CA email NPTCBC -WG Tips Project - Data Cleanse progress and winter tip Inspections requests or reports.

Hi all I appreciate this email arrives whilst C19 continues to impact on our respective personal and professional lives and has necessitated our priorities and working practices adapting to new ways of working. This said, thank you for your on-going support for the WG Tips Project as it continues along it path to towards providing the public and ministers with assurances on mining waste tip safety. Our work continues aligned to the Taskforce objectives and operationally we are currently focussing on two crucial aspects of the project:

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1. Assisting with the data cleanse activities following the recent series of Local Authority (LA) meetings during July and August. All of the project objectives require accurate up to date information to ensure the Taskforce can focus on the appropriate risks and locations, hence the importance of the data cleanse. I hope your data cleanse is progressing well to ensure we can finalise the respective numbers of each risk category tip (i.e. D/C/B/A/R) and the ownership details of each tip with your respective boundary. The completion target remains no later than 3 months after your respective data cleanse project meeting. If you require assistance or resource to complete this task, please contact us. 2. Preparing an inspection schedule for the ‘pre-winter inspections’ of D and C category tips (the higher risk tips – it would be expected that these higher risk tips have a more frequent tip inspections). This will give confidence and ensure that appropriate risks are reviewed prior to the onset of winter weather season. I wish to remind you all, that we have tip inspectors who have the experience and capacity to undertake inspections on your behalf, with the inspection costs covered by the project. We have had several LA requests for assistance and these inspections have been incorporated in our winter inspection schedule. Thank you for these early requests which we will coordinate with your inspection teams and provide a written inspection report upon completion. These inspections can also be undertaken jointly if you wish a degree of training/knowledge transfer to be incorporated with the inspection. If you are undertaking your own C/D inspections prior to winter then the Taskforce have requested copies of these inspection reports to confirm accurate tip inspection numbers and compliance confirmation can be given to the FM/Senedd. The Taskforce has been asked to track and confirm numbers of inspections prior to winter. Please also be aware that; The Taskforce has invited 3 x LA’s to its latest technical meeting along with other WG colleagues. Project awareness/engagement has commenced with the 4 x Welsh Local Resilience Forums to ensure emergency planning documentation is appropriate to cover the potential risks associated with tip failure. As always, either myself or are happy to take tip related calls associated with any of the above or the project as a whole, including assistance requests for the data cleanse task or the winter inspection schedules.