E3 - Terms of Reference

• to provide expert industry-wide advice to the Government, regulators and civil authorities in their development of comprehensive, regularly-updated contingency plans (based on the Government's 'common architecture') for tackling a large-scale gas supply failure, the wider consequences of the state of emergency resulting from such a failure, and the safe restoration of supplies to individual consumers;
• specifically as regards those aspects of the contingency planning which entail the gas industry: to represent the gas industry in the development of appropriate governance arrangements, including the necessary memoranda of understanding; in reviewing, adapting and where necessary developing, the principles and any related protocols for dealing with the suspension of normal commercial arrangements and the consequent problems; and in devising the arrangements for dealing with all consumer-facing activities, communications and safety procedures (this latter, in consultation with energywatch and the HSE, and in close coordination with the other utilities, notably electricity);
• when these contingency plans have been prepared, to co-ordinate the programmes required to put the gas industry into a continuing state of readiness; and to this end, to promote a full understanding throughout the British gas industry of the responsibilities of the individual participants, so that collectively and individually they are ready and capable of playing their parts in contributing to the tackling of a large-scale gas supply failure;
• and in the same context, to co-ordinate the regular review and updating of the contingency plans and the state of readiness of the industry's participants, taking full account of changes in the structure of the industry and the addition or departure of individual companies; and to test this and identify any shortcomings through simulation exercises undertaken in conjunction with the relevant parts of Government, central and regional, and the Civil Authorities; Civil Authorities;
• to provide Transco and the Network Emergency Co-ordinator (resourced from Transco) with a forum for reviewing the procedures and priorities governing the reinstatement of gas supplies, having regard to the inter-relationships with electricity supplies, and to the trade-offs between the various threats to human life and safety in the state of emergency which would result from a large-scale gas supply failure;
  Mitigating the risk of a large-scale gas supply failure
• working with the DTI, HSE and Ofgem, to provide expert industry-wide advice on factors - including any new or emerging developments - that could lead to large-scale gas supply failures, the related risks, and possible measures for mitigating the risk of such failures