Climate Change, Environment, and Infrastructure Committee

Welcome back to the committee. We now move to our next item, and we're going to continue to take evidence on our inquiry relating to storm response and focusing specifically on storms Bert and Darragh, of course, which hit Wales late last year. Joining us now are three witnesses, and a very warm welcome to the three of you: Steven Joseph, who is operations director for south Wales with the National Grid Electricity Distribution; Liam O’Sullivan, who is a director with SP Energy Networks; and Ian Christie, managing director for water, asset planning and capital delivery with Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water. Welcome to the three of you. We appreciate your presence here today. So, just to set out some context, and briefly, if you will, could you provide us with a brief overview of the impact that the recent storms had on your respective networks? I don't know where you want to start. Ian.

Yes. So, a very different impact from the two storms. Storm Bert was very much flooding. We had a lot of power outages as well, but they were short-lived. The flooding had a major impact on a few of our waste water treatment works and a few of the assets, predominantly in the south-east Wales Valleys. Storm Darragh was very different again. That brought widespread power loss and that was very different. Despite moving a lot of our major assets onto a generator, we had to really mobilise a lot of generators around the patch as the impact started—more pumping stations—so, in very rural communities, both on the clean water side and drinking water. So, that was predominantly the impact. The impact was mitigated, and 99 per cent of our services were not impacted, and that was through some good, hard work by our front-line workers, who worked in pretty atrocious conditions over the weekends. These storms never hit during the week; it's always on a weekend. But, the mobilisation during the storm and then the recovery, which went on for some time after, that's all down to the hard work of our people, who worked throughout the two storm events.

There we are. Diolch yn fawr. Liam.

Well, storm Bert, really, for the SP Manweb network, didn't really impact on us. We never really got above business as usual. But storm Darragh was an entirely different story. As you would expect, the hurricane-force winds brought significant damage to the network between 6 and 8 December, impacting a total of 181,000 customers across our area, with the bulk of those, obviously, being in Wales. The worst-hit areas were the north and mid Wales coast, along with the Valleys, Snowdonia, the Conwy valley, et cetera. We took 77,000 calls during the event into our contact centre, and over 65,000 of those were related to the storm itself. Vulnerable customers were prioritised immediately upon calling in, as we knew that this was going to be a significant event and that we would have to manage a lot of vulnerable cases as we effected repairs. Typically, we would take about 37,500 calls in a whole month, so, as you can imagine, to get that over a couple of days was a significant challenge for us.

The Government issued the red warning threat to life, which, as we know, is very rare, and the text alerts did focus people's attention that something severe was coming and that they should try to remain in their homes, which was, I think, a very good step. The health and safety of everybody is paramount during an event like this, and probably the one thing that was most difficult was that, for the first day and a half of the storm, it was very difficult to work at height due to the excessive wind speeds. Our staff will always make a sensible risk assessment and, obviously, the prevailing wind conditions and the likelihood of trees falling down in wooded areas where they were expected to work was a paramount factor during that risk assessment.

To give you an idea of the scale, compared to previous events, an interesting statistic is that, during storm Darragh, we used the same amount of materials as we had done in the previous five large storm events, including storm Arwen, so that was a considerable effort and challenge by our dedicated staff. A good thing was that it was localised to ourselves in Wales and the south coast, which meant other distribution network operator companies were able to send resources to help us very quickly, which enabled us to restore 89 per cent of customers who were impacted within 24 hours and 95 per cent within 48 hours. However, in the days thereafter, you’re effecting repairs to get relatively small numbers of customers back on, which is difficult but necessary.

During the course of the event, we put in place various measures to inform customers of progress, identify cases of vulnerability that we may not be currently aware of. We worked with partner organisations through the local resilience forum to try and reach customers; we deployed a whole business response to this—in fact, I’d go so far as to say it was a whole industry response to storm Darragh—

Sorry, I don’t want to cut across you. I know we’ll be picking up on some of these issues. Is there anything you wanted to add just briefly at this point? We can pick up on much of this.

I think I’ve covered the main points.

Okay, thank you. Sorry to cut across. Finally, then, Steven.

Good morning, bore da, and thank you for your time. In terms of the impact we had in south and west Wales, which is the area that I cover, we had around about 200,000 customers impacted by the storm, which was broadly about 10 per cent of the population that we cover, which is around about 2 million customers in south Wales overall. In terms of what we saw in faults, we saw about 1,150 faults cover the whole of south and west Wales, which is actually more than the combined amount of faults we saw in the three previous storms, from storm Darragh. Similar to my colleagues, storm Bert kind of came and went. That was a storm that we were able to contain and mobilise resource relatively quickly and get customers back in service.

Storm Darragh was a much bigger impact for the very similar reasons that Liam spoke about—the high winds that we saw, up to 96 mph. That caused a lot of damage to our network, and not just the network itself, but through debris, through trees falling, which wasn’t just the impact to the network, but actually physical access to the network as well, through roads being inaccessible and fields being inaccessible. What was taking some of the time to restore was actually physically getting to the network itself. We saw our customer contact increase. Across the weekend of storm Darragh from the Saturday to the Sunday, we saw 0.25 million calls into our contact centre. To give you a scale of that, in a year, we take 1 million calls. So, we saw a lot more contact into our contact centre, which we promoted prior to the storm as well, because we were very keen to ensure our customers knew where they could reach us to ask any questions, queries and concerns.

That wasn’t the only method we used. We reached out to our priority services register customers. In Wales, we have just over 300,000 of them across the whole of south and west Wales. We proactively contacted those prior to the storm to ensure that they were aware of what information was available to them, where they could reach out for support and what they could do as well. Importantly as well for the priority services register customers, they had a direct line into our contact centre, so if they had any questions or concerns they could come immediately to us instead of to our business-as-usual 105 number that we publicised as well.

Thank you very much. We will be picking up on a lot of these as we go along. I think as a committee that we should also note our appreciation for the work of your teams that have to respond to these events in difficult circumstances. It is easy for us to forget, but it’s important that we do give our thanks. Janet.

This is a question for Steven and Liam. Both of you have detailed damage caused by fallen trees during storm Darragh. How do you work with forestry companies, landowners and management authorities to minimise the risks posed by falling trees?

If I look at what we do BAU, outside storm periods, we invest our money in removing trees that are close to our network. We do that by monitoring the network through helicopters and drones and foot patrols to make sure we understand what trees are within falling distance of our network. Annually, we spend in south and west Wales £12 million on removing trees that are within falling distance of our network. During storm Darragh, because of the severe red warning—obviously, a very rare red warning—trees falling and debris that were hitting our network were completely outside the normal falling vicinity that we’d expect, so actually, there were trees falling down that we’d never expect to fall down that would be anywhere near our network. We continue to invest in monitoring and removing trees that we see as risk.

Outside that, in terms of your question of actually how we work with the forestry companies as well, we work very closely with Natural Resources Wales, because that is a large landowner across my area. There are challenges in terms of access to properties and where we actually want to invest in the network as well in terms of additional reinforcement of poles or cables. At times, we have quite long delays, because the sense of where we need to be able to get into the land itself and actually agree, at times, where we want to put more reinforced materials there. At times, it takes a lot of time to come to an agreement to allow that to happen. But we work with them regularly because we're keen to invest money into the network. To give you just a quick scale of that, we'll invest around £1.2 billion of capital into the south and west Wales network over five years, and we're going to sustain that in a future sense. But we do see challenges when it comes to actually being able to get access.

A lot of the things that Steven has just outlined there are very similar to ourselves. I think there are a couple of things that I would add. Engagement is really critical with landowners, particularly commercial forestry companies. The work that we do, obviously, has a commercial impact on their business, so we have to spend a lot of time engaging and negotiating with them to get that. But we have an extensive programme, and, as Steven outlined, a lot of the commercial companies, we have a very close relationship with, but in a storm like this, as Steven outlined, it's not just a case of trimming back trees, you would literally have to fell significantly more trees and create a much wider corridor for lines to run through to prevent that from ever happening, which, again, is difficult.

Again, we use helicopters, drones et cetera to identify trees that may be growing a little closer than in the agreed corridor, and we trim them back straight away. I think from the point of view of non-commercial businesses, as well, there are a lot of trees, obviously, on private landowners' properties, and, as we know, people like to see trees and they don't like to see companies coming in and cutting them, so we have to be very sympathetic and work with those landowners to make sure that we keep the network as resilient as it needs to be. That costs millions of pounds annually. We'll never stop doing that. I think there's one thing that potentially might help us. The legislation that gives us powers to access land where we might not be getting permission is over 30 years old, so perhaps a review of that with a view to making us more storm resilient might help us in the future.

Just to add on that point very quickly, I think to follow on from what Liam mentioned there, obviously, it's very similar in south and west Wales, and actually, when we look at the access rights for other sectors, like the telecom sector, that obviously have a similar challenge to ourselves, they are differing in terms of the agreements that they have in terms of access to land, et cetera. So, it is trying to work together on how do we create consistency so we can continue to invest in the network where we need to.

Interesting. Diolch. Very briefly, Joyce.

You mentioned the local resilience forum being involved. There are powers under local resilience and they were exercised, of course, in that red warning, in any case. Are you involved in any emergency talks that would alleviate some of the things you were talking about with power of entry in terms of people needing their power, people being vulnerable? I'm just interested, because you talked about the powers that you have being 30 years old and maybe not up to scratch, but was there an alternative? And you might find it easier if you took your headphones off, not to hear yourself.

Thank you. There were cases where we got assistance through third party agencies that were involved with the LRF, and, in some cases it wasn't a case of using the police to help us gain access, it was sometimes more discussions with landowners so that they could understand that a particular village had a high proportion of vulnerable customers and having access to do work would help us. In many cases, people will see reason, but there are the exceptions to that where the powers are the only option, and that's difficult, because we don't want to be seen as a company that runs round just waving legislation about. We want to work with the people who have our assets on their land.

Julie.

Diolch. This is for Steven. Why was low-voltage electricity distribution infrastructure so much more vulnerable to damage during storm Darragh compared with the high-voltage network, which is operated by your sister company?

Thank you. The transmission network, which is the high-voltage network that you discuss, is much more widespread and in much more isolated areas. So, to our earlier point of what caused a lot of damage during storm Darragh, it was trees falling, debris et cetera, which a lot of the transmission network is not exposed to. The distribution network is around five times larger than the transmission network, so there's a lot more of it, because our role is to get the power away from the high voltage into our customers' homes. So, it's a lot more exposed to things like the overhead network, like the trees et cetera.

Roughly, we've got around 1.5 million wooden poles that allow us to serve, particularly, our hard-to-reach customers, and they're the type of things that got impacted during the storm because of the severe red warning that we had and such high winds. In normal circumstances outside the storm, our network is 99.993 per cent reliable, so a lot of the time our customers don't see any impact at all because of this. But due to the severity of such high winds, that caused the impact it has, and where our network is and the size of it compared to the transmission network—that's a lot of damage that we saw.

Thank you. Then, I wanted to come to Dŵr Cymru. As a risk management authority for flooding, how do you feel about the current distribution of roles and responsibilities for flood mitigation in Wales?

We don't have a direct responsibility for flood management, just in the responsibility not to cause any additional flooding from our assets, but we work with NRW and the local authorities, which lead flood response. We joined the flood board set up by Rhondda Cynon Taf during the storm Bert event, following on from storm Dennis back in 2022. We've continued to work with the local authorities the best we can, but there's always room for more communication around flooding, and we very much entertain the views to continue to get around the table. As we've proven with Rhondda Cynon Taf, these things work; all agencies working together have a responsibility to prevent the impact from flood damage.

So, do you feel the roles and responsibilities are right, in the way they're distributed?

I think they're well practised in Rhondda Cynon Taf, and we worked with Monmouthshire County Council when we had the issues in Monmouth. I think that the authorities that deal with more flood events are more versed in those relationships. We feel that everyone is playing their part, but there is still more to do.

Thank you very much. You're all category 2 responders under the Civil Contingencies Act 2004. Can you tell us what this means, in terms of how you prepare for, and respond to, storm events?

Do you want me to start? All of our emergency response is linked to weather warnings. So, for storm Bert, we had a yellow warning for rain. That level of warning makes us heighten our preparedness, so we dust things off, effectively, ready to deploy. Storm Darragh—the red warning that covered all of our area leads to our highest level of response, and that means that we mobilise all of our standby resources, both in people and equipment.

Our command centres are set up; so, we have silver command centres in the local areas impacted, which was all of Wales for storm Darragh, and we have gold command overseeing the event. For both storm Darragh and storm Bert, we also stood up our crisis management team, which is led by our chief executive, who has overall responsibility for ensuring that we are resourced and that things like welfare and health and safety are foremost in how we carry out activities.

What we then do is participate in the tactical co-ordination groups, the TCGs, and when the SCGs are stood up—the strategic co-ordination groups—we also sit and play a part in those groups. Following on from the events, we go through the debriefs that are led by the SCGs and TCGs, and we've participated in all of the hot debriefs that the Deputy First Minister has led for all events as well.

Thank you. Does anybody else want to come in?

Very similar to Ian there in terms of the structure. One thing that we do is that we invite all of the local resilience forums and emergency planning officers into our business in around about September time, prior to the typical season, so that we can brief them on any changes from the previous year, any things that we might want to do differently and any assistance that they can give, and, also, so that they understand who the key contacts are in our business during a storm event. Then, as we've said, depending on receipt of a red weather warning—. We monitor the forecast on a daily basis, 365 days a year anyway. But, when a warning comes in, we move through our states of our emergency preparedness, from level 3, which is preparing for an event before it happens, to level 2, dealing with initial impacts, to level 1, where we have an event of the scale of Darragh where we're importing resources, either from our sister licence in Scotland, or from other DNO businesses.

In terms of preparing customers, we start to push things out through social media and advertising campaigns, telling people that something's coming and what to do to try and prepare for a potential power cut, obviously communicating how to get in contact with us, either via the website or the 105 telephone number. We have leaflet drops that are done before storm season start for GP surgeries, community centres et cetera, and then, obviously, we work continually with the local authorities. We provide daily briefs to parish councillors and the chief executives of the local authorities of any impacted areas to make sure that they know exactly what we're doing, what's the impact in their particular area and who to contact if they do have any cases of extreme vulnerability et cetera. So, we try and do as much as we can in advance, but then we also do a lot during an event as well to make sure that people are kept up to date.

Thank you.

To answer your question directly in terms of the category 2 responders, we engage regularly with the local resilience forums, our emergency services, local authorities and the NHS. We do that on a regular basis outside storm periods. During storm periods, similar to my colleagues, we ramp that up in terms of communication throughout the storm, and we do that at a wide scale as well, at a local level as well, in the communities, to ensure that we can understand local challenges and understand what we can do to help each other to address the concerns that we have, and then try and respond to customers quicker.

Similar to the alert systems and forecasting we have, we have weather systems. We use a system called DTN, and it tells us wind speeds, rainfall, snowfall et cetera, to allow us to assess the potential size of the impact we have. Obviously, as we had the red warning coming in, that allowed us to understand what response we had to do. So, in two additions to that, then, how we responded internally with our staffing: we doubled our staffing standby measures, as Liam said, across the weekend, which isn't a typically working day, to ensure that we were able to respond quickly, and, actually, what we saw is, by the time we got to Saturday morning, all available staff were deployed, whether they were on standby or not, to ensure that they were able to respond. Additionally to that, we doubled our contractor staff footprint across the weekend, and our contractors do things like tree cutting for us, to ensure that they were able to remove the trees at a much quicker speed than before. As the storm then progressed, as we were able to restore service back to our customers, we were able to target the effort and the resources much more localised, where we saw the customers who we weren't able to respond to as quickly. Actually, to give you a scale of that, in our west Wales area, around the area of Cardigan and Newcastle Emlyn, which was one of our worst-hit areas, typically, on a given day, we have about 60 engineers a day restoring customers' power and providing maintenance to the network; during the week of storm Darragh, that number grew to 350, to ensure that we were able to respond to customers much quicker than we normally would.

And just finally, if you don't mind, in terms of our customer contact, our customers we proactively reached out to through various media outlets, whether it would be tv, radio, social media, and through our website as well, and we did see the interaction increase. So, on our website, where customers have information, we saw traffic increase by about 4,000 per cent to what we'd normally see, and we saw our incident map, where they saw updates of where their faults were, increase by about 3,500 per cent as well. So, our customers were using the outlets that are available to them to understand what information they'd need.

Thank you.

Can I just ask one question? In that situation, would you then contact, put something out to, the local health authority, GPs? Because they'd be the people who would know, if they had time to react, of the vulnerable customers that you would have no way of knowing, like a newborn baby, an elderly, isolated person.

So, a twofold answer, if you don't mind. So, yes, in terms of, actually, our work with the local authorities, whether it would be local GPs, as well as the local communities, whether it would be local councillors, local MPs, and during the storm that was pivotal for us, because they were providing us information about customers who may have not registered under the priority services register forum. That's something we utilised throughout storm Darragh, completely, to give us more information that we needed, and it's something that we're continuing to do as well, which, in addition, a big part of that is working our charity partners. Charity partners play such a big part as well, and we utilise those extensivelly.

Thank you.

And we'll move on to the PSR, the priority services register, in a minute. Thank you. Carolyn.

Just briefly, because we haven't got a telecommunications company here, when we have high storms, we can no longer rely on phone lines connecting anymore, because we rely on electricity. And if you haven't got a mobile signal, then it's really tricky to actually say, 'We haven't got electricity or power.' It has happened to me twice now. I live on a main road in quite a well-populated area, but I haven't got a mobile signal. So, how do you know when there's a power cut for that area? I just feel like there's a gap now for people to be able to alert that they haven't got any power, any electricity.

In terms of—. So, if we have a power cut that's affecting a mobile mast—is that the question?

Yes. Well, during both storms there was no power in our area. I wasn't—. You're no longer able to phone because you haven't got a landline, because you rely on electricity nowadays; they've been cut off. You haven't got the internet, you haven't got a mobile signal, so it's really tricky, isn't it, to be able to actually say, ‘I've got no electricity.’ You say dial the 105 number for an emergency, but you can't unless you go and walk up the hill and try and get a signal. It's really hard for people, isn't it?

We do make priority decisions on critical sites like mobile phone masts, pumping stations, where we know—.

Are they well known, these areas, these notspots?

Just to add to that, the biggest problem for us during storm Darragh wasn't necessarily the power outages, it was the loss of communication to assets. So they generally are through public switched telephone network lines, which are on poles in rural areas, and some of the masts went down, certainly in Carmarthenshire, as well. So, our biggest problem was understanding which assets had actually lost power—

Because you don't have people there, you have—

We have no visibility at all, and especially the mobile phone signal—. PSTN switch-off, which is happening in 2027, switches everything to mobile providers, so all of our telemetry systems, that control of our assets, will be over mobile connectivity, which isn't the best in parts of west Wales. The 4,000 customers that we had impacted through power loss on storm Darragh couldn't contact us by phone, couldn't contact us by internet, we didn't have visibility they were off supply. It ended up when someone actually went out of the area and managed to get a phone signal that they could contact us, because everything else was down, and this is a real challenge all of us need to face.

Yes, that's what I had to do twice. Go up the mountain. It's the issue.

We touched on this slightly when we discussed the sewage outflows, didn’t we, and monitoring?

My elderly neighbour couldn't do that, so every time we had to go up the mountain and try and get in touch to sort that out. But I must say, though—

Very interesting, yes.

—we're grateful for the way that electricity was restored quickly in terrible conditions. I would just like to say that.

Some local authorities have raised concerns about inconsistent risk tolerance between responder organisations in the aftermath of storms. So, how do you manage risk during storms, and what's your approach? Was it shared with other responders as well? Do you work together?

From the point of view of risk management, obviously we don't just rely on our own information in an event like that. We all take in information, whether it be provided through local resilience forum meetings or any other means, so that we can prioritise in the right way. Probably for the first time in anger, during storm Darragh we used a new prediction system that helps us understand the impact for communities when they're going to experience certain weather systems. It worked pretty well and enabled us to make sure that we were prioritising the communities that were going to be significantly impacted if they were off for lengthy periods. It doesn't get absolutely every single decision right, but it helps you make those decisions very quickly.

I think one of the critical things about managing risk through that storm is making sure that you have information and that you have people who can react very quickly to situations as they may arise because, for example, there are so many different priorities coming at you in the middle of a storm event that you need to make sure your risk management is robust, because otherwise you can deploy resources that are better placed elsewhere doing something for less gain.

Can I just ask, though—? Risk management is one thing, risk tolerance is another thing, isn't it, in that you will each define at what point—. There's amber and there's amber, isn't there? I think we heard an example of a low likelihood of a highly damaging event, or a high likelihood of maybe a low-risk event. Do you co-ordinate how you interpret that matrix, because sometimes you might find one part of the system actually stepping up a bit further than another part of the system because they just don't appreciate the risk in the same way?

I can only speak on behalf of the national grid in terms of the work that we do on risk tolerance, and the role that we play is to ensure that, if customers lose power, to restore power as quickly as possible. If we look at storm Darragh, 80 per cent of our customers in south Wales got power back on with 24 hours, and then subsequently that grew to about 90 per cent when we got to about 48 hours. So, in terms of your question on risk tolerance, the tolerance for us is we want customers to maintain power and we will remove the risks that will prevent that from happening. A lot of that is what we discussed already around trees and tree-cutting tolerance, ensuring that we remove those risks in terms of if that is the risk to providing a customer power.

So, your response, regardless of why it becomes an amber or a red, would be, basically, you would kick in to the same kind of process; you wouldn't differentiate.

Correct.

And also—. Yes, okay. Right, fine. And is that the case for Dŵr Cymru?

We align to the yellow, amber, red, and each one of those steps requires a different response. With storm Bert, our impact was not in line with a yellow warning. We would have thought it would have been more significant than a yellow; certainly, the rainfall we saw on the Rhondda Valley. Storm Darragh, no issue with the warning at all. I think it was very clear, given in advance, and allowed us time to fully mobilise. Whenever we mobilise, though, we never know where the impact is going to be, and with storm Darragh it was moving continuously around the network and trying to get generators to the points that really needed it, which was made a lot more difficult by loss of communications in large parts of the rural areas.

Yes. Okay, diolch yn fawr iawn. Thank you. Janet, a question.

Yes, just a point that my colleague, Joyce, mentioned before about the vulnerable people register and how you handle any crisis. As well as storm damage, we had a recent water outage and it was chaotic. The Cabinet Secretary didn't seem to think it was, but it was. However, what I found was that different organisations hold different sets of data.

Yes, we're coming on to that. There's a whole section on that in a minute—

Yes. I just want to know whether you feel—

So, I think we should respect the people who've asked to cover that. Sorry, Janet, I just—

—currently that it is as joined-up as it could or should be. When you go into a response, there must be something that you feel, 'Oh, that needs to be better'?

I think, yes, ultimately, it would be great if we all had the same lists of vulnerable customers, but the problem we have is 'vulnerable', from a PSR perspective, can include such a broad range of things. Going back to the point that Joyce made around information on newborn babies or somebody who's recently become critically ill, that sometimes can't filter itself to us very quickly, so we do rely on that. So, I would say the one thing that could be done better is perhaps that sharing of information. We've recently signed a memorandum of understanding with some of the organisations in the local resilience forum community to try and improve that. The systems and infrastructure aren't fully developed yet, but the first step has been taken in acknowledgement that we need to share information in a much better way and have some sort of robust system around it to protect things like people's data and medical information and so on and so forth.

Thanks.

Okay. Delyth, I'll come to you.

Diolch. This is primarily for Liam and Steven. When you're restoring disrupted power supplies, could you talk us through, please, how you prioritise recovery efforts? Thinking about Ian's point earlier about the loss of communication with assets, do you focus on restoring power to other essential utilities like water suppliers?

Our priority is to get every customer restored as quickly as possible, and we do that firstly through our network. So, our network is an automated network as best as possible, where you don't then need to send physical people on the ground. The network is able to be smart enough to divert power around to restore service as quickly as possible. So, what we try and do is, where we've got opportunities to fix parts of the network that increases the ability to use that automation, we try and prioritise that as quickly as possible because that allows us to restore large volumes of customers quite quickly. And that's what supported us really well in storm Darragh; when we were able to fix those parts of automation that had broken, that allowed us to restore customers very quickly on a large scale.

Moving forward, our main goal then is, again, to prioritise our priority service registered customers, and they'll always be the ones that we respond to as quickly as possible, whether that be through fixing the network or providing generators, which we did throughout the storms as well. And just a brief added note is that, from a generator perspective, we typically have around about 50 generators across south and west Wales available to us at any point. During storm Darragh, that number went up to round about 300 that we pulled in to have additional means to support those customers where we needed. So, the role for us is we restore volumes of customers as quickly as possible as well as prioritising the PSR customers as well.

Thank you.

I would just add to that, in terms of whether we prioritise other things other than large customer numbers, yes—if we're aware there is a critical site that might be off supply, particularly things like hospitals, medical facilities, communication infrastructure, water supply infrastructure, and if we're aware of it and we understand the criticality of getting it back on, then, yes, that becomes a priority, because, obviously, the longer communities are off supply, the more vulnerable people become as they go through that event. Being without power is one thing, but being without other services, as we've discussed, only exacerbates that problem. So, we will try and alleviate that wherever we can.

Thank you. I think this only would affect Liam, but, actually, I'd be interested in hearing all of your thoughts on this in terms of how it would affect you. We've been told that ScottishPower Manweb didn't have Welsh language provision for phone calls during storm Darragh. Obviously, the primary concern here would be about people's safety, because, in a lot of the areas that were covered, proportionately, there might be more people who don't just speak Welsh but they're much more comfortable in Welsh, particularly if they're vulnerable, if they're older. Would that be something that you would be hoping to make sure is available in future storms?

Absolutely. Obviously, we do have Welsh speaking contact centre agents. It's difficult when you're dealing with such a volume to try and ensure that people will always get through to a Welsh speaker, if they prefer, because sometimes, when they want to speak to you, they will just press the options to get through. Obviously, our local engineering force are all based in the community, and many of those are Welsh first language and able to assist. But also, other people who work in our business that have Welsh language skills are drafted in to man the phones during the storm events. So, absolutely we'll look at the issues and try and improve that, but I can assure you we do have Welsh-speaking facilities for people.

That's great. Thank you so much, Liam. Did either of you want to add anything to that?

Yes. I'd just add support. I don't think it's an issue for Dŵr Cymru, but the events, for the call centre for us, were not significant for these two storms. So, we were dealing with very low numbers of calls.

Of course. Diolch. Did you want—?

We've got contact centre staff, similar to Liam, who speak both English and Welsh, that allows us to engage the customers we need to. All our written material is sent in English and Welsh as well, and our website's able to translate into Welsh as well. So, we've got various forums. In addition, too, a lot of our people are embedded in communities. So, a lot of people are able to discuss with customers in Welsh as well and, throughout the storm, our Welsh-speaking members of our team were the ones engaging in the media outlets where, actually, Welsh speaking was required, and, after, we utilised the facilities we've got to ensure that our customers got the information they needed.

Thank you, all.

Thank you. Can I ask why did it take so long to get people back on electricity, really? I know the scale, obviously, of the storm, et cetera, but it did feel exceptionally long for some customers this time, didn't it, particularly in rural areas.

So, I'll start. As we've discussed, it was a severe red warning. Again, to give you scale, this was larger than any of the three storms combined. This was the biggest storm that south Wales had had in about 30 years. As you advised, it was with a large-scale impact. The biggest thing that caused the damage wasn't necessarily the damage to the physical network itself; a lot of it was access to the network that was slowing us down—so, trees falling, road access because of trees falling, and hence our desire to stand up those contractor footprints, to allow us to remove the trees, remove things that are in the way of the physically getting to the network itself. That's what slowed us in the early days. If we think back to storm Darragh as well, it wasn't until the Sunday evening that the winds actually passed. So, whilst the red warning was only over a space of about 24 hours, it wasn't until Monday morning that, actually, the wind had passed to allow us to physically get to some parts of our network. About 50 per cent of our network is overhead, and, as part of the network, it was dangerous to climb at points to actually physically start to restore power as well. But a lot of the challenges that we had were physical access to the network, which slowed us down. As soon as we were getting our hands on the network, we were able to restore customers at a rapid pace.

Okay. And similar for you, I'd imagine.

Yes. Overhead line faults are actually relatively quick to repair compared to cable faults, where you have to excavate. But trouble getting around was a big factor, not being able to work at height for a good day and a half in the early stages, but also multiple damage in certain locations. Some communities, all the lines that feed a certain village had a damage on them, so trying to get the repairs done and restore the whole village was very difficult, and we do thank customers for their patience because there were some people who were off for a longer time than anybody would have liked during storm Darragh.

Yes. Okay. Thank you.

I'm from an area where some houses were restored quite quickly, within a few hours, but there were a number of houses that weren't restored for five days, and they thought maybe it was because of the lower population of that area. So, is it because the network is more ageing, that they're connected to?

No, not as such. Going back to the point that Steven made before, some restorations we can do remotely very quickly, so we can sectionalise a circuit actually from the control room remotely, so it's only the customers that remain off then that need the network repaired to get them restored. The bulk of the customers, once we've isolated the section to a small number, we can restore remotely, and that's why people have different experiences. So, some will say, 'Well, it went off, but I was back on within five minutes', and then other people who needed to wait for the repairs to be completed, they may have been off for significantly longer.

Okay. Thanks, Chair.

Okay. Can I just come back to the priority services register? We have had local authorities tell us that the PSRs that were provided by utility companies weren't good enough, basically; they were poorly maintained. Carmarthenshire told us they even included names of people who died years ago. So, who's responsible for maintaining those?

Do you want me to start with the water company? I fully support the views, and we support the views that there's work to be done on joining up all vulnerable customers because we all have individual priority service registers, with all different definitions of what makes a customer vulnerable, and every time we come to one of these events, we are trying, in the heat of battle, to co-ordinate different lists between different agencies, and GDPR, unfortunately, cuts through everything. We need to find a way collectively of sharing that data because we have a very distinct definition of what would make the customer vulnerable. One of our biggest issues is trying to explain to a customer that just because they've registered as a priority service with another agency, it doesn't automatically update them to our priority services. So, our register is as accurate as our billing data, because it's all related to billing, so there will be gaps and there will be areas to improve. We continue to campaign to get more visibility of what our vulnerable customer priority service register is, but there's a lot more to be done, but more collectively between different agencies and utility companies.

Steven, Liam, and then we come to Janet, and then we come to Carolyn.

To update the priority service register, we proactively contact every customer on it every two years to make sure their information is as up to date as it can be, but, in the meantime with that, we also partner with Age Concern Wales and other third sector organisations to try and glean as much information as we can. We also promote people to go online and update their information themselves. We do leaflet drops in GP surgeries, community centres, encouraging people that either are on it or think they should be on it to register and update their information. So, as my colleague said, it's very difficult at times because it's an ever-changing picture, but we do try to keep that as up to date as possible.

We're very similar. So, every two years, we proactively reach out to our priority service customers. We, each year, as well, in the winter, reach out to those to explain what they need to be aware of because, at times, the network can be a bit more susceptible to faults. During the winter periods, you want to make sure they understand what means they can contact us on if they need support at all. So, there's an opportunity every single year to ensure that we're contacting them to have the most relevant information and details we need to keep in touch. And to the earlier discussion we were having around working with local authorities, we have been historically sharing information with local authorities, with the fire and rescue services, with oxygen providers who are trying to, then, as I say, start to share information back and forth, but there's more for us to do in terms of working with other utility companies. Likewise, we discussed the telecommunications companies who were getting in touch with very similar customers, so it's something we're keen to progress on.

Okay. Briefly from Janet, and then we'll come to Carolyn.

I think this is a huge issue. I think, just even with our water outage—and I spoke to the fire service afterwards—if you're a responder, if you provide emergency provision, I can't for the life of me now, with digital technology, understand why we haven't got one list that's used by fire, health, you name it—you included. Now, I understand, during the water situation, you had 3,500 on the priority risk register, but in that few days to the weekend it doubled to 7,500. That shows there’s a weakness in the system. So, do you believe—it will take some work, it will need some support from the Welsh Government—that there should be one risk register that everybody can access, that the hospitals can access, the GPs can access, you can access?

Do you agree with that?

Yes.

Would you support one central register?

We would support it, yes.

Albeit with, as you mentioned, data protection and GDPR, and all that kind of thing, which might be—

Just to add to that, we had the hot debrief for the pipeline incident that Janet’s referring to. A task and finish group has been formed by the local resilience forum in north Wales.

Oh, good. That was on Monday, wasn't it?

Yes, it was, and that task and finish group has been tasked by the Deputy First Minister to look at trying to resolve the issue around one common list, and we fully welcome that.

Thank you. Carolyn.

Anglesey told us that they weren’t provided with the register until late on Sunday night, more than 24 hours after the peak of storm Darragh. So, can you explain why the delay happened?

Yes. Anglesey, obviously, is an important community for me and for our business. Of around the 70,000 people who live on the island, 17,000 of them are on the priority services register. So, we know that’s a community that, if a storm arrives, will be significantly impacted. So, we did our best to prioritise those customers. We offered hotels to the most vulnerable. We provided generators. We would typically deploy around 50 people working on Anglesey on a business-as-usual day. There were over 250 working during storm Darragh. It was a very difficult set of circumstances for the customers. We provided welfare. We have taken some feedback locally that there were some local businesses that would be prepared to support us in the future with the provision of hot food, et cetera, which we—

But the issue here is—

It was the delay, wasn't it.

—that you didn't provide the list for 24 hours, not how you responded to those who were on the list.

Because you have a list—

Yes.

—but Anglesey didn't have that list.

Until 9 o'clock on the Sunday night, which was 24 hours after the peak.

I'm sorry—I wasn't aware that that was the case.

Okay.

But it certainly won't be the case next time.

Okay. Maybe you could write us a note afterwards explaining, maybe, what the circumstances were, and—

Yes, certainly.

—what your interpretation of the situation is. Okay. Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you.

Joyce, thank you. Just for Members to be aware, we've got about eight or nine minutes left, so Joyce is going to take us through the last section.

Yes, and I cover nearly all the area that was hit. I want to know about the long-term resilience of the infrastructure, because the likelihood of future events, it seems, is high. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get a storm at the end of this lovely long spell of warmer weather. So, in terms of the intensity and frequency, what are your long-term plans, all of you?

I'll start. As we discussed earlier, within the period of 2023 and 2028, we’re going to spend £1.2 billion of capital on the network. Where we’re going to spend that money is on the reinforcement of the network itself, where that will be our overhead and underground network, through new poling, larger cables, becoming much more resilient in these times. In addition to that, we’ve talked a lot about automation of the network that allows us to restore customers’ power very quickly, without, then, having to physically send resources. That allows us to have faults on the network without customers even knowing, to allow us to repair, then, once they’re back in service. So, a lot of that £1.2 billion will be spent doing those things in the next five years.

But we’re already starting a plan now for beyond that. So, I talk about £1.2 billion; we expect that to scale in the five years onwards. We expect that to increase to around £3 billion from 2028 onwards, over that next five-year period. And that’s our ambition then, to invest in the network where we can.

We talked earlier around tree cutting. We continue to maintain our trees across the network, using the information from our helicopter or foot patrols, et cetera, to ensure our network remains as resilient as possible. I do remind you, in terms of that, that our network, as it is currently, is 99.993 per cent resilient. A lot of the time, our customers won’t experience power outages. But I recognise your concern that we may see more of these storms, going forward. So, our goal is to ensure we continue to increase the automation and resilience of it through that expenditure.

Can I just ask, on the local network to new housing—? So, we’re going to build more houses and we’re going to need lots more distribution. And if trees are a problem, there seems to be an obvious thing that should happen, about looking at, in the planning stage of that housing, that you actually mention if you think it’s going to be a problem, that people can't grow trees but have another form of hedgerows or something. I'd call it prevention.

It’s certainly something we can take away, absolutely.

Right, carry on.

It's very similar in terms of the size and scale of investment in, particularly, overhead lines. I can give you an example. The typical level of asset pull replacement over the next three years compared to previously is probably 50 per cent higher. So, we're doing a lot of work in asset replacement. On vegetation management, for example, we will not decrease our vegetation management plan or programme. We can't. We know where the sites are. We know what we need to do in that respect, but the critical thing here is trying to improve the automation on the network. Moving the number of customers that would be typically affected by a longer duration power outage to be restored in a matter of seconds is a huge benefit and will have a huge impact on our customers, particularly during storms, but also during business as usual. And I think the other thing that I would focus on as well is making sure we work with the communities to understand, where we're going to invest in the infrastructure, what is the solution that best suits them and best protects them, wherever possible, from the impact of future storms. So, those are the plans that we would have for the future.

Okay. I think we just need to understand that we're not going to build our way out of this. I think investment has its part, but we need to accept that there are things that are going to happen that we cannot build our way out of. We need to respond better. We need to learn from every event we have, which we will do, and we need to adapt. We are adapting a lot of our assets using nature-based solutions. We've got Rainscape down in Llanelli. We’re looking at nature-based solutions to deal with spills. That's one way of using the environment to naturally protect the impact our assets can cause. Ofwat have also moved in their stance around resilience. We really welcome the movement now. We've got £230 million of investment that we'll be making between 2025 and 2030. That will allow us to build flood defences for five waste water treatment works, five water treatment works. We've got a £4 billion investment programme now that will start to strengthen some of the asset base, but how we respond collectively with all the multiple agencies and the power companies is how we're going to mitigate this through the longer term, not just through investment.

But also it will involve talking—. I mean, culverts are obviously a problem in places, and surface water flooding. I know all about the Rainscape project in Llanelli; I've seen it loads of times. But if we're talking about future resilience, we have to talk about surface water and the removal of it. We're scaling up housing for the future needs of people who need roofs over their heads, but how engaged and how listened to do you feel you are in planning applications? I know there are certain rules in place that have to be adhered to, but my experience is that you're not always listened to.

I wouldn't disagree. We see the two biggest risks to using nature-based solutions as planning and then permitting the solution we put in place, because it is so new, it is so different, and we are working very hard with NRW to get the permitting issues sorted, but planning is the biggest delay we will have to trying to get some of these schemes in place. So, we are working and lobbying to try and get some planning legislation that would allow us to move quicker to nature-based solutions, because, with the timelines we have for some of the Ofwat requirements, that is pushing us down a route of pouring concrete, which is a solution we do not want to do.

So, could you give us some examples of that? We haven’t got, maybe, time now, but that would be useful.

What we can do is follow up with some examples of where we’re looking at these nature-based solutions.

You talked about undergrounding, or maybe you didn't, but it's been talked about, through forested areas. Do you think that's a viable way forward? Again, we're talking about futureproofing. There are an awful lot of applications in the pipeline at the moment—wind applications particularly. Do you think that's a viable way forward? I've looked at this in some detail, and what I've been informed of—and you can tell me whether it's right or not—is that sometimes the connections are easier if they're overground than underground, to facilitate access. And if that's the case, what can be done?

Very briefly, if you don't mind, because we are out of time.

Well, first off, undergrounding isn't always the answer. It sometimes can be, but there are certain technical challenges in terms of, obviously, as you can imagine, excavating through a forest and through root bases, et cetera, being more costly, more time-consuming. Cable faults do happen and they're immensely more difficult to locate and repair than an overhead line fault. We use the overhead line network to get to hard-to-reach communities, because normally we will have geological challenges, rock, ravines, rivers, et cetera, which are far more straightforward to get across with an overhead line than through a cable route. That said, where cable is appropriate, and we can look at that, obviously the cost implication comes into play there, but also then we need to consider the environmental impacts. Excavating cables can be far more intrusive for certain species and habitats. Everyone sometimes gets consumed with undergrounding everything, well, in some cases it's technically not possible to do it, and in other cases it's financially not viable; that said, there is an opportunity in certain areas to do that, absolutely.

Okay. There we are. Okay. Can I thank you all? I'm afraid that we are out of time, but we're very grateful for the evidence that you've given us. It's certainly going to enhance our considerations, and we'll be bringing everything together, ultimately, in a report with recommendations. So, we may wish to write to you with just a few follow-up questions once we've reflected on some of the evidence that we've received, but we're very grateful for your presence.

Thank you very much for attending. Thanks.

So, the committee will now break for lunch. We will reconvene in good time to start at 12:40, because I wouldn't mind having a couple of minutes before we go into public session at 12:40. Thank you. Diolch.

Welcome back to the committee. We are continuing with our committee inquiry into storm response, and we now move to an evidence session with local authority representatives, and a number of them are joining us online. Welcome to you all. Welcome to Councillor Jackie Charlton from Powys County Council and to Matt Perry, who is chief officer for place with Powys County Council. Welcome also to Kevin Kinsey, lead engineer at Blaenau Gwent County Borough Council; Ainsley Williams, who is director of place and infrastructure at Carmarthenshire County Council; and Paul Ridley, who is civil contingencies manager with Carmarthenshire County Council. A warm welcome to you all. We have about 55 minutes for this session, so I'll be encouraging Members to be succinct in their questions, and perhaps we could keep that in mind when responding too.

I'll start, if I may, just by asking you to explain what processes you have in place for handling different tiers of alerts and warnings from forecasting bodies. For example, how does the process of dealing with a yellow weather warning differ, perhaps, from an amber or red warning?

I don't know who wants to go first. I have five faces on the screen. Anyone? If you could raise your hand if you'd like to start. Okay, we'll go to Carmarthenshire first, to Ainsley.

Good afternoon. Thank you, Chair.

Yes, if I outline briefly: you mentioned there, Chair, what's the difference in terms of escalation between the different warnings, yellow, amber and red. We hold daily briefings anyway through the local resilience forum, organised through emergency planning officers, and that, in effect, will give us foresight on each of those days as to what may come our way on any given day. So, that is a baseline position for us.

We also hold internally a weekly weather meeting on a Friday morning, just to reinforce in terms of where we're at with any weather warnings that may come through. That timing and day can be changed depending on what comes our way. So, we have an internal escalation process from that point. If it's a yellow warning—and a yellow of a shade, I should say, that warrants additional resource—then we would scale up our additional resources internally to deal with any highway incidents, any flood mitigation infrastructure that we would take a look at, inspections and the like. So, that process is there.

If it goes beyond that, and we feel there is a need, there's also through the Dyfed Powys local resilience forum what we call a pre-emergency assessment meeting, and they will happen as we call them, as the need arises, and again, we will bring in the Met Office and NRW colleagues to that meeting to give us an overview of any weather that's predicted. And from that point we can decide whether it's likely to go to a strategic co-ordination group, tactical co-ordination group-type scenario. So, there's a whole structure there on how we do it, and that would apply to any of the given warnings, be they yellow, amber or red.

And I'm presuming it's similar for Powys and Blaenau Gwent, or not; you can tell me otherwise. Yes, it is.

Yes.

Okay. Great. Thank you very much. Delyth.

Thank you, Chair. Good afternoon to you all. I just wanted to ask Paul and Ainsley: you said that you no longer call your local resilience forum together for yellow warnings, but has that changed following storm Bert, please?

In terms of any yellow warning, we would call that internal meeting and we would have had the prior warning to that, if you like, in the daily meetings that the emergency planning officers have. So, on the yellow, it could go to a pre-emergency assessment teleconference, simply because of the potential impact of that yellow warning. So, there are shades of yellow in any given yellow warning. So, we will scale up accordingly, I would say. So, that process is there for any warning we get through. It depends on how far we go through that process, and it depends what the severity of the impact is.

Thank you. That's really useful. Could I check as well—? Well, this would be for all of you: did you feel that there were any gaps or any shortcomings in the warnings that you received during either storm Bert or storm Darragh, and if there were gaps, how that affected your response, please? You're all being very polite.

Who wants to go first?

I think Jackie.

Oh, yes, sorry. Councillor Charlton, yes.

I wanted to bring in perhaps a different view from this, because on the ground, with councillors and with local communities as well, we don't have the benefit of all the extra work that goes on behind this before we have a storm, but because of the way that storm Bert hit us, and because we felt that the warnings were not actually appropriate at the time, and that's for all kinds of different reasons—. I saw Councillor Andrew Morgan give his evidence last week, and I totally concur with him that it was the level of the rainfall that was unexpected, and it has actually caused huge amounts of problems for us in our local community and—

We can hear you. Yes, carry on.

We can hear you still.

Okay, I think we're having some technical problems. We can hear you, Councillor Charlton, I don't know if you can hear us.

Thank you. There's a voice coming in telling everybody they're welcome back to the meeting. I don't know whether you can hear that, but I can certainly hear it.

We can't. Apologies. Can you try—

You can't. Okay, I will try and continue, because it is very disturbing to have that in the background.

But I think the local communities felt that the warning that they got for storm Bert was not appropriate for the level of damage that we received after that. We had a very, very high level of rainfall on that night and overnight, so early in the morning, at 6 o'clock in the morning, we had floods that we'd never ever had before in areas that we'd never ever seen water coming down before. We live directly under the canal. There were a lot of people thinking that the canal was bursting, which created a lot of fear, so it's just to give you that context as well, that local contact. I'm still hearing a voice in the background.

Okay. I'll ask our technical people to try and deal with that, if possible. It may be that you have to leave the meeting and rejoin us, but we'll advise you on that. In the meantime, Ainsley, do you want to reflect on your position in Carmarthenshire?

Diolch, yes. It sounds like it was slightly different for us here in Carmarthenshire, so whilst it was a yellow warning for us, there's a degree of nuance within the shade of yellow, as I mentioned previously, but given what we experienced, we'd scaled up to reflect a yellow warning storm, and that's pretty much what we got. But I think, as mentioned there now, the further east you went, maybe the severity and intensity were quite different to what we had.

Storm Darragh, on the other hand, again, that was called correctly for us, and that was called early enough and escalated in a way that allowed us to plan quite a bit ahead for storm Darragh and make an early call on what services to close down and where we prioritised our resource based on the amber rain and red wind warnings, of course. Diolch.

Diolch yn fawr. Kevin, what was your experience in Blaenau Gwent?

We'd scaled up and prepared for a yellow warning, and the intensity of the storm took us completely by surprise. We, like many others, had water coming out of hillsides that never had water coming out of them before, and just the level of water everywhere and the intensity completely took us by surprise. It was a full 24 hours, really, before we were able to pull resources in and gear up to deal with what was presented to us.

Okay. Diolch yn fawr iawn. Julie.

Diolch. Is your response to extreme weather events primarily led by the local authority, the local resilience forum or something different? I don't know who wants to start on that, maybe Carmarthen.

Yes, I'm happy to do so. Thank you. It's a mixed answer, in a way. If it's appropriate for the local authority to lead on that, as it was in storm Bert, from our perspective, then we would scale up accordingly and lead from a local authority perspective, because it's within our gift to do so. If it's a bigger event, such as storm Darragh, then we would scale up for that also, but in context of the LRF. So, in storm Darragh, for instance, the TCGs and SCGs were chaired by Dyfed-Powys Police, and we all had an input into that from an LRF perspective, so it depends on the scale and the severity.

Right. Is Powys back?

Maybe Matt can respond.

If I can come in, Chair, basically, for all weather events, we depend on the accuracy of forecasting from the Met Office—I do apologise, I've got a bit of a sore throat, so apologies for the croakiness—and the interpretation of that by NRW in respect of impacts on river systems as well. The Flood Forecasting Centre gives an additional picture in respect of surface flooding et cetera, but the local authority leads on the response to most weather systems, whilst the LRF leads on those events with amber or red weather warnings. So, NRW tends to chair all weather-related PEAT and TCG meetings.

Right, thank you. And Blaenau Gwent.

Yes, the same for us. Prior to storm Bert, because it was only a yellow weather warning, those response structures weren't set up, so we had to do it, again, on the hoof as the event played out. But, certainly, following storm Bert, even for yellow warnings now, we will now be setting up PEATs and NRW flood teleconferences for immediate impact after yellow warnings in future.

Right, diolch. So, basically, it's the extent or the severity of the warning that determines which organisation leads. I wanted to ask some questions about the priority services register. Did you use this during these recent events and what were your experiences of using it?

Let's go to Paul first on this one. Can we unmute? There we are.

Thank you, Chair. Sorry, there were problems with the audio. We were given the priority customer service register. I've got to say that we found that a real challenge, because the amount of impact of storm Darragh—the drop-off of electricity supplies was significant across the county, as a result of which we spent a great deal of time responding to looking after what we identified as vulnerable groups. The problem with the priority customer register was that the vulnerability index was very different to our interpretation of it from a local authority perspective, but also from the health service, and then, when we were provided with their lists and their data sets, again they were very different to our own, which then presented a challenge, because of the volume that we were receiving, to be able to check and test their credibility. When we did check that, we had a number of occasions where that information was significantly out of date. So, from our perspective, it was a problem and continued to be a problem throughout the time that we were dealing with our response phase for Darragh. So, I think, for the future, it's about looking at consistencies in the interpretation of what vulnerability is across all agencies, and making sure that those data sets, particularly from the national grid, are up to date and accurate. That can help us focus on relatively limited resources in our response phase. So, from our point of view, it was a problem and continued to be a problem for quite some time for us to resolve.

Thank you. Any other experiences there?

Ainsley has asked to come in.

Diolch. Maybe just to add to what Paul said there, there was a bit of an issue for us as well in working through those lists. Initially, there were concerns raised about data sharing, the general data protection regulation and the like, so I think that whilst those mechanisms are there to do so, maybe it still needs wider awareness and to just raise that awareness amongst organisations that they can do that and must do that in an emergency. Diolch.

Just to echo what Ainsley has said, in terms of the GDPR, that did cause some issues. Within Powys, we were very reliant on our social services records, and then trying to, obviously, link them with the utility companies was difficult, so there's definitely some learning there.

Right, thank you very much. The Welsh Government's flood response framework—did you use that to inform your approach to resilience planning? Does anyone want to respond to this?

Ainsley and then Matt.

I think it's fair to say that we know that that publication goes back to 2016, but, nonetheless, it does provide a framework of operation for us anyway. Essentially, when you read through that document, that's the way, really, the LRF structure is set up, and those responsibilities are looked at anyway. So, it's still a useful framework, in that sense, albeit it may need refreshing. But the framework is sound, yes.

Right, thank you. Has anybody else got a comment on it?

Yes, there was another hand—Matt, I think.

I suppose just to echo what Ainsley said, it is a document that sets that framework at a national level. What it does not include, though, is the detail of the singular multi-agency response plans at the local level, and I think that some of this is, obviously, key in terms of dealing with these issues. That's my only comment on that, Chair.

Right, thank you. So, the fact that it's not been updated since 2016 is not of great importance to you.

If—. Sorry, I didn't put my hand up then.

Go on. Well, Ainsley, then, if you want to. It's just a 'yes' or 'no', really, isn't it?

You found it of use, despite the fact that it hadn't been updated.

I think it's been used to set up our structures, but just picking up on what Matt said there, we would, I suppose, welcome a refresh, just to bring it up to date with what we face these days.

Thank you. And then finally from me, do you feel that the Welsh Government's financial support for households following the storm events has been sufficient? What about Jackie? Are you back online now?

Yes, I am. I'm very happy to come in; I just didn't put my hand up. I would say, yes, it is sufficient. I know it's very welcomed by people at the time, when they're going through what seems to be a very stressful time for them anyway. I think there is an issue here where some people are not getting insurance, and the figure that's handed to them is really quite a small figure when you consider some of the damage that happens when water goes through your property. It doesn't take a lot of water to go through your property to actually cause an awful of damage, which could mean complete replacement of furniture, et cetera.

I don't think it's the only way to deal with this, but I think it is very welcome at the time. I think, when we go around talking to people directly after a storm, they really feel that that's something that is important to them. It does make them feel better. But whether it's the right level, and whether it is the right thing to do, I don't know. I think perhaps we could do with some better evidence around that to see what the impact here is, whether it's been helpful, or whether we should look at a different way of supporting people, or perhaps increasing those levels as well. Thank you.

Thank you.

Carolyn wants to come in. I'm aware that Ainsley might have wanted to come in as well, but, Carolyn, if you want to just raise your point first.

We've heard previously that local authorities don't have a statutory obligation to provide sandbags in advance of flooding, and I know that north Wales ones don't, because of resources, and I know they can't be stockpiled. Is there any funding available so that residents can buy storm guards, air bricks, anything for prevention, ready, beforehand? Is there Welsh Government funding to do this, or any other funding that you know of?

Matt, you respond initially to that, then I'll come to Ainsley to respond to the previous point.

Just on that point, we were successful within Powys through using the shared prosperity funding. So, we've managed to help 100 properties throughout Powys in terms of flood alleviation, particularly around flood guards to the doors of those properties. So, there is funding. And in terms of the sandbags, we do, as much as possible, support local residents with sandbags, where we can. So, that is something that we currently offer at the moment.

Ainsley, do you want to respond to, maybe, that one, and the previous point particularly?

The previous point, if that's okay, Chair, was on the funding to households following storms. Any funding that can be provided to residents hit by floods is clearly welcomed. The question for me is around the equity of that, because that money is often only released in certain named storms. I have examples within our communities here where we have a very localised storm that affects up to 10, 15, 20, 25 properties, but because the scale of that storm isn't such that it affects swathes across south Wales, or across Wales in its entirety, then that funding is not available. But, for those individuals, that property is flooded; it's still as significant for them as it is for 100 houses elsewhere. So, I think there's something there for us to look at possibly, in terms of that equity, and that's a key point for me.

Yes, you're right. That is an important point. Jackie then, briefly, and then we'll move on to Joyce.

Thank you. I just wanted to come back on the sandbags, because this is something that—. People see sandbags in flooding and think sandbags are just going to be distributed at any time for flooding. We have a massive problem here in Powys, because distributing them is a massive problem for us, as you can imagine. They might be stored at a depot that is 30 or 40 miles away from where the sandbags are needed. You're never going to get them there on time. So, we've looked at this very carefully, and we do have flood groups, and we want to extend this and expand this further. And our local flood groups and flood wardens, what they've been doing—since storm Burt this was, and we did this in storm Darragh and it worked very, very well—is local community councils or town councils actually went to the local hardware store, bought the sand, brought it back to the community, provided bags and allowed the community to come in and fill their own bags up and take them away if they needed them. It was much quicker. It worked very well. The community councils and the town councils took it out of their funds and were suggesting that might be something that they might like to consider in the future for their precept, because it is there on the doorstep for people who need it at the time. And I wonder whether that's something that other communities could consider, because people do want sandbags.

Yes, there are nodding heads here. You might not be able to see them, but, yes, thank you for that. Okay, we'll move on to Joyce.

Good afternoon. I'm going to talk about community and private sector involvement and whether there were community-level organisations like flood groups, and you've just mentioned them in Powys, and do they play a particular role in the response to storms, whether it's Burt or Darragh, and did you activate them at the time?

Matt, yes.

Thank you, Chair. Our approach in high-risk flood areas since storm Dennis in 2020 has been to work with local communities to develop flood groups, and then through these groups to identify and address the local mechanisms for flooding. So, for example, in Knighton, the situation is both a main river, which is NRW, and an ordinary watercourse, which is the local authority. So, with the group providing the focus for activity, both NRW and the local authority have carried out works. NRW are preparing a full flood report on the River Teme, and Powys County Council is devising a pumping response plan for our watercourse. In Crickhowell and Llangattock the flood groups are at the heart of the pumping response as well, and that's been really successful over the last few years. So, again, just to emphasise that community-level organisations are key to this.

Thank you. Jackie.

Thank you, Chair. Yes, this is very close to my heart. I'm a flood warden, and I know lots of other people are flood wardens as well, but they have proved very, very successful since storm Dennis. We had real big problems in storm Dennis. I'm sure some of you will remember the pictures of Crickhowell, what it looked like. We weren't ready, we were not resilient, and from that we've learnt that we have to become resilient in our local communities, and we've started to share that since storm Dennis. We now have a particularly successful flood warden committee, which we are just about to extend and make much more formal, and perhaps have it as a governance committee so that we can support and help local communities for them to become as resilient as possible. We know this is going to continue to happen, and we know that every storm is completely different to the last one, so you have to be ready in different ways, but local people can react much more quickly than the local authority. And whilst we should have—. Matt has told you about the pumps; that's another area where the shared prosperity fund helped us to fund those pumps. In the last three storms that we've had in the Crickhowell area and the Knighton area and elsewhere, they have been absolutely crucial to keep water out of properties and to keep people safe and to help them feel safe as well. And the feedback that we've had from those groups, from the flood groups and from those communities, has been very, very positive, but we had to build up that conversation around becoming resilient, knowing what's going to hit you if you get a certain amount of water coming out of the sky and it's going to continue to do that, what you can do about it and who is available locally. That has been extremely powerful and I think it's helped us to build up that conversation about what you can do to protect your property, and what we can do to help to facilitate that.

I think that's something that we've learnt specifically from storm Dennis and others—storm Frank was a big one that hit us, plus all the other main storms; I think we had 10 in one year—but specifically from storm Bert and storm Darragh as well. Both the two storms, storm Bert and storm Darragh, coming very closely together really focused attention on how supportive, how important, those flood groups are, and how we want to see that extended and supported into the future.

Okay. So, you've given an example. I went down to Crickhowell after one of your major storms and you were just starting to think in these terms as a consequence of needing really fast warning, so it's great to see that it's progressed and it's working. So, the question is: how are those community organisations going to fit into the wider response framework for extreme events, and should they be part of the thinking in those structures? I don't know whether anybody else here from Carmarthenshire is thinking in these terms, but at least they've heard what you're doing.

Kevin has got his hand up as well. Kevin, do you want to respond to that and the previous point?

Yes, Chair. So, the first part of the question, Blaenau Gwent up until storm Bert had nothing in place—there were no community-led flood groups in place—but what we have found since the event and with various meetings that we've had with the areas that were greatly impacted is that there is a willingness amongst the residents and others to look to develop these groups. And certainly, in terms of working with them going forward, that was the main focus of the discussions that we've had with them, as I said, post storm. So, I think, certainly in two of the main areas affected in Blaenau Gwent, that is something that we will be developing going forward.

Okay. There we are. Thank you. Anything from Carmarthenshire?

Fitting them into the structure?

Paul or Ainsley. Ainsley. We're waiting for the—. There we are.

We have, I suppose, a mixed picture in Carmarthenshire. We have a couple of examples where community groups work very well, and we've tried it in the past also, but I think the challenge usually is sustaining that community group as we go along, and different people will join and leave those groups at different times for different reasons, and that continuity can be a difficult challenge. But to answer the question whether they have a role going forward, yes, certainly, in terms of the intensity and the frequency of storms we have, I think those communities have got to be a bit more self-sufficient. And I think, as local authorities, we will try and facilitate and enable that and give them links into third sector organisations as well to help out. So, that's the way I see it going forward.

Okay. And were there any third sector or private organisations that offered any help or were continually involved in helping?

In the events that we've had, so storms Bert and Darragh, we certainly talked to them—and maybe Paul can come in on this one from a Carmarthenshire perspective—we did talk to those organisations and put them on standby, if needed. Paul, maybe.

Yes, if I can add to that, Ainsley, we had the Red Cross and the 4x4 Response Wales teams, which we work closely with. They form part of our response planning and they are put on standby. They may not be deployed, depending on the nature of what we're requiring those individuals to do, but they very much form that early stage engagement. Taking on the point as well in relation to local community groups and sustaining that professional response with them, we were looking at extending that to trialling a capabilities day for a number of voluntary groups that service the Dyfed-Powys local resilience forum area, to allow these groups, then, to be signposted into those other agencies—so, Red Cross, REACT, 4×4 Response Wales, a number of others. There are about 10 or 11 local voluntary groups that have been invited to the Dyfed-Powys Police headquarters for I think it's 20 March to showcase their skills and what they can do for communities and the emergency services and the local authorities. And from that, it's just developing awareness and knowledge, so that we can then feed local representatives into those groups, and I think that, for us, seems a way of looking forward for a long-term picture of engagement and developing skill sets within certain vulnerable communities

Thank you.

Excellent. Okay. Diolch yn fawr. Thank you very much. That's really useful information. We've got about 20 minutes left. I'm conscious that there's a lot that we still wish to cover, so maybe Members here, and those joining us as well, can be a bit focused, maybe. So, Delyth, over to you.

Diolch, Cadeirydd. I want to ask you about infrastructure and specifically about culverts. Are they of particular concern for you locally, please, in terms of flood management?

Yes, a lot of nodding heads.

Yes. Well, if you want me to be more specific. Oh, no—Matt.

Matt and then Ainsley.

Yes. Thank you for that question. Yes, it's definitely—. What we have noticed, particularly with the recent storms, is culverts that weren't really on our radar—when I say 'on our radar,' you know, in terms of regular monitoring—are becoming really tested. So, many of our culvert inlets have been fitted now with trash screens to minimised blockage within the culvert. But, obviously, we've got to try and manage that as best as possible. But it's definitely something that we are noticing that we've got to keep regular checks on, because the strain on the culverts now, particularly with these flash-type storms, is putting ever increasing pressures on the service to make sure that they are clear. So, that's it, Chair.

Yes. Thank you, Matt. Ainsley and then Kevin.

Diolch. Yes, very much the same picture as Matt outlined there: ageing infrastructure, so that brings a challenge, and probably underinvestment over the years as well, to be fair. That's the situation. But also the fact that—and Matt mentioned it briefly there also—we have such intense storms and high frequency that our culverts of old are not designed to cope with that volume of water, and that brings a challenge in itself, of course.

Indeed. Kevin.

Thank you, Chair. Yes, just to echo what the others have said, our culvert infrastructure is very old. The culverts and the intakes and debris screens are not to current standards. Many of them are in difficult-to-access and remote locations, so they're very difficult to maintain. During a storm event or pre-storm event, we go out, we check the culverts, but it's such a dynamic situation when you have storms of that intensity, things can happen so quickly, that, even with the pre-check regime that we have in place, culverts still block, and a lot of it is very much down to the fact that they are not to current standards, and the maintenance is so difficult for them. So, certainly, within Blaenau Gwent, the amount of investment that we need to consider to upgrade all of our culverts to current standards is—you know, I just can't put a figure on it at the moment.

Yes. Okay.

Just before Jackie comes in, I'd be interested—well, Jackie, if you'd like to answer this as well—do you think that there should be more targeted support provided nationally to take account of the fact that a lot of this infrastructure is Victorian?

I think so, because, to many people, it's not something that's at the forefront of their minds, really, because most of these structures are hidden. People are only aware of them when there's a problem. Yes, I think there does need to be a targeted approach to deal with this specific issue that we have.

Thank you, Kevin. Jackie, thank you for your patience.

Thank you. I'll try and keep it as brief as I can, but I absolutely agree that culverts are a problem. It's one of the issues that comes up in my portfolio from councillors around Powys—not only that culverts aren't being cleaned, but, when they're not being cleared out or supported, the impact that has on the road. We have, perhaps, a slightly different problem here in Powys because a lot of our country roads are very, very country roads, very rural, and we're getting a huge amount of water run-off off the mountains now that comes down into our very narrow, very small country roads, and impacting on the culverts, and we're getting a lot of land slips. And this is very historical, it's because these culverts haven't been cleared over a number of years because of cutback, so any focused support on that would be useful. But I think the infrastructure commission have looked at this as well, and I know we've given some support to them and some evidence to them as well.

Indeed.

Thank you. I'm aware of time, so I'm happy to move on. Diolch. Thank you.

Okay. Diolch. Carolyn.

Okay. It's been raised with me—. You talked about how highway gulleys are old and can't take the amount of water, but we're talking about private ditches and culverts as well, on private land, not necessarily just farmland, but others. So, under riparian law, they are responsible. In the past, councils might have cleared them, and now some fall under the responsibility of NRW, the council, but landowners. It was raised with us by Andrew Morgan that landowners don't always know their responsibility. Is that something you've come across, and do we need mapping so that people do know, in their local areas, who's responsible, so that they can get in touch with them, basically?

Kevin.

Yes, I think that's very much the case, that people aren't aware of their responsibilities under riparian ownership. I've got a case I'm dealing with at the moment where the landowner expects us to go in and do maintenance works on the culvert, and it's well within his land, the culverts are his property, it's clearly his responsibility, but, yes, people believe that the local authority is responsible for maintaining all culverts, and they clearly aren't aware of what they should be doing.

Can I just ask you, would it help if NRW or the Welsh Government produced some information for local authorities to have to hand out to landowners to say, 'You are responsible'? Would that help?

Yes, I think it would be. I think it would be very useful.

Matt.

Just to pick up and very much echo what Kevin has said, I would welcome that in terms of landowners and having that mapping so that people are aware of their responsibility, because, as Kevin said, we've got many who are just not aware of it, so any awareness on this would be welcomed.

Jackie.

Just to add to that quickly, I think we've recognised that, as a local authority, we have a responsibility to raise awareness around landowners, and again, you can imagine, we've got a massive amount of land here—we're a third of the land mass in Wales, so there's a lot of land out there. One of the things that we want to do is to actually raise that issue, raise awareness, but any support that we can have from the Welsh Government to back that up would be very, very welcome.

There we are. Thank you very much. Can I ask whether you feel that the Welsh Government's current approach to funding flood mitigation projects, which, of course, involves annual bidding by risk management authorities, has been effective, do you think, in improving resilience? Matt.

Yes. I suppose we would always welcome more, but in terms of the funding we do get, we do welcome it. I think, sometimes, and I've spoken for the team, that some of the issues can be being able to spend that money in time. I know it sounds a bit daft, but sometimes, as we come to year end, it's having that flexibility, so that we can off-set it against, perhaps, other schemes, so that we can carry it forward. So, I think they were just some of the, perhaps, limitations of it, but, that said, we do welcome all the support that the Welsh Government do give us.

And Ainsley.

Similarly, Chair, we welcome what we get from the Welsh Government on this basis. The annual funding is an issue. It's difficult to plan ahead, to a great extent, but also it can be a long-winded process, and I think this is where communities get frustrated and don't understand the process of bidding for capital money to upgrade in the aftermath of a flood. So, I've got examples whereby storm Callum hit us here in Carmarthenshire quite extensively, and Ceredigion, for that matter, and I'm still dealing with issues in the communities of Llanybydder, Llandysul, Pont-tyweli, since 2018, and that takes a long time to get through in terms of the initial scoping of that work, with the feasibility, detailed design, and even then there's no guarantee that the money will come. So, that is a particular challenge for us.

Okay. Diolch yn fawr iawn. Delyth.

Diolch. We’re being warned all the time that we can expect the intensity of these storms, and the frequency of them as well, to increase. Do you feel that you, locally, are in a good position to deal with those kinds of changes, which is, I know, a rather massive question? Forgive me.

Jackie.

Yes, I think that’s an absolutely massive question. I think we’ve got to learn how to support our communities. We’ve got to, I think, as local authorities, understand what their expectations are, and what they think is going to happen, because, if we have that conversation with them, I think, together, we can start looking at what we do with risk and adaptation. It’s been a big area that I’ve been very concerned about as a portfolio holder, working alongside the WLGA, who have been given quite a lot of support, a lot of training around how local authorities adapt to what’s coming ahead of us. We don’t know. As storm Bert showed us, we really don’t know what’s going to happen and when it’s going to happen, and it can be very, very localised. But I think the only certainty is that we know it’s going to continue to happen and we’ve got to do something about it. So, it’s understanding the risk. It’s understanding the adaptations that we need. But don’t ignore the fact that there are other elements that we’ve got to put in the mix here—it’s reducing our carbon, getting to net zero by 2030. It’s all part of this, and we can’t ignore that. But it’s a huge question, and I don’t think any of us have got an answer to it at the moment. I think we’ve just got to keep working together, working with our communities, and seeing what we can do together.

There we are. Well, Ainsley's going to try and answer, I think. [Laughter.]

I can't promise that, Chair. [Laughter.] It’s multifaceted, multilayered, and, I think, it’s probably a reflection on what we’ve discussed here this morning—different ways of approaching the problem, be that engineering solutions, nature-based solutions, community help. So, we won’t solve all the problems, clearly, but I think we need to look at the way we approach things, and part of that will be having these communities to understand what we can and what we can’t do. Equally, for us here in Carmarthenshire and the Dyfed Powys region, we have a fair bit of coastline to contend with as well, and that’s another challenge for us, of course, in a similar way.

Diolch yn fawr.

Thank you.

Okay. Thank you. Just to Powys specifically on this one, you've highlighted your limited opportunities to support communities at risk of main river flooding, given, of course, that Natural Resources Wales is the risk management authority in those locations. Could you just elaborate a little bit about how you work with NRW to support communities impacted in those areas, or those circumstances? Matt.

Yes, so just picking Crickhowell as an example, we work closely with NRW, and I and Councillor Jackie were talking earlier that, I think, one of the big things now for us within Powys, given the size of Powys, is to set up quite a formal flood group, and that will include NRW in terms of having to deal with those local issues. But, in terms of how we deal with it, in Crickhowell, we’ve got the issue with the community and NRW, and also using the local pumps. And that’s something that we’ve done in partnership with NRW. So, that’s just an example of where we can introduce initiatives that will benefit the community. There are times, ultimately, when that river does overtop the bridge, and, in which case, through NRW’s communications, it’s about evacuation then, and, obviously, working with the communities to make them safe. But, yes, that work is ongoing.

And Jackie as well, maybe you can just reflect a little bit on—. We touched on this slightly earlier, didn’t we, about the public’s understanding of who’s responsible, and where and when, and, obviously, that’s another barrier that has to be tackled.

Thank you. That’s exactly what I was going to comment on, Chair. I think we spend a lot of our time explaining to the public the difference between the local authority’s responsibility and NRW’s responsibility. And, of course, we have another mix in here—the main rivers. So, you’ve got the Wye, the Severn, the Usk. There are lots of rivers that NRW have control over, but the streams that run into them, we have responsibility for those, and that’s not very well understood. And, sometimes, it’s not really well understood by us either. So, I do think that we do need to work much more closely in partnership with NRW, and that there's an expectation that NRW understand that we are the public face and we're the ones that are accountable. I often feel that NRW can hide behind a lot, where we can't, and I think we have to have a better understanding between the two organisations about what we can—. Again, I come back to this togetherness. We can't do this on our own. We have to do it together, and I do think we have to find a better way of working across local authorities as a whole across Wales, and NRW as a whole across Wales.

NRW come in for a lot of bashing, and I see it, but they can disappear into the ether, they can go away, whereas people like me and other councillors, we're in the front line the whole of the time, and I just wonder whether we could have a lot better co-operation, a lot better understanding about what our roles are, so that the public understand that as well and they can see where they need to go or where they have to go to those different places. I mean, we do whatever we can to support them and help them understand that, and we've done a lot of that, as Matt said, in Crickhowell. Just a quick example: after storm Darragh, when mostly we had trees falling, they all came up against the bridges. There was a massive amount of debris on those bridges, in Crickhowell specifically because it is such an iconic bridge, and everybody was screaming and shouting at us, 'We've got to get this out. We've got to get this out. We've got to do this, we've got to do that.' And we had to explain to them what the different roles and responsibilities are: 'On the edge, it's NRW. On the bridge, it's us. We're trying to do this and we're trying to do that.' It is quite difficult and it's quite stressful for all of us, so getting that information out there would be crucially important, I think, but also to understand that we're partners.

Yes, indeed. Okay. There's plenty of food for thought there. Thank you for that. Ainsley.

Yes, there is definitely confusion about responsibilities out there, and, to be fair, we work in Carmarthenshire quite well with the local team from NRW, but I think the issue comes in our local authority's responsibility under the Flood and Water Management Act 2010 in terms of what we call section 19 investigations. Once a flooding event hits above a certain threshold, as the local authority we're obliged to investigate the causes of the flood event. Once we do that and we find root causes, of course some of those assets will be within others' gift to deal with, such as Dŵr Cymru Welsh Water and NRW. What we find then is that the expectation is on the local authority to address those points, whereby NRW will have a different programme, a different set of resourcing to us, and they never dovetail together to bring a solution to the table, and hence my example earlier of still dealing with storm Callum on that basis.

Okay. Diolch yn fawr. There's a clear message for us there. Just finally, then—we've literally got two minutes left, so we'll have to be brief on this one—the National Infrastructure Commission for Wales, of course, has highlighted the need for a greater emphasis on natural flood management. We've heard it as well in other evidence that we've received as part of this work. Very briefly from each of you, maybe could you just explain to us whether you're involved in any such schemes in your respective authorities? Jackie, first of all, then, and then we'll come to Ainsley and then Kevin to finish.

Yes. I'll be very brief. Yes, we are heavily involved, and it is something that I see as the most important thing for us in Powys, to understand and to be able to deliver on natural or nature-based solutions, bringing into that the landowners, farmers, local communities to understand what nature-based solutions mean. There is evidence in the pack that we sent to you. I hope you'll be able to read that. We want to extend and expand on that across the whole of the county and in different ways, but definitely take on landowners, find a way of actually supporting them and providing them with the money they need to deliver that as well. So, it's not just funding, but lots of other things. But there are lots of ideas, I think you'll see, in our pack, and I hope you're able to read that and perhaps come back to us and we'll share more of that information with you as well.

Indeed. Thank you. Thank you for that. Ainsley, and then Kevin to conclude.

Yes, similarly, we are involved in that, and we do have examples of a couple of schemes where we've actually implemented that. But I think it needs to be more widespread and built into our suite of solutions, if you like, that natural solutions are part of our thinking, albeit combined with engineering solutions as well.

Yes. Okay. Diolch yn fawr. And finally, then, Kevin.

We don't have any natural flood solutions at the moment within Blaenau Gwent, but it's something we are looking at, and want to look at in detail, because some of the issues that we have with the culverts and their capacity issues, we're unable to do anything in terms of upgrading these culverts because of the physical constraints of where they are. But certainly looking at the upper catchments and seeing if we can manage the water up there, to delay the discharge to lessen the peak flows during the storm event, will all help to reduce the impact on those culverts and deal with the capacity issues that they have.

Excellent, okay. Well, can I thank you all for joining us? We really do appreciate you giving us your time, and the evidence that you've both shared with us today, but previously as well in written form. Diolch yn fawr iawn. You will be sent a draft copy of the transcript to check for accuracy, but with that, diolch o galon, thank you very much. Our committee will continue whilst you leave us. But diolch yn fawr iawn.

Thank you very much.

Thank you very much.

Our next item is papers to note, of course, item 5. Are Members content to note them collectively together? Yes? Delyth, yes, please.

I think it's actually not one of these papers to note, but it's a paper that will be coming in the future, because I think it might have come in after the deadline, but because of the timeliness of it, could I just mention something now? Would that be all right? I know that we have been written to as a committee about the current situation at Ffos-y-fran and it's something that we have undertaken work on. There is a revised restoration plan that has been put forward that confirms a lot of the fears that we as a committee had put forward, and I'd be keen for us as a committee, in the private session, to discuss what action we could take, but I know that there'll be a paper in future sessions for us to note officially about that.

Okay, thank you for noting that. And with that noted, I'm sure Members are happy to note the papers before us as well. Diolch yn fawr.

Okay. We'll move into private session.

So, in accordance with Standing Order 17.42(vi) and (ix), I propose that the committee resolves to meet in private for the remainder of the meeting if Members are content. Yes, all happy. Thank you very much. We'll wait a few seconds before we enter into private session.