such a lot of work to do in Loughton,

I wonder why it couldn't be possible to have the works for longer hours.

Thank you.

Thames Water - 1:15:26

Yes, it's a very good point and as I drive myself I share your frustration

and I share the frustration of the residents.

As said earlier, I will take away the concerning, the roadworks in Loudton.

The reason the halls are open for so long,

The reason they're so big is because we're replacing

the whole main.

Now the way we try and replace the mains by lining it,

which is quite difficult in London,

the reason it's quite difficult in London,

because in an area where the population is stable

or reducing, then technology allows us to line the main

because rather than replace it,

and that allows you to have smaller holes and fewer of them.

In the case of the Southeast,

because the population of Zebedziel is growing,

and because you can't, it's not like gas,

you can't compress water, it takes the volume it takes,

we're unable to actually align as many pipes

as we would like.

So we have to open cut the whole lens

and replace the whole lens of water main,

which is very, very time consuming

and also very difficult.

but I will take away your comment on the duration.

Thank you.

Councillor Small.

Thank you, Chair.

Just a couple of quick questions, you'll be pleased to know.

Cllr James Small - 1:16:47

Just to clarify on the compensation,

so my residents were on the understanding

that they'll be getting the credit

to their water account, as you touched on earlier.

A couple recently got some cheques through.

They weren't complaining

that they were expecting credit on their account.

I think I identified why that is,

because they pay their water through their rent

through their social landlord.

And just clarify that is the case,

So some might get cheques and then use them.

I believe that probably is the case,

but let me double cheque.

Okay.

Thames Water - 1:17:12

And the next one is just as you heard this evening,

councillors could be on the front line

in emergencies like this.

Cllr James Small - 1:17:15

So I was wondering if you could maybe set up

a dedicated hotline for councillors

and a dedicated mail box perhaps.

I know we had a contact at Temple which we were regularly,

he was overwhelmed as well.

So it'd be good if we had a dedicated mail box

that was manned by a team and a hotline.

Thank you, Chancellor.

Thames Water - 1:17:41

We have been looking into that to see how we can get dedicated lines for elected members.

So it is something that we are trying to see how we can.

I think we have had something similar before but unfortunately the number got leaked so

we are basically trying to figure out how we can and then obviously we get inundated

with customers and then it doesn't serve the purpose that it is supposed to.

So we have had that quite a lot from some of our MPs and Councillors over the years.

So we're looking into it to see how we can make that possible,

but then how do we safeguard it and make sure that it doesn't get external.

So there are challenges with that, but we are looking into it,

and I'll be in touch once we've had more information

on how we're going to be able to do that.

It might not be an actual line.

It might be maybe like a link that we can, you know, something like that,

so online, so that you still have access to us and there'll be somebody dedicated.

So we're looking at how we can do that.

Thank you.

Are there any other questions from committee members?

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:18:31

You mentioned about the limescale build -up and then having to replace whole sections

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 1:18:36

of pipework. Is the limescale build -up preventing lining the pipes? Is that why you are having

to replace whole sections of them? It was just something I didn't quite get.

No, it's not like that. So it's not like in a boiler where you get, or your kettle, where

Thames Water - 1:18:56

you can get limescale. But what happens is that when you look at inside of any burst

What you'll notice is it looks brown, because it's iron,

but you have never seen a burst water main

with white limescale on the inside.

It doesn't happen that way.

The reason the mains don't burst on the inside

is because the limescale acts as a buffer

with the acid attack on the inside of the pipe.

So it doesn't line it, it just prevents,

it just reacts chemically to prevent it corroding.

As a chemist, I could explain the detail,

but I think that probably is sufficient.

Thank you very much.

I was reading it up as she was talking about it,

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 1:19:38

and that's one bit that I didn't quite understand.

Thank you very much.

Thank you.

So if that's everyone from the committee,

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:19:44

I'll now go to members that have been in the wards directly affected.

I'll start with Councillor Isby.

Thank you very much, Mr Chairman.

Cllr Kaz Rizvi - 1:19:53

And I'm gonna start my contribution with a little bit

of a modern history lesson just to help set the scene

and more for matters of factual accuracy.

So I represent Chigual with Lambon Ward.

And in this very chamber on the 23rd of July,

members will remember I stood up at full council

and requested that we summon Thames water

to a scrutiny meeting at EFDC,

some two and a half weeks before we had

the regional outages of 10th of August.

In Chigwell and Chigwell Road,

we were the first to have water outages

and we were the last to have our water returned.

Frankly, it was a disgrace, it was unacceptable,

and my residents were the worst affected

across the entirety of Northeast London

and across all of Essex.

And I think it would be worthwhile,

probably at a separate meeting after this,

for us to debrief and unpick how we can avoid

some of the issues that my residents had experienced

during this outage.

I think when I reflect back at the 10th of August,

seven day outage, what was most revealing

was that an organisation the size of Thameswater,

a multi -billion pound utility company,

did not have any system of business continuity,

disaster recovery, contingency,

call it what you want to react,

to respond in the way that residents need it to,

to help the most vulnerable people within those wards.

In Chigua Road, Chigua village, we were no different.

I had terminally ill cancer patients

who were suffering in 35 Celsius heat without water.

They had medication that they needed administering.

I had children with peg.

Like many other councillors, me, my two board colleagues,

Craig McCann, Councillor Sunner,

put the onus on our own selves to pick up water

from whatever source it was available,

be it the local supermarket,

be it the depots in Fairlough or in Tesco.

We queued up like all of the other Redbridge residents,

just to be able to load our cars and drop it off.

I don't think it's acceptable to rely on the goodwill

of councillors and community activists to do a job of a utility company which residents

are paying rates and bills for.

So that was an observation that I had made and I felt it necessary to bring that at the

start of my contribution because I know what level of suffering the thousands of households

in Chigua and across IT7 and Buckersdale and Loudoun had experienced during that seven

day outage.

but this hasn't been an isolated incident for us in Chigwol.

When I reviewed some of the data that residents had shared to me,

since December of 2024, we had had 29 separate incidents

of water outages until August.

That works at around about one outage every three and a half weeks.

I don't think in any sense that can be acceptable.

I think we need to look at what can be done more long -term

to future -proof IG7 at least

against these sorts of disruptions.

Because it affects lives, it affects businesses,

it affects people's livelihoods,

it affects people's every single day.

So I think that's a really, really important point

for us to note.

Whilst we went through the seven -day August outage,

I think it was clearly very disturbing for residents,

but it brought out the very best of the Chigua community.

My two ward colleagues will vouch for that as well.

We'd seen neighbours going out of their way to help

the elderly, the vulnerable, those people that maybe

they didn't even know on their road

were suffering as bad as what they were.

So I'd like to go on record to extend my sincere gratitude

and thanks to all of the residents of Chigua

and Chigua Road and neighbouring councillors as well

for rolling up the sleeves and actually being there

at everybody's time of need.

So I think the questions that come to mind

for me specifically, and Mr. Chairman,

I'm sorry for the long monitor,

I do have three questions actually,

is number one, how can my residents

of Chigwol and Chigwol Row have any confidence

in Thames Water based on the outages

that I've explained to you,

that their water supply is safe and secure

and it's reliable?

Okay, I'll start by thanking you

Thames Water - 1:24:35

as I thank others for your help and assistance during this time.

So thank you very, very much for that.

In terms of your question in terms of how do we secure this

and make people confident in the water supply,

we're blessed in the UK with a very safe water supply.

I don't drink bottle water and never have done,

and I'm the one responsible producing it.

So we are blessed with a very safe water supply.

So residents can be completely assured

that the water is safe.

We take round numbers,

about 550 ,000 independent tests every year,

which get taken to the laboratory.

And of those 5 ,500 last year,

170 failed the standard,

of which 80 % or so were due to customer plumbing.

So the standard of water we supply is excellent.

in the safety and the residency need to have no concern

about the quality of water that they supply.

In terms of the reliability of that supply,

which I think is the harder question to answer,

I think I'd answer it in two ways.

I think we start by talking about the short term things

we can do, and then the longer term things

that we need to do.

So in the short term, I mean this was an impression to them

because we had four sources of water

into Chigua service reservoir.

Chigua service reservoir holds 47 million litres of water.

So we had four independent sources

and they all burst within 48 hours of each other.

That's never happened before.

So to have that level of disruption is unprecedented.

I'm not saying it wouldn't happen again.

Only four would say those things wouldn't happen again.

but it is unprecedented. So what are we doing about it? So as I said already, we are replacing

a large number of water mains. We are looking actually at whether there is a 12 -inch main.

I won't bore you with details that we can actually bring back into supply,

but we will add a fifth level of supply into the area and we will do that. We are also doing some

work at Chigwell Pumping Station, which it sounds like your residents are fed from, and they

in fact, they recovered the last at the end

because they live in a pump supply.

So we're looking to replace that too.

In terms of the longer term solution,

I'm afraid this is very, very boring,

but the only long term solution

is to replace the infrastructure.

The infrastructure is at the stage it needs to be replaced,

nothing lasts forever.

And that is the stage we are at.

I gave you some numbers in terms of how much we're replacing

this five year period and next five year period.

But I share your frustration and I share your residents' frustration.

The IG postcodes are one of our more difficult areas in terms of resilience.

There is no doubt about it.

I am very familiar with them.

My North London team will tell you that.

I am always very twitchy when we have an IG postcode turn up on our daily report.

So I am very aware of the resilience in this area.

But I say that is the longer -term solution.

Do you want to build on that?

I do.

And it was just on the, you know, whilst we recognise this might happen again, what we

need to do is better respond and have better plans in place for the incident in which it

may happen again.

And I touched on that earlier, but just to reiterate that, you know, we are working very

closely with the Essex Local Resilience Forum and with various different emergency planners

across the councils to better equip ourselves with plans

if this were to happen again.

Internally in Thames, we do have

many different business continuity plans.

To your point, we do have those in place

and we do train and exercise those

on a risk -based approach, not just for wall draughtages,

but for many other different scenarios.

We do have a dedicated team that do that routinely

and rhythmically through the year.

So I just wanted to note that,

which was a point you made earlier.

Yeah, and if I can just come back on that,

I think what makes it even more eye -opening then

Cllr Kaz Rizvi - 1:28:54

is when we had an outage,

the scale of what we experienced certainly

in Chigua and Chigua row,

the very fact that all of those rhythmic

business continuity plans that you mentioned

were inadequate or were not rolled out

is actually even more concerning for residents,

for elected representatives,

because what's at the heart of the problem

is that it didn't feel like there was any support

being offered to the residents.

We heard about the priority scheme

not being rolled out in a timely way.

You know, the four categories,

only one of them potentially being addressed.

I mean, I actually went to people

that would have qualified onto a tier one

because they had no communication whatsoever

from Thames Water.

So I think on reflection, I appreciate that nobody

wants these things to happen

and nobody wishes them to happen.

And business continuity plans,

fortunately are rarely ever exercised.

You know, we rely on the network to be upgraded

for regular maintenance to be carried out

so that we never ever get to a stage of disaster recovery.

However, I think the major learning point from this

is the speed at which some of the, you know,

processes should have been rolled out

was not fit for purpose.

I think, you know, it's probably been acknowledged.

I fully appreciate and recognise some of the learnings

and the reflections that have been made

and the future hope that when something like this

has happened, this protocol will be followed,

which is completely vulnerable.

But I think what we have to recognise is,

an organisation the scale of Thames Water

shouldn't have to sit there and have thousands of households

goes seven days, eight days without water supply,

that really is unacceptable.

And it felt like during that stretch,

actually we were very much neglected, very much forgotten.

And it wasn't until the very tail end

that actually our water supply was returned.

And it just come back down.

I've learned more about water, water supply and pipelines

than I ever could have dreamt of

during that seven day stretch.

My colleague and I physically visited

the epicentre of the main outage on Chigwell Road

near Charlie Brown's roundabout.

We shot a Facebook video,

which brought in tens of thousands of views

because we were genuinely concerned about our residents.

And I think what I look back on is we've heard tonight,

you know, some of the things that we've been putting in place

to avoid this happening again, which is great.

The final question that,

and this was brought to me by residents

because it fits in quite nicely with the timeline,

that around the period that the Epping Forest District

was facing the outage,

there was a, I think it was in the London Standard paper,

there was a press release that had been put out

to say that the new CFO of Thames Water

had inherited a 1 million pound golden handshake.

And I just wonder in what possible world

can that be considered fair,

or can that be considered appropriate

when thousands of households, thousands of people

have been going without a water supply.

And I wonder if the representatives would be able to

just give a bit of context to that.

Yeah, and it could have a standard product.

Thames Water - 1:32:19

Yeah, I mean, in terms of the area,

in terms of the...

I'm afraid the topography of the area

determines where we need water booster stations.

And it sounds like your area is in one of those areas.

The way a water booster station works,

obviously it needs water to the inlets to that booster station.

So the areas that are lower recover sooner,

because that's the way water works.

And those areas have to fully recover,

and the mains need to fully recover.

And I've just got some facts from where I came here.

So within this area, the 301 kilometres of water main,

and all of that was empty.

And all of that needed to be filled.

And so that is an immense amount of volume

that we needed to refill.

What that meant was, even when the mains were repaired,

and we did a lot of very unusual, quite innovative stuff

to get the mains back in, like using Kevlar wrap -in

to try and get the mains in quickly.

Those water mains needed to refill,

and then once those water mains were refilled,

then we've refilled Chigwell service wells,

well that's the 47 -megalitre tank I talked about earlier,

and that is the suction source for those booster stations,

And that's unfortunately is why it took that area so long to recover.

That's the mechanical reason for why that area took so long to recover.

There's not a lot I can do about that.

That's just the way the topography of the land works and how water itself works.

And when you've got 301 kilometres of water main that is empty,

that is quite an enormous volume to refill when we've fixed the pipes.

Yes, in terms of payments to CFOs,

that is a matter for our enumeration committee

and a matter for the board.

It's above my pay grid, I think we'd say.

But that's a matter for those people

and not something I have an opinion on.

Thank you, Councillor Ritchie.

Now, I know Councillor Sunge has been waiting

for a long time, so I'll go to him.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:34:25

Thank you, Chairman.

Cllr Darshan Sunger - 1:34:32

and can I start off by saying a very big thank you to all the residents of Chigwa village and Chigwa row

in my ward and also to all the volunteers those champions that actually rose to the challenge

when we needed them most they came out and they supported the local community and like

Councillor Ritchie just said my ward colleague that also meant that we were able to work together

collectively as a community and just to demonstrate that we can make things happen when things

go wrong. Basic needs were deprived, bathing, flushing, toilets, hygiene, we mentioned all

that today and I've been listening very carefully. One of the things that councillor has just

alluded to was that we actually took the initiative to reach out to the residents of the Humber

put things into context, we reached an audience of 50 ,000 people that actually viewed an update

that we provided where we went to the empty centre where the actual main problem was in

Chigaw Road, I think it's near Charlie's Roundabout, that's where the main problem was. And I'm

wondering that if we could achieve that, why couldn't Thames Water come out with some sort

an update on social media. Because let's face it, every single one of us has got a mobile phone and

every one of us do look at that phone in the morning, in the afternoon, in the evening and

quite simply that message could have been sent out to those residents that had absolutely no idea

what was happening. There were road closures in Grangeville, there were shops in Grangeville where

the road closures were happening where people couldn't get to the shops. But the shops themselves

also had no water either, so the staff, the local residents that work in these shops,

couldn't actually work in some of those shops and probably sent home lots of business.

I think there was a lack of signposting, and I'd be interested in how we're going to support

our local businesses because these people do rely on local business from local residents.

The other thing I really wanted to mention, I'm trying to wrap this up in one, is that

there are 54 councillors in Epping Forest District Council. Each one of us have been

elected by our residents to serve the community and we are available. I'm wondering if this

was to happen again, whether you would consider using us as a point of call to relay any messages

And I'm thinking, what would happen if this happened again?

What would be your plans within the first 24 hours of a water outage?

48 hours, 72 hours.

And finally, how are you going to recognise all the hard work of all those volunteers,

and I'm excluding councillors in this, that actually went out and stepped when we needed

the most.

I know you mentioned charities, but I'm talking about these people that actually went out

doing their duty as volunteers.

And a nice way of saying thank you to them.

And finally, I think I wanted to mention,

I think Councillor Ritchie has already said that,

14 % pay rise to the chief exec didn't go down very well.

I can assure you that because we had hundreds of emails saying,

how could that be?

And it was quite, it was quite,

it was really bad timing as well, I would imagine.

But Chairman, thank you for that.

And I know that much of that has probably been covered,

I would like to know from Thames Water if we could provide a single point of contact,

54 Councillors and 24 -hour outage, 48, what would be your plans?

24, 48, 72 hours during an outage.

Thank you.

Thank you and thank you for your questions and echoing the thank you that you made at

Thames Water - 1:38:32

the start of that to all the residents in terms of patients but also all the support

that we got as well.

Thank you very much.

I'll start with the social media query, because I think Tenzor made a decision from a mass

communications perspective to use our website.

We have a red banner when you enter our website, and it has all of the incidents that are going

on across our patch.

When you click on that, it gives you the latest update.

That is the best possible way and the freshest possible information you'll get on the incident.

We have also started to do Instagram videos as well.

It is something that we have started to do which is to bring into life the incident.

Similar to what you said earlier, some of the videos you have done on Facebook, we have

started to do that as well on Instagram as well just to bring it to life a bit for people

and help build that understanding.

Something else that we are looking into as well just to get the message out there is

sort of visual bulletin boards.

So we do use these in incidents.

It's a really good way of trying to get the message out

to customers that are unfortunately queuing up

our bottled water stations.

So we do use these throughout our incidents

and that's another good way of getting the message out there.

Another consideration is we found when customers

were coming to bottled water stations,

they didn't want to just collect water.

They wanted to ask questions and rightly so.

So we're looking into ways in which when someone's queued up

and taken the time to get to one of our sites

and they've got those questions,

How can we get them to a safe place to answer those questions and out of the queuing traffic?

So again, as part of our renewals and logistics team, that's a query that we're working for at Rumpster,

how we can do that to help answer those questions.

In terms of your point around the 54 councillors, yes, absolutely.

We definitely want to work with you in incidents and I believe we did answer some of the queries that were coming through.

Our main channel of comms from Thames Water into councils and other agencies

is through stand -up calls that are not stood up

by Thames Water, they are stood up

by the London Resilience Group or other in this case.

So I believe actually Essex in the end

stood up the strategic command group call,

which we attended.

That is the best way to get information

from Thames Water into the council,

so the emergency planners which join those,

to then disseminate that message out

to the councillors and the MPs.

We really would like that in the incident.

We are all heads down trying to get customers back into the fly.

The less calls, the better.

So we would very much like to give our update into that

and that, we have to trust that that message

to simulates out to our councillors and MPs.

And again, to save the time into the local engagement team

where we're getting individual queries.

If we can really channel that, that would be fantastic.

In answer to the 244872, if I use this particular incident

as an example, because of the bursts that Martin explained,

it was a changing picture and it was extremely challenging.

But our strategy, and always will be,

is to get customers back into supply.

So we will look at the full outage, and we will then plan out

where we need those bottled water stations

to meet demand of the customers.

We will plan out where those tankers need to go

to support hospitals and prisons, and then other after that.

And we will plan out where the bottled water deliveries,

So the vans that we use to get to doorstop deliveries to our vulnerable customers, we

will give them a very clear list, priority, top -down and geographically savvy list as

well, by the way, to make sure they get to customers as quickly as possible.

So that will always be our strategy.

And we continue to review that strategy, Councillor, as we go through the incident to make sure

it's still fit for purpose, because there are, and nine times out of ten, it is a changing

picture.

So we will continue to do that through our various incident calls.

In terms of your give back and thank you, yes, we do want to do some of the charity

in terms of giving our time back into the community and we will take that away.

I think on top of that we could maybe look at doing some sort of thank you comms and

letter to the community.

We can absolutely do that and I will take that away as well.

Okay, so that just leaves the difficult question for me.

So in terms of the, I mean, just building on that one first,

I mean, we are very transparent.

You know, it's a water coming around,

not running a secret organisation.

So everything you see on the website,

as part of the incident, I run a lot of incidents,

these sort of big, massive ones.

And we go through the ops update,

we go through the repair,

we go through the bottle of water,

we go through customer,

and we go through what we're going to put on the website.

And it is always accurate,

and it is the best information that we have.

We're not holding anything back.

Why would we?

It's a water company.

We are as transparent as we can be.

Moving on to your last question

in terms of the pay of the CEO,

that is a matter for, as I said earlier,

it's a CFO, it's a matter for the board.

It's beyond my ability to influence it.

And the board makes that decision, not me.

Thank you.

Next I'll go to Councillor Meade.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:43:50

Thanks for waiting. Thank you very much Chair. First of all I'd like to say thank you for coming and it's been really interesting listening to your comments.

Cllr Louise Mead - 1:43:56

So my first observation is, regardless of the priority register, we have

something called Stay Safe in my event so I think if you link up with Fabrizio you might be able to

and work out a way to get the information across

at those events.

So I've got a couple of questions,

I'll run them into one.

Okay, so my issue is the communication

since the events that happened in August.

I have at least six residents in my Anowtham constituency

who still have not received any compensation

or have not had any communication from you

if they've written letters to you.

I then have taken it up on myself to write to you and I'm really frustrated because I'm not here.

I've not heard anything since the 16th of October.

And you did mention when you were speaking that people should be receiving their compensation in 20 days.

This was obviously from the outage of water in August.

So when I write to the person that we communicate to, TENS Water,

on those emails, says you'll hear from us within 10 working days.

I think 10 working days is quite a long time when a council is actually writing on behalf of their residents.

And I just wondered why this is and why I'm not hearing anything and what can I do for these residents

because I'm still waiting because I say it's October and the issue is happening in August.

The second question I've got is just a question that whether you can answer it or not.

There's quite a lot of speculation that the current works in Louton, all over Louton,

from Thames Water is connected with data centres, with the new data centre.

Can you confirm whether that's correct or not? Thank you.

Thames Water - 1:45:56

Thank you, Councillor, and again apologies for the six residents that haven't received payments.

What I would recommend in this scenario is we've got a CGS web form which they can fill out,

But to save any customer effort, I'd happily

liaise directly with you and get those details.

And we can look into each individual resident

and understand if they're eligible.

And if they are, we'll make sure that those payments are

pursued.

And in terms of your personal lettering, again, apologies.

We have got an enormous backlog of complaints and inquiries

at the moment.

I can only apologise, but we have this incident plus many others that Martin referenced, which

has led to a significant influx of complaints and inquiries. We are dealing with a huge

backlog and we have drafted resources from all across the company to try and deal with

that. That being said, again, we will liaise directly with you and work that through with

you following this evening. Apologies again.

Thank you. Thank you very much.

And in terms of the works in labs, is it linked to the data centres? No, it's part of our

renewals programme.

Thank you.

Thank you. Next I'll look at Councillor Callefson.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:47:12

Cllr Will Kauffman - 1:47:15

Thank you, Chair. My colleagues across the term might have seen me trying to play mental

battleship, because some of the questions I had in my mind have been answered very,

very helpfully, and so that will shorten the monologue, if you're pleased to know.

One thing I'd be curious to know is whether there is,

and I have to break it down into multiple questions

if that's okay, just try to get some sort of flow.

Is there a duty to cooperate between the utility providers?

So for example, if Thames Water are completely overloaded,

you can reach out to, I'm not an expert,

but say Castle Water, Affinity,

and I don't know if there are any others

in the immediate area to say,

look, we have a major problem.

What have you got?

can you get the tankers across from either A12 further afield,

the M35 up from Kent, just to supplement what we've got?

That's my first question.

The answer to that question is yes, there is.

Thames Water - 1:48:14

There's a scheme called mutual aid, which all companies share.

So that allows us to reach out for anything from pumps to pipes to tankers.

In this period, if you remember, it was very, very hot and very dry.

Every company was in the same situation we were.

And so no company was able to provide tankers.

We were also asked to provide tankers for other companies,

and we weren't able to do it because obviously we were dealing with this.

So there is a requirement, I'm pretty sure it's in the Water Act as a requirement,

but it is limited.

It's fine, the process, when there's one or two companies with a problem.

When we are all dealing with a problem, it is less useful.

Thank you, Chair.

May I go on, sir?

Cllr Will Kauffman - 1:49:01

So the next point, for the benefit of people maybe listening, I sit on both planning committees

and obviously work quite closely with Councillor Dab on planning matters.

Obviously Thames Water and water companies are consulted as part of the local plan procedure,

I know they are not on planning applications.

But given where we are as a local authority, we, and the officers won't thank me, we have

no Friday housing rent supplier, we are in section 62A, we have planning applications

coming left, right and centre either now or in the immediate future.

I would say we have sort of actually reached a point where we are at maybe an early informal

local plan review.

So do we need to possibly through Thames Water or indeed through my conservative colleagues

speak to our MP to say, look, we do need

to have some sort of engagement now

with Thames Water to make sure that the number

of applications, number of homes coming forwards

can be actually safely accommodated

within what's coming our way.

Yeah, I mean, I talked about this earlier.

Thames Water - 1:50:12

I mean, I say many, many years ago when I joined industry,

we were a statutory consultee,

we're no longer a statutory consultee.

And that I think is a, personally, I don't think that's a change for the better, actually.

And I think it would be very helpful if we were again.

As I say, our trade body, Water UK, has been lobbying for this for some time, hitherto

with no success.

But yeah, I tend to agree with you.

Cllr Will Kauffman - 1:50:38

So am I incorrect that if, for example, when a local plan is produced, you're not consulted

at all with that?

But that's the sort of the,

should we say that my final point on input,

my next question is output, forgive me,

which is that a number of my colleagues

in Loughton town council have written in to say

that there are issues with the Roding Valley nature reserve

and the recreational grounds where there is raw sewage,

apparent on the verges and on the banks.

What can we do to try to monitor what's happening?

Is there a way that we are able to,

I almost have local spotters, shall we say,

that can be recording and feeding into you

directly through some sort of hotline

and whether or not there is a way that,

I don't suppose there is anything you can do

from an emergency perspective to try and stop that.

Thames Water - 1:51:45

Yeah, I mean, it's worth remembering, I'm not an expert on sewage, I'm an expert on

water, but in terms of sewage, the way the system is designed, it's designed to overflow

because it stops people's homes flooding.

So that's the way the system is designed to overflow.

As I say, the design was made many, many, many years ago when the climate wasn't as

it is today.

It's either very, very hot or very, very wet

and not much in the middle is my observation.

Which is how the system was actually designed.

In terms of monitoring, there are monitoring,

I think I'm right in saying on all CSOs,

although I say I'm not an expert,

and all the monitoring that is available is actually online.

So you should be able to go to one of those and find it.

Occasionally stuff is down because things break,

but the information is right.

And we were the first company to publish that

I'm putting them online too.

Thank you, Chair, and thank you again for coming.

Thank you.

Cllr Will Kauffman - 1:52:42

Councillor Dadd.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:52:45

Thank you, Chairman. This is something quite different.

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:52:48

I want to ask you about reservoirs.

You talked about there being pipes but nothing in them.

And of course, the southeast has got very low rainfall anyway.

And I understand that your reservoirs at the moment,

looking at data here are only 59 % full,

and you'd normally expect them this time of the year

to be 78 % full.

What plans have you got about building,

well several quick questions really,

building more reservoirs,

how also you plan to fill the existing ones,

and whether I understand,

and I don't know if it's in your area or not,

there's only one desalination plant in the UK,

but I also understand that the last reservoir

that was built in England anyway was 1992.

What plans have you got for that?

Because we talked about data centres,

we talked, we know there's a lot more population

coming our way and we need water.

And if we're going to have hotter, drier summers,

we may want to shower more.

Thank you.

No, I completely agree.

The Ansec, I'll break it up and I will answer all your points.

Thames Water - 1:54:07

So in terms of the way the London system works,

there are two sources of water.

There's water from surface water,

and that's either the Lee, the River Lee, or the Thames,

and that's pumped into reservoirs, as you say.

Second source of water is groundwater,

which is a predominant in the southeast of London,

although there are some in the northeast, but they're small.

In terms of the amount of storage,

when all the reservoirs are full,

we have 100 days worth of storage in them.

That's how much water.

So as you say, they're very small compared to the demand

that we have in London.

So that's why we have a very, very active pumping system

to pump water from those rivers into the reservoir.

In terms, you're absolutely right in terms of the need

for more reservoirs and we agree with that completely.

and particularly given the climate situation

that we are now facing into.

We actually have been trying to build a reservoir

in Oxfordshire for about 20 years.

And it's been stuck in planning,

it's been stuck in all sorts of,

what do you call it, inquiries.

And in fact, there was a public inquiry back in 2011

for the new reservoir in Oxfordshire.

And the reason that, that sounds quite remote here,

but the water's then released into the Thames,

which we then abstract in London.

So that's how it feeds into the London system.

The government of the day actually opposed that idea

at the public inquiry and it didn't get approval.

So despite our wanting to build it for a very,

very long time, we've not been able to

because it hasn't passed public inquiry.

Now, we have recently, with the new government, received consent,

and we now, as a building it, it would have been quite handy this year,

as the person running the water system,

it would have been quite handy this year to have had it,

and had we built it in 2011, it probably would have been filling as we speak.

So that's the long term.

In terms of your short term question, in terms of the reservoirs...

Can I just ask you when that running up to this year is expected to be completed,

and it's still, Oxfordshire is still not a very high

rainfall area.

No, no, completely agree.

I mean the Elan Valley, for example,

was fed into the Birmingham area with pipes and things

because it had more rainfall in Elan Valley.

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:56:33

Yeah, so as I said, this is not my first water company.

So other water companies, so different water companies

Thames Water - 1:56:38

approach the problem of supply to their cities

in different ways.

In Birmingham and the northwest,

they went to the Lake District or to Wales

to get their water and pipes across.

Of course, in those days there was no treatment.

So it was just seen as pure water, that's why it was done.

In the case of London, that choice wasn't made.

The choice was made to use the River Thames.

And so that's why the Thames region

was the first in the industry to get treatment

because they had to treat

because Thames wasn't a pristine water source.

So there's a long history of that.

You're absolutely right,

Oxfordshire doesn't have a huge rainfall either,

but it has a bit more, and so that's why we need such a big reservoir to allow us to store it

and then release it in a drought situation which we've got at the moment.

In terms of what our plans are to refill the reservoir, the way the system works is we're allowed to take water

from the River Thames based on the amount of water flowing over the Teddington Weir.

And normally that number is 700 megalitres, has to flow over the Teddington Weir.

At the moment, we've agreed with the environment agency

as part of our drought response

to reduce that to 250 millilitres.

So that allows us to refill our reservoirs.

We have had some recent rain, which is very, very welcome.

Well, if you do my job, it is anyway.

And so we, over the last week,

we've been abstracting more water than we've been using.

So the reservoirs are starting to refill.

It will take a long time to refill the reservoirs

and it will depend on the amount of rainfall we have.

it's very difficult to predict this.

And my experience having been in this for a long time

is that the long range forecasts,

not always as accurate as one might hope.

So we will see how the recovery goes.

The thing that worries us in the water industry

is not so much the hot weather, it's the dry winters.

So you haven't got any other plans

other than the OPC one for another reservoir.

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:58:38

And the other question was about desalination.

Okay, yeah.

So desalination, we have a plant at Becton.

So, yep, that's that.

Thames Water - 1:58:44

And that, as you say, is off at the moment.

The reason it's off at the moment is because

the plant was built 10 or so years ago.

The membranes that we installed then

have reached the end of their life.

They need to be replaced.

We can't buy any more membranes

because, as I said earlier,

the lab required every product in contact

with drinking water quite rightly has to be approved.

We don't want to be putting anything

in contact with drinking water.

The labs to allow us to do that, there weren't any,

because the last one closed.

So there are no membranes that are approved

for me to instal.

I've actually got the money released, ready to go,

the minute they're available.

The latest information I have is that those,

that will be tested, will be completed in May of next year.

Once those membranes are there,

honestly, I will buy them and return the site to use.

it is genuinely not for the want of trying that site.

But that still hasn't answered my question

about what you're doing more.

You've got the opposite problem, it's not quite finished.

You're hoping to get the desalination plant up and running,

but what about extra?

So in terms of, well, we can't magic it up.

I mean, so we're taking -

I mean, planning terms, what you're planning to do,

because obviously it's really important to people

to have water and we've got a growing population.

Yeah, absolutely.

So the last part of the jigsaw is leakage.

So leakage is very difficult to,

it's the most important number in my world

that we don't actually measure.

We measure it by difference,

how much we put in and how much is used.

And of course, everybody's metered.

So it's actually quite tricky to calculate the exact number.

So we have more repair teams on the books

than have certainly got money for in the budget.

We're doing a huge amount of work

to repair leaks at the moment.

But there is, there's clearly more to do.

So that's the last piece of the jigsaw.

In terms of our response to drought,

so we've done a huge amount of work

maximising our abstraction from groundwater in the southeast.

So we're taking more water from the southeast

than we normally take.

We're taking more water from the northeast groundwater sites

more than we normally take.

And we're in the middle of returning

Hornsey Water Tink Works,

which is a site that's not been used for over 10 years,

back to supply, because that takes water from the New River.

And that's a source of water there

that we can't currently access.

So that's the, it's a sort of short meeting

to send tactical response.

Thank you.

Councillor Morgan.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:01:21

So just one last question.

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 2:01:24

And I just want to say before I ask a question,

thank you all so much for coming.

And it's, I know it's late, but so we'll be very quick.

You did have mentioned about boosters, and he's not here,

I was gonna ask Councillor Risby

if he wanted to talk about this,

but they're still having issues

with incredibly low water pressure in parts of Chigal Row,

so much so that it's a trickle coming out.

It's not on a daily basis now, but it is still happening.

Will you upgrade the boosters?

If they are upgraded, would this help the issue

with the residents on their low water pressure?

I don't know the detail of that particular thing, but I'll take that away and look into

that if that's okay.

Thames Water - 2:02:05

Yes, that's lovely. Thank you very much.

No problem at all.

Thank you. The last member I've got is Councillor Murray.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:02:14

Cllr Stephen Murray - 2:02:17

One quick point and one quick question. The point I want to make isn't really for Thames

Water to answer. It's the two Conservative councillors who have left. I found it interesting

as they are the ones that mentioned the bonus for the Chief Finance Officer, who I would

say to them, and I'll say it to them privately as well, perhaps they need to look at the

flagship policy of many, many years ago of privatisation, where one of the rules within

that legislation was designed to give Thames Walter as a privatised company the ability

and power to make the decision that they made.

So I just found it quite interesting that they were the ones that raised the issue

and they don't know the answer.

Have a look at one of your own flagship policies would be my answer.

My question, and it's a very minor one, but it was important because we were told

in an earlier answer that the website is the one of the main sources of getting

information the residents should turn to.

For most of the incidents, it seemed to be only referring to the Tugwell incident.

And I make that point because I had lots of residents from IG -10, which obviously

had thousands of houses affected, that said, well, we've been on the website and we couldn't

find anything.

And the reason why they couldn't find anything is because they couldn't see the word

Loughton.

It's not me about putting Loughton first, but I just think you need to be very accurate

in describing where the issue is.

Because as I say, for most of the incidents,

as far as I could see on the website,

you referenced it Chigwell,

and that did stop some people from understanding

that that actually covered Loughton

and presumably Buckhurst Hill as well.

So I just think that's important.

That is a really, really good point.

And we did pick that up in our,

so we actually hadn't mentioned this,

Thames Water - 2:04:08

but we have an internal wash up as well

before we then went into the multi agency debriefs,

just so all the tower leads that Martin referenced,

earlier health and safety customer and so on,

brought forward things that we could have done better.

And that was one of them.

Because we started to reference it as the Chigwell incident,

rightly or wrongly.

And then within the actual text,

it does add sort of lists the post codes.

But you're right, if you don't click on it,

because you don't think it's your one,

then you don't get to that important part.

So yeah, really important point,

something that we've learned from this

and we will do better to title them on the red banner and more appropriately.

Thank you.

Any other members that want to make a comment?

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:04:49

Councillor Small.

Thank you, Chairman.

It is just a follow -up point you have to come back to us on.

Cllr James Small - 2:04:54

Are you going through the committee or direct to us?

Some of us you have to come back to on points, right?

Yes, and it is actually a question I had the best way to do this because there is a couple

Thames Water - 2:05:06

I think it would be better for us to go through one point of

contact.

Would you agree?

We will be able to come back in writing.

I can share the information with Laura and we will respond to

everything as a whole and then share the information with Laura

share a written response.

Does that work for you?

Is that, would that be helpful, Councillor, yes?

Definitely, I'm just hoping somebody could be quick, please,

like for example clarifying the conversation,

because a couple of my residents were confused

by getting cheques instead of a credit.

Oh yes, of course.

Cllr James Small - 2:05:52

Just little bits like that might be quicker, please.

If you could share the ones that you would like us to hire,

Thames Water - 2:05:59

just to obviously be able to provide a more quicker response

so that we don't block that in the door.

Just conversation for my friends, yes please, thank you.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:06:09

Thank you. So if we leave it for Laura to liaise with you and she can provide the relevant

contact details of who to contact and then we can go through there via the council to

make sure we get everything answered. Thanks, members, for all of your questions this evening.

It's been very interesting, particularly on what you're doing to... I know you can't potentially

stop it happening again, but everything you're doing to mitigate it as much as possible.

So thanks so much for attending.

It's been really helpful.

Now we're going to move now onto EFDC

or questions to EFDC.

So you're more than welcome to stay if you want,

but if you'd like to leave, you can.

No, no, it's great.

Can I just thank everyone for their questions

and thank everyone for their support.

I really appreciate it.

Thank you very much.

Thanks a lot.

Thank you.

Thank you, Lord.

Thames Water - 2:06:54

I've got some extra things to add.

I'm gonna leave it to you.

So rather than the other one,

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:07:01

Okay. So if we move on to the EFDC questions.

Okay. That's absolutely fine. Thank you very much.

Okay. If we move on to the EFDC questions, just to note that a briefing note from our officers was sent to the Committee

7 WORK PROGRAMME

and it was about the multi -agency action plan.

So I'll answer these in the minutes.

And it's from the Council's perspective.

I know Councillor Small has asked some questions,

particularly to EFDC, so I'll start with his questions

and then move on to other members.

Great, thank you, Chairman.

As I requested of Thames Water,

are we also able to see the Council's own contingency plans

for emergencies?

Cllr James Small - 2:07:51

Thank you, Councillor. A small few questions. So in terms of actual contingency plans for

water, we don't have one at the moment. We are drafting that and we're working on that.

And actually that came out of the debrief and it's something that potentially, going

Fabrizio Ferrari - 2:08:09

on what Thames Water have been saying about sites and so on, looking at that, that's something

6 EXTERNAL SCRUTINY OF THAMES WATER

we could potentially link in as well. Lisa's online as well, if she wants to add anything

to that.

Thank you, Sam. No, we don't have any particular plans at the moment, but we are working with

the Essex Resilience Forum.

Lisa Lipscombe - 2:08:25

And I think Steph made reference

to the water disruption plan that's being created now.

And that's across the county for all districts

with utility companies working alongside.

Thank you.

Cllr James Small - 2:08:41

So I appreciate you don't have a water contingency plan

because this has been an unprecedented outage in August.

But I thought you'd have had a general contingency plan

that you could have fallen back on,

for example, sites, et cetera.

but this is one I'm a bit confused about.

Do you not have that already in place?

General civil emergencies?

So Lisa, should I start in terms of, yeah.

Fabrizio Ferrari - 2:09:03

So in terms of the actual sites for water,

it's quite difficult because as you've seen,

we have to be led by Thames Water.

And so when we did find sites,

many sites that we've had stored to them,

they weren't appropriate.

As you see, they've got very strict rules and regulations.

So for example, we've discussed pallet drops,

But that was inappropriate because they needed to have someone on site to see the

palette, to have the water.

They also refused certain sites because of public safety.

They had issues in other sites and so on.

So in terms of actual sites that we had for this incident, no, it was a bit of a kind

of local knowledge of officers and other people and finding sites.

But again, going back to that point that I think that Thames Water made, we could

look at this for future.

That was a learning that came out of the debrief, that having predetermined sites

that we can use.

Thank you Fabrizio and it sort of brings me on to my second question.

Cllr James Small - 2:09:56

I was actually going to suggest that ward Councillors also bring forth and because we

know our walls, right?

You'll probably already know these sites but it might be worth following up on that.

Where's my other ones?

Right, yeah, so if you could just come back to the Bongol residents.

So I wanted to know for any known Bongol residents identified in Epping Forest, perhaps through

Essex County Council social services list.

Could we encourage Thames Water to send out another targeted

mailing list by perhaps reminding them all their care is at a priority register?

Yeah, definitely.

Fabrizio Ferrari - 2:10:30

So we have worked with Thames Water in terms of better comms to get out.

In terms of getting more knowledge, I think a point was very well raised

by Councillor Neid around getting Thames Water into our space safe and well events.

We run them across the district over the course of the year.

you get 90 to 100 of one of our residents attending those

around staying safe in the summer, in the winter, et cetera.

We run them seasonally.

So that's another way.

I think it is learning from the multi -agency debrief

was about better comms and coordinated comms

between ourselves and Thames Water

and particularly in peace times as well

and getting that information out to vulnerable residents.

Yeah, so for those vulnerable residents

that are not aware of this Stay Safe project,

Cllr James Small - 2:11:11

it'd be good if counsellors could be informed

of who are vulnerable in their ward in order to help during a crisis. Like with the water

delivery for example, I'm not sure how feasible that would be with safeguarding laws, et cetera.

But if possible, I'd certainly be interested in putting my name forward. Thank you. That's

all my questions.

Fabrizio Ferrari - 2:11:34

So in terms of that, I think that might be difficult because of GDPR. I'm not an expert,

but I do think it will be a difficult one. Just in terms of to reassure you during the

whole situation when we called an SCG, County Council were on that social care and they

did confirm that they'd spoken to all their vulnerable residents in those areas.

But again, the list is different, the vulnerabilities are different and what did come out of the

debrief is trying to look at what we determine as vulnerabilities, what they determine as

vulnerabilities.

We will determine something as vulnerable, they will determine something else.

They have four levels as we heard in terms of terms of water, so it's just about coordination

of that as well.

Thank you.

Okay.

Any other members for any questions to EFDC?

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:12:14

Okay.

That concludes the Thames Water items.

So we'll move on to the work programme on pages six and seven.

So it's slightly revised because this of course was a single item meeting on Thames Water.

7 WORK PROGRAMME

I agreed that the section 62A not be presented because it was recently agreed for council,

but it will be on the agenda for the next meeting.

Have any members got comments on the work programme?

Councillor Small.

Thank you, Chairman.

Yeah, we've transferred for London,

Cllr James Small - 2:12:44

obviously, as you said,

Thames Hall just took its slot this evening.

I was expecting it to go to January.

I thought originally it was going

to be January's work programme.

Is it because there's too many items now on that programme

and it's now being delayed till March?

Because in all honesty, I have some points

I want to raise to transport for London.

I've got a lot going on in Buckhurst Hill.

Thank you.

I'll go to Laura.

We did ask them to move.

It's about their availability as well.

There is a limited number of meetings.

Laura Kirman - 2:13:09

They were planned to come this evening

and were prepared for that.

I think they have problems getting stuff at that time.

They were asked for that as their preference.

Thank you.

Councillor Dadd.

Yes, Chairman, just to query,

Cllr Mary Dadd - 2:13:26

bottom of page six, statement of community involvement.

What is that about?

Laura Kirman - 2:13:37

My understanding of the statement of community involvement is it's how the...

It is my view, this may not be accurate,

it's how the planning department consults and communicate about their plans.

It has to go through to Cabinet and Council for approval

and there's a possibility that it will come to one of the scrutiny meetings.

And the alignment is because they're not sure when,

because of all the planning activity,

they're not sure when that will go to cabinet.

So it might, it will have to be realised

so that it has pre -cabinet scrutiny.

I'm still not clear.

You've got both chairman and vice chairman

Cllr Mary Dadd - 2:14:15

of planning committees here,

and they're looking a bit blank as well.

So presumably between now and the next meeting,

we'll have a bit more information from that.

I'm sorry, at this time I can't give you any more information.

Laura Kirman - 2:14:28

It will appear on the forward plan.

Thank you.

Sorry, the forward plan is discussed at every overview in scrutiny.

So it was something that was put forward early.

It's about the timing of it.

So you...

Okay.

Cllr Mary Dadd - 2:14:49

The other query is you've got on there, again, on Matt Winslow,

and I'm chairman of the task and finish panel.

I'm wondering why that's here because I thought it was kicking under

my report back to overview and scrutiny rather than this one.

Laura Kirman - 2:15:05

It's just the way that the work programme has been cut.

I apologise.

Can I go to Barbara Beadwell online?

Yeah, it was just the members.

My understanding, I'm not an expert of this, is that a statement of community

Barbara Beardwell - 2:15:16

involvement is a formal planning document which explains how the council engage

residents, businesses, stakeholders in plan -making, the processing, the planning applications.

And it's a legal thing required of the Planning Composted Purchase Act.

And so I think that this would go to scrutiny, then on to cabinet and then full council.

Can I ask whether it goes to the constitution working group as well?

Cllr Mary Dadd - 2:15:46

Barbara Beardwell - 2:15:49

I don't think it would be a matter for the constitution working group. It's not part of

It is something which is a planning document, it is not part of the constitution.

Thank you.

Councillor Whitehouse.

Thank you, Chairman.

Cllr Janet Whitehouse - 2:16:04

My item about the environment is going to the Chairman and Vice -Chairman's meeting.

Can you tell me when that is, to give some idea of the time scale?

Laura Kirman - 2:16:14

That has been to the joint Chairman and Chairman's meeting and will be reported back at overview

scrutiny on the 17th and the progress made against it.

Chairman, I think it was my item that

Cllr Janet Whitehouse - 2:16:27

me and Curtis have told me that they had gone to that meeting and tell me the result.

I'm not getting it, Laura, but I just think as a matter of process,

you know, if a member put something forward to discuss the meeting,

that member should be told the result. I didn't think the meeting had taken place yet.

I'll take the answer now.

Laura Kirman - 2:16:43

Thank you.

Okay, so if there's any other comments on the work programme?

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:16:49

No?

Okay.

So -

Before you close the meeting -

Councillor Murray, yes.

Cllr Stephen Murray - 2:16:58

It's not on the work programme, it's on your work, because I think you've done wonderful

work tonight.

Thank you, thank you.

Thank you.

Oh, sorry.

We sing the song, don't we?

You have done a brilliant job tonight.

Well done, Chairman. Thank you.

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:17:13

Donna, I do think we should commend our chairs more,

Cllr Sheree Rackham - 2:17:17

like I did Jamie last night, because he was outstanding as well.

So it's really good to see the chairs that we have got,

and the vice chairs, of course,

because I think they make such a difference to our meetings.

Thank you.

Yes, and if I can just quickly say, obviously, I agree with both my colleagues.

So really, as usual, outstanding.

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 2:17:36

So thank you, Councillor Parsons and Councillor Myers.

But also a big thank you to Fritzler for staying so late.

And an even bigger thank you to Laura

that was here till quarter to 12 last night.

And again, till 20 past nine tonight.

So thank you to our officers as well.

So thank you very much.

Thank you.

Okay, so the last item is the date of future meetings,

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 2:18:00

which is the 26th of January next year.

8 DATES OF FUTURE MEETINGS

I've got my apologies, so Councillor Morris will be chairing the meeting.

And with that, I'll close the meeting at 9 .18.

Barbara Beardwell

Monitoring Officer & Strategic Legal Advisor

Epping Forest District Council

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Cllr Barbara Cohen

District councillor for Buckhurst Hill East and Whitebridge ward

Loughton Residents Association

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Cllr Mary Dadd

District councillor for Ongar ward

Conservative Party

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Fabrizio Ferrari

Team Manager - Economic development & Health Improvement

Epping Forest District Council

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Cllr Will Kauffman

District councillor for Loughton Fairmead ward

Loughton Residents Association

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Laura Kirman

Democratic Services Officer

Epping Forest District Council

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Cllr Louise Mead

District councillor for Loughton Fairmead ward

Residents 4 Loughton

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Cllr Lisa Morgan

District councillor for Grange Hill ward

Epping Forest Independents Group

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Cllr Martin Morris

District councillor for Waltham Abbey North ward

Labour Party

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Cllr Stephen Murray

District councillor for Loughton Roding ward

Independent

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Cllr Joseph Parsons

District councillor for Waltham Abbey West ward

Conservative Party

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Cllr Sheree Rackham

District councillor for Loughton Roding ward

Loughton Residents Association

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Cllr Kaz Rizvi

District councillor for Chigwell with Lambourne ward

Conservative Party

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Cllr James Small

District councillor for Buckhurst Hill East and Whitebridge ward

Reform UK

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Cllr Darshan Sunger

District councillor for Chigwell with Lambourne ward

Conservative Party

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Cllr Janet Whitehouse

District councillor for Epping East ward

Liberal Democrats

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Interactive webcast player

Place Scrutiny CommitteeTuesday, 3rd November 2026 at 7:00pm

1 WEBCASTING INTRODUCTION

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:00:05

Cllr Martin Morris - 0:00:41

Fabrizio Ferrari - 0:00:45

Laura Kirman - 0:00:49

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:01:40

2 APOLOGIES FOR ABSENCE

3 SUBSTITUTE MEMBERS

4 DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

5 NOTES OF PREVIOUS MEETING

6 EXTERNAL SCRUTINY OF THAMES WATER

Thames Water - 0:02:22

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:02:50

Thames Water - 0:03:03

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:03:52

Cllr James Small - 0:04:03

Thames Water - 0:06:43

Cllr James Small - 0:10:04

Thames Water - 0:10:24

Thames Water - 0:11:17

Cllr James Small - 0:11:58

Thames Water - 0:12:36

Cllr James Small - 0:12:46

Thames Water - 0:13:14

Cllr James Small - 0:13:33

Thames Water - 0:13:49

Cllr James Small - 0:14:15

Thames Water - 0:14:22

Cllr James Small - 0:15:03

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:15:06

Thames Water - 0:15:10

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:15:13

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 0:15:18

Thames Water - 0:16:20

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 0:16:28

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:19:55

Thames Water - 0:19:57

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:20:23

Cllr Mary Dadd - 0:20:37

Thames Water - 0:27:18

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:27:24

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:27:30

Thames Water - 0:29:18

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:32:36

Thames Water - 0:33:27

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:34:59

Thames Water - 0:35:10

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:35:20

Thames Water - 0:35:56

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:36:50

Thames Water - 0:37:48

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:41:56

Thames Water - 0:43:04

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:47:39

Thames Water - 0:47:44

Cllr Stephen Murray - 0:51:16

Thames Water - 0:52:58

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 0:54:18

Cllr Sheree Rackham - 0:54:30

Thames Water - 0:57:13

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 1:01:26

Thames Water - 1:06:10

Cllr Lisa Morgan - 1:08:03

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:08:15

Thames Water - 1:08:45

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:09:39

Thames Water - 1:11:28

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:11:42

Thames Water - 1:11:48

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:11:51

Thames Water - 1:12:00

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:13:09

Thames Water - 1:13:12

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:13:56

Thames Water - 1:14:01

Cllr Mary Dadd - 1:14:22

Cllr Joseph Parsons - 1:14:25

Cllr Barbara Cohen - 1:14:29

Place Scrutiny Committee
Tuesday, 3rd November 2026 at 7:00pm