Transcript

Good evening, Councillors and those watching tonight's committee. Welcome to the meeting of the Transport Committee. This meeting is being webcast because I just heard myself through something else. Some offices may be accessing virtually, which is certainly the case for one of our papers this evening. So please do bear with us if you experience any technical difficulties. My name is Councillor Fraser. I'm chair of the Transport Committee. Welcome this evening and especially welcome to Councillor Austin, who's joining us for his first committee meeting of the Transport Committee this evening. Members of the committee, I'm going to move to my left in a minute so that you can introduce yourself. Please turn on your microphone and confirm your attendance. Once you've confirmed your attendance, please remember to switch off your microphone. So I'll go to my left now. Councillor Milchas. Hello, Councillor Milchas, Trinity Ward. Tony Bilton, Battersea Park Ward in Battersea. Anna Marie Crichard, Tooty Beck Ward. Councillor Nick Austin, West Putney Ward. Councillor John Lockhart, Thamesfield Ward, Putney. Thank you. And also in terms of this evening is Councillor Yates, the cabinet member for transport. Apologies for absence this evening have been received from Councillor Apps, Councillor Hamilton, Councillor de Sejour and Councillor Tiller. Members are reminded to ensure that your microphone is turned off unless you're speaking. When you're called to speak, please do state your name and please bear in mind that this committee must remain core at all times. We also have a number of officers present this evening who will introduce themselves when we arrive at their papers. So owing to various elections, it's been a little while since we we last met, but the minutes of the last meeting for those around and can remember back that far were held of the meeting held on Monday, the 19th of February have been circulated. Please can I accept those as as accurate? Agreed. Thank you, councillors. Agenda item two is how do we have any declarations of interest this evening? No, thank you. So that's our preamble done. So now I'm going to move on to the substantive business. This evening is agenda item three. We have the budget monitoring report for 2024 and 2025. I'm now going to move to Mr. Moylan for that. Thank you very much, Councillor. Good evening. My name is Alex Moylan. I'm the head of finance and performance for the Environment and Community Services Directorate. This report sets out the revenue budget monitoring for the quarter one for the current financial year, so that's 2024, 2025. The summary of the position is set out just under paragraph two. So we're in a fortunate position to be on budget or expected to be on budget for the current financial year. The breakdown is further set out within appendix A as to the individual services and then set out within the body of the report is information explaining the movements and variances between budgets for different service areas. So I wanted to highlight a couple of things within the parking service, so that sits within traffic and engineering within the table on page two. This is a reasonably large area of volatility for the council, so whilst we're at the moment expecting to see a non-budget position, this is a large area and so can vary quite a lot, particularly as we've seen in recent days, the oil price has significantly increased and, therefore, that will lead or is likely to lead to an impact on pump prices and, therefore, decisions that people make as to the mode of transport over time. Within the place division, I also wanted to highlight that there's a sort of a common theme throughout some of the pressures within the services within place and it's a common recruitment pressure and that's a national issue, being able to recruit specialist planning officers has proved difficult and, therefore, when you are unable to recruit conventionally, you are sometimes forced to go through an agency route to proceed with bringing members of staff in. The service has undertaken a considerable amount of work, working with our HR and recruitments team to develop kind of a bespoke approach to bringing people in, so we've established quite recently a sort of specialist website where sort of covering all of the planning related services, offering recruitment information within that website to try and drive engagement and, amongst other things, there's obviously an intention to recruit the next generation of planners and they have brought in a pathway to planning platform, bringing in graduates and apprentices to try and alleviate that pressure, but I will be very happy to answer any questions that people may have. Thank you very much. Councillor Bailton, I saw you first. Thank you. Thanks for that introduction. I'm the chair of the planning applications subcommittee, so I guess I'm the politician with the most responsibility for the areas covered in paragraphs 8, 9, 10, I think it is, maybe 11 as well, 8, 9, 10, 11. We have a slight problem there. I was particularly interested in this last cycle of planning application meetings that we lost an appeal and costs were awarded against us. It was actually quite a low level of costs. It was in five figures, I think. Low five figures. I imagine that comes out of this budget and tell me if we were to lose a very large one and there's several very large ones that that would have been possible. Since this happened, I suppose I can quote this one, supposing the All England Lawn Tennis Club had gone for costs and won it, the costs would have been horrendous. Seven figures or eight figures or whatever it is. Where does that come from? The budget is not obviously big enough. It would have to be translated from somewhere else, I guess. Thank you for that question. I think at that point, in an accounting perspective, we would intend to record the cost and report it against the department and service that it is in relation to. I mean, I think there will be areas where the Council will set aside funding for unexpected events, certain provisions. In that instance, if it was a known issue, it might have featured as part of a legal provision that the Council would set aside as part of the year-end process. I'm not sure that it did, but I can go back and check. But if there isn't a specified budget and there's no available provision, then that would just be an area where the Council has to incur the cost. I suspect it would come out of one of the reserves. There's always a contingency reserve for things like that, isn't there? Yes, thank you. Councillor Critchard. Thank you. Picking up on the planning theme, I'm quite interested in Appendix B. We've got a table showing the differences in planning applications, so we've got the two previous years plus quarter one, so 25 per cent of this year. Firstly, could you give us and any viewers an indication of what constitutes a major application and what constitutes a minor application? And I've noticed it looks like we're on track to be having more major applications this year, which I think are the ones that generate more community infrastructure levy that the Council can then use for other projects. There is indeed a threshold. Off the top of my head, I believe it might refer to I would probably say I would need to go back to you to check the threshold. I think there would be a classification on number of dwellings, so more than ten would probably sit within median, but I would need to go back and ask someone. There may be someone around the table who knows the answer. I don't know whether Paul might know the answer. Apologies, Mr Chadwick. It's okay. I think you're right with the ten, but we can get back via Christine Cook. Councillor Locker. Sorry, I have a few questions, so I'll try and group them. If I try to follow on with the planning ones. It struck me in paragraph 7, because it's sort of labeled the chief executive group, but it's quite a big overspend, isn't it? Almost 400,000 pounds. So I was sort of looking at the reasons for that, and I can see that there is comment about the number of applications. So I went to appendix B, has been picked up by Councillor Critchard, but I didn't understand the table, because there is this category called other in paragraph 3 of appendix B, which is by far and away the biggest category, and it's not defined anywhere in the appendix. So can you begin by telling me what that is? Thank you, Councillor. Yes. Apologies for the not particularly helpful table. Other will include primarily residential applications and also minor change of use. Thank you. That helps. And I think in future if we could just define that, that would be helpful. It also struck me looking at appendix B that there wasn't any revenue income information anywhere, so I can't tell the price of a minor application, an other application or anything else, and I can't see what the levels of income are for any of those categories. I think it would be helpful in future to see that. Thank you, Councillor, and can I clarify, when I said residential at the previous question, I meant a householder application rather than a major residential approach. You are correct. The fees that people will be charged for a planning application will vary significantly depending on the type of planning application. We have a fees and charges schedule that is brought to this committee every cycle, but we won't include the statutory planning fees as those are set nationally. I can make up the table for the following committee cycle to include a little bit more information about the breakdown of that income by type. For a major application it is more likely that the Council will have engaged in a pre-app agreement with a developer, and therefore the developer will pay a contribution to cover the cost of the officer time for that work, so they will generally have a larger fee structure. For the householder applications, we typically run at a loss for the cost that we have to incur going through the planning application from start to finish, whereas for major applications they will typically cover the cost of time involved. So this is one of the pressures that we have where we get a change in the volumes of the respective types of applications. If we have a high volume of householder applications that leads to a greater burden on the cost of the service without a corresponding level of fee income to compensate. Thank you. And these are some of my thoughts in terms of suggestions for the future to just make it easier to read. I was scratching my head, because in paragraph 2, the final sentence says that the fees were increased by 25% for minor and householder applications and 35% for major applications. Yet I think in the narrative, and I can't remember which paragraph it talks about, that this area has not made the income that was expected, it talks about a reduction in the overall number of applications. But when I added them up, the number of applications have only dropped total applications in that table between 2022, '23, to '23, to '24 by 5%. Thank you for that. So yes, the increase in planning fees was a change that was put through to the statutory planning fees, and it took effect in December 2023, '24. So previously they had not changed since, I think it was in 2016, so quite a long lead time where we were stuck with fees that did not meet the cost of the application. And as part of the consultation, the Council made clear that it was the residential and other areas that, or rather the householder application, which received a lower increase, was part of the budget pressure. In the earlier part of the committee paper where I refer to the assumptions made as part of budget setting, so we were moving out of a period of very significant inflation, and at that point the applications were quite depressed, and then we assumed a level of increase in those applications. Whilst we have seen some increase, and that is positive, it's not at the level that we had assumed as part of the budget setting. But that will happen with almost any service where there is a degree of volatility and the level of demand for that process. Councillor Critchard, you want to come back? Yes, thank you. Moving on to another aspect of the budget setting, I noticed in paragraph 16, the fact that TFL's fares have been frozen has actually given us a benefit with not having to pay as much for the Freedom Passes, and we've actually had a rebate, and I was just thinking that seems like very good news. It is good news, yes, absolutely. Thank you, Councillor. As it sets out in the report, typically you would have a rolling balance that would roll over to next year. I think because of the scale of this, it was agreed it's sensible to rebate to the borough. Councillor Locker? Sorry to just go back. Thank you very much for the verbal update you gave me. That makes a lot more sense than it did when I was reading the paper. If I could sort of turn to a positive, or what I think might be an opportunity now, the paper talks about the new software that's being implemented and the opportunity for efficiency. So I'd just like to ask, because presumably there is a business case that was signed off to invest in this new software, what are the efficiencies that we are expecting from it, and will we be tracking that so in next year's paper, or version of this paper, that we can see the savings that we've made? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor. You mentioned the original business case for this. I think the original was established probably about six or seven years ago. So it is a very long-standing intention to develop the combined planning system, so obviously we're very positive that we're reaching the end of this. I think it's a good practice as part of all major software implementations or major projects to have that ongoing review process, and I'm sure that will be the case as part of this, that there will be a review of what the software was intended to achieve, both in terms of the capacity for the planners to offer a better service, but also in terms of the capacity for the team to either make efficiencies or to free up officer time to focus on other areas. So I'm sure that will be something that will be considered internally by the officer group. Thank you. Councillor Belton. I can assure Councillor Locker, I'm not sure there's been on the planning applications committee, at least for a long, never, right? I think the planning applications committee from my experience, and I suspect Councillor Critchard's experience, the actual members use the software much more in their day-to-day work, because we always look at the plans and the diagrams on the system. And I can assure him that members of both sides have been desperate for upgrade for years. So your side was certainly with us on this years before the last election. Councillor Locker. I thank Councillor Belton for that reassurance. Can I move on to my next theme? Yeah, go on. Sorry. So I think this is probably one for the cabinet member, actually, or the next couple for the cabinet member. Paragraph five talks about the fact that we're seeing changes in motorists' behaviour. And I think this is sort of code for people are giving up cars or reducing the number of cars that they've got. They're driving less and parking less. And that's having an impact on the amount of parking income levels. So I think this is a really big strategic question, actually, for the Council in terms of what are we going to do to fill that funding gap in future years? People are behaving in the way that we want them to, in the way that we've encouraged them to. So how are we going to fill that funding gap? Is it the Council's policy to just continue to increase the parking charges by above inflation in future years? Thank you, Councillor Locker. First of all, I think we should go to Mr Tiddley for some information on car usage and ownership trends in Wandsworth. I think that would be helpful. Thank you, Chair. David Tiddley, the Head of Transport Strategy. It's certainly the case, Councillor, that the traffic volumes in Wandsworth have been pretty flat for some some years. There is, however, still substantial demand for parking, and that will remain for the foreseeable future. A lot of the traffic that comes into the borough is through traffic and some of that's reducing. Other movements are reducing as well, but primarily it will still be a significant demand for parking in the borough. The first and foremost requirement of the Council is to ensure it covers its costs of enforcing and delivering a parking service, and so that will be the thing that will drive us going forward. There will be other forms of income that come on stream as parking from car parking reduces. So, for example, we have revenue sharing agreements with electric vehicle charge point providers, the e-bike operators will be providing services and things like that. So there will be some other forms of income that will come in and take place of some of that parking income. Thank you. Thank you. Councillor Belton. To help Councillor Locker's equation, I think one thing he left out was the population increase in Wandsworth has been about 10 per cent in over the last 20-odd years. So whilst usage on a one person by person basis has gone down, it's not gone down as much as it might appear because of the number of people who have gone up quite substantially. And I thank Mr Tiddley and Councillor Belton for those points. But my point is this. Paragraph 5 begins, the largest area of risk and volatility within the traffic and engineering is for parking income. It then talks about an additional budget provision of £2 million was added in February 24/25. What are we going to do year after year when that income goes down by £2 million or more? Because that's going to come out of the transport budget for the Council. This is an area I think the Council needs to be planning ahead for and thinking about now. Mr Moylan. Thank you. Just to clarify, I think it is worth pointing out that we wouldn't expect there to be a £2 million decline in parking income year on year. I think that would be vastly in excess of anything we would assume. I think we have seen trends over the last 10 years in terms of volume of cars. But nothing as significantly excessive as you have mentioned. I think you have mentioned 5 per cent in relation to planning. Over the last nine years I think vehicle miles have dropped by 5 per cent within the borough, so nothing of that scale. Thank you. Just seeing a final check around to see if there are any other questions on this paper. Have you got a separate theme, Councillor? I will allow you because your numbers are down. I have just one more, which is to page 8, to ask the cabinet member because I assume the cabinet member is obviously very familiar with the budgets and this paper and signed it off. Could she just explain to the committee why on engineering 3 of that table, road safety, we are spending less money on road safety this year than the prior year? Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Locker. I think we will need to turn to officers for specifics on that budget line. Regarding road safety, we are doing a whole number of things to improve road safety, which we have previously discussed in this committee. For example, the committee unanimously agreed to move to the detailed design and implementation of the Queenstown road scheme between Queen's Circus and Chelsea Bridge, which will include the provision of two high quality cycle lanes, which should reduce accidents on that stretch of road where we do have accident levels that are of concern. We are going to be coming later in this agenda to the highways paper, where the significant investment in resurfacing our roads and pavements, again, should help to improve safety for all road users. But on the specifics of your question, I think we need to turn to Mr. Moylan. Thank you, Councillor. It's probably worth pointing out that the budget from last year has increased to this year, so I don't think it's appropriate to say we are going to have spent less. Last year within the service, we will have allocations from different areas and we will probably have had a small overspend on previous year, I'm afraid. I don't recall the last year, but in budgetary terms, we have increased it from last year to this year, and this only covers the revenue by the budgets, the significant areas of capital as well. Thank you. Councillor Crichard, did you want to come in there? Yes, thank you. I would like to sort of check, though, that obviously that's the budget, but presumably if something came up, a big scheme that came up that we really felt needed to be done in order to improve road safety, one that's new we hadn't planned for, presumably that's the sort of thing we would do as an administration. We would do our best to try to make sure that those schemes were put forward. Is that a reasonable question? And I'm aiming that at Councillor Yates. Yes, of course, Councillor Crichard. Alex made it really important, sorry, Mr Molyneux made a very important point there. We're looking at the revenue budget, and the point that I was making previously is that there are many things we're doing through the capital budget with our capital schemes that will improve road safety, and it is a priority, and if there are important measures that we need to take that we're not taking, then of course we would look at those. Thank you, Councillor. Councillor Locker. Thank you, everybody, for their answers. I think what I'd find helpful is perhaps if someone just offline dropped me a detail of what's included in that spend, so what was included in the 469,000 last year and what's in the 423,000 this year, I appreciate that obviously capital programmes and schemes, a big important part of them when we're assessing them should be that they improve safety, but I also just want to check that we're not cutting back on things like cycle training, the junior citizens programmes and all of those sorts of things which are normally funded by the revenue side of the budget. Thank you. Thanks, Councillor Locker. I've got some officer movement down the table, so Mr Chung is going to come back on that point. Henry Chung, Assistant Director of Engineering. Just regarding the engineering-free road safety budget, it is a revenue budget. It's operating covering staff costs and general minor works relating to road safety. The reason the forecast is currently less is because we've had a member of staff down, and that has meant that we're not forecasting as much spend as we would have done in previous years. Thank you. And Mr Tilly, did you want to add anything on cycle training, because I know we are continuing that as well. I'd just make a couple of points. First of all, the cycle training budget is protected and funded as it has been for previous years, and I'd also probably just point out that there are other lines in the budget which also support road safety. So my own team in the transport strategy budget, for example, quite a significant amount of the work that the transport strategy team deals with is related to particularly school travel, school streets and things like that. So that doesn't actually come out of the road safety line, but it comes out of the transport strategy line. Great. Thank you, Councillors and officers for those explanations. That paper is for information only. Can I accept that it's been agreed or accepted? Thank you, Councillors. And on the subject of continuing with bikes, we're now going to move back to Mr Tilly for an update on bike hangers, please. Thank you, Chair. Hopefully the report is self explanatory. The council has a very active program of the delivery of secure bike storage, particularly on cycle hangers. There are currently 229 on the streets plus a number on council estates. The report updates committee to just advise you that there are currently 120 additional hangers subject to current consultation. That consultation is currently running live and expires at the end of September. Subject to that, those 120 bays will be installed. And then as soon after that, we plan another consultation on another 100 bays, another 100 hangers. And also the report also highlights that we plan 100 hangers in council housing estates as well. And I think I'm unaware of any London borough with such an extensive program at the moment. I might be wrong, but I certainly don't think I am. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Tilly. We all think bike hangers are great. Councillor Austin, your first question. Thank you. I thought I'd jump in first before my questions get answered or asked. I've actually got a point you can take offline. There's been 4,634 bike hanger requests. Can I have a breakdown of that by ward? Thank you. First question answered swiftly. Councillor Critchard. Thank you very much. Page 14, paragraph 20. Just going to say really welcome the reducing in the costs for bike hangers for lower income residents. And I just wanted to check whether the ask for a bit more about the 50% discount, because it wasn't 100% clear. Is it the third and subsequent one? So if it's parents plus children, then they'll start to get them. We think it would work on every member of the household would get the 50% discount, not just the extra one. Gosh, that's even better than I anticipated. I read it like that and then I thought, no, that can't be the case. Oh, that sounds really great. Thank you. And I mean, that must be really, I would have thought that's a great incentive to encourage families to all cycle together, especially if they, we did once have eight bicycles in our house, only four on the ground floor, but it's a lot to have lying all over a house with a family. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Belton. So I'm just intrigued by how this works in financial terms. As I understand it, and I wasn't on the committee when these were initiated, so I could be wrong. The contract for providing this was won by a tender and we don't get any income directly for it, so the income, I imagine, goes to the provider for providing the facility and the management thereof. Why should they, did we negotiate with them about the discount or did they volunteer it? Could we negotiate more or could we negotiate less? So how did it work? Yes, we simply negotiated it. I mean, we don't expect there to be huge numbers of four or five person families seeking large numbers of the discount, but yes, we've spoken to the operators about it and they're happy to help us deliver it. In, sorry, if I just continue, in my ward and nowadays I don't think it's particularly exceptional, but in all the big flats, which I'm sure you know, all around Battersea Park, there are many households with shared renting, where I could take you to two straight away this evening, if you wanted, was like Councillor Critchard mentioned, lots of bikes in the place, because they're all young, 20 year old, high earners, cycle to work. They don't all get coveted by this, do they? No. Councillor Milakas? Just want to, I guess, welcome the particular focus on housing estates as well and just ask officers if they see that having any positive impact on improving accessibility and safety in stairways and corridors where bikes are often locked up. Clearly yes is the short answer to that, Councillor. Obviously, what we don't want to see are people carrying their bikes up stairways and having them on balconies and all the rest of it, if we can provide good quality, secure cycle parking at ground floor level that's easy to get into and get out of, then that's fine and that's what we're aiming to do. Thank you, Councillor Austin. Thank you very much. Just carrying on from that point, actually, I was doing my rounds around West Putney at 6.30 this morning and the hangars there, there are two on Courses Road which are empty. There are two on Tilsie Road which only have two bikes in them. There is one on Hayworth Yard that's empty. The question is, we're seeing even when the hangars are in place, like there are five on the Ashburton South estate currently that are not half full, then the uptake is not being taken for them. What would you put that down to? I'll take a punt with the £25 or £50 per key charge potentially as these are lower income areas in general with household income and what more can we do, maybe putting more codes in instead of the keys in order to try and increase this uptake. I absolutely agree with the point with regards to fire safety and it's something that we need to very seriously look at. But in my ward, the hangars are in place but they're not being taken up as and offered. I think there are a couple of things there worth highlighting. The hangars which are put in on street, despite having what I would call a relatively expensive charge, are basically full and you can't find a space in them. The hangars that get put on the estates, despite generally being managed by the estate office without a charge, some of those are less used and we'll be working with the estates to find out exactly why that is the case, trying to make the barrier of entry lower again by doing away with keys or charges for keys and also of course lots of those residents would be likely to be eligible for the access for all schemes coming forward and that's likely to include further discounts and benefits being available for the residents of the estates at lower charges and lower costs. Thanks. I would just echo that on the ones that go in on streets. I think one went in by me and it was full the next day and word soon gets around on what's that groups and different things. So yes, I think they're full as soon as we can get them in but I don't know. Consolaki, you've got a question? Thank you. I welcome this paper. I welcome the paper a year ago and people might remember a year ago I was worried it wasn't ambitious enough. So I looked at what we've delivered in paragraph 4, page 12. 2023, 24, we delivered 71. We were supposed to deliver 100 so we've missed that target by 30% or that aspiration by 30%. I remembered this and I thought I'd go and look at the minutes because I actually tried to pass an amendment and I was beaten down by some of my colleagues who may remember that because I suggested that in order to deliver 100 we should be targeting 120 because we should always expect that there would be attrition. So I'd just like to understand why did we only implement 71 in 23, 24 rather than the 100? Yes, just to pick up on that table, that's effectively the 43 that were delivered in 2024/25 were delivered in the first few weeks of the financial year and they just effectively appear in that table rather than added to the 71. Okay, so I accept that but that wasn't what was in the paper in 23 or the minutes. They were supposed to be implemented in the spring of 2024, it said, in the actual paper. But I think what you're saying is there was some slippage into the first quarter. Yes, I would argue they were introduced in spring 2024 but there you go. Fine, I'll take your pedantry on that. However, I would just like to raise another point. I looked at the press release on this. It says 130, this was on the 25th of September, so I think it was that two days before these papers were published, 130 proposed new bike hangers are to be implemented across Bournsworth and be consulted on. I've gone through this paper. I cannot find any reference to 130. I can find reference to 120. So do we need to amend this paper back to 130 or do we have to go back and change the press article? I think Mr Tiddley. I would rather work with 130 than 120 if it has to be one of them, Councillor, particularly as we've got plenty of demand for more hangers and as I said 100 have planned to go on to homes in the States as well. And I would like to propose an amendment then to, I think it's 2B. I have written it out somewhere so I can give it to the Secretary. Are there ones that are the members of the committee? I can read it out. Sorry, I think I only did, actually no, there's one there. So if I just read out, so I propose an amendment if someone will second me to change 2B to read note the start of a consultation for a fourth phase of and then insert 130 bike hanger installations. I'll second that. So just because I'm clear, because the paper we've got here is just an email to Democratic Services, not the amendment itself. So yeah, so the amendment is changing 2B to read note the start of the consultation for a fourth phase of and the key changes you're suggesting putting 130 in there. Is that a substantive point? Yeah, can I come back? Yeah, sorry. And I appreciate this is pedantic to many, but actually there is a principle behind it. I really want to make sure that we're delivering what we commit to. I think that's really important. And like I said, last time a year ago I flagged that I was concerned that we weren't being ambitious enough. I want to make sure this time we are going to deliver what we say, we promise and what we put out in our press communications. It's as simple as that. Thank you. Okay. So just before we move to the vote, I've got Councillor Crichard and Councillor Middleton. Okay. Thanks. Yeah, I understand Councillor Locker's keenness to make sure we meet our obligations. The only thing is I don't quite see why 2B needs to be changed, because it actually doesn't say anything. And therefore presumably we could produce 140 or something, so we could go more. And I would be worried if we put in 130, we might be boxing ourselves into a corner where we say, well, we've done 130, that's it. We're actually I think probably where we might be in agreement is we both would like as many as possible. Councillor Middleton is next. I don't think it's quite right to say it doesn't say anything. It doesn't say how many, which is the important bit. And I was going to make the same point, actually. I want it to be

1. I'm surprised at the lack of ambition shown by Councillor Locker, and I want it to be 240. And we can have a Dutch auction. Jack is going to tell me it's 360. So why be specific? I think we leave it as it is. Okay. And then I'm going to move to a vote. This Council a few weeks ago faced the embarrassment of having to restate general election results because it got its numbers wrong. The only authority in the country to do so. How have we put out a press release very specifically which quotes the cabinet member saying we're consulting on 130 when the paper says that phase 4 is to consult on 120. Councillor Locker, I'm willing to accept comments on the amendment. That is not in the scope of what we're discussing. It's important to get our numbers right. At least be consistent. If we don't want to amend this paper, we should go back and amend the press article that we've put out there. Thank you. Okay. So we've taken comments on that. So we received notice of the amendment and seconded. So can I say all those in favour of the amendment, please do raise your hands. Thank you. All those against? Okay. So the amendment falls. Thank you, Councillor Locker, for tabling that. I'm assuming we're now at the end of the discussion on the bike hanger point. So returning to what we're being asked to agree to. Okay. Yeah. That's why I did want to do a final check around. Go on Councillor Belton for the final word. Then we'll move to the vote. These, by implication, they're either on estates or streets. Again, I'm thinking about my ward and being very selfish about my ward. But there's a mile long, as I'm sure you know incredibly well, Prince of Wales Drive. And all along the back of Prince of Wales Drive for a mile is underused or unused, a few bins, nothing much. Anything wrong with putting the bike hangers all along this unused back row and other not necessarily street land? In principle, no. Thank you. Okay. So coming to the end of the discussion on that paper, the committee are being asked to approve the recommendations in item two. So A, notes the progress that's been made on introducing bike hangers. B, notes the start of a consultation for a fourth phase of bike hanger installations. And C, approves the installation of the fourth and fifth phase of on street bike hangers subject to analysis of consultation results. D, delegates to the interim director of place agreement. And E, notes the proposed strategy for increasing the number of secure cycle parking spaces on estates. All those in favour, please raise your hands. Papers. Carried unanimously. Thank you, councillors. Okay. Agenda item five on the agenda is on the Battersea B9 CPZ. So I believe I'm moving to Mr Chung for an introduction on this. This paper provides a live consultation result of a CPZ trial in the Falconbrook and St Mary's ward. This is the second ETO, experimental traffic order, where we delivered parking restrictions. So they cover on street parking for permit holders only. It covers for pay-by-phone parking, disabled parking bay, car club bay and electrical charging bay. Over a six month period, we've had very little representations regarding the scheme because we believe that during the first round of ETO that we've delivered all the concerns regarding road safety and the lack of parking facilities for residents in in the area. Therefore, we're recommending this paper be supported for the scheme, the trial to be made permanent. Thank you, Chair. Thank you. And I believe we also have an officer online as well to answer any specific comments. So it may well be during the course of if there are specific questions, it may well be that we jump online. So just to make councillors aware of that point. So I've seen Councillor Locker, then Councillor Belton. Thank you, Mr de la Sejour, asked me to pass on her thanks to officers and for meeting with her on site so that you could walk through and discuss amendments to the scheme, which her feedback is have been broadly helpful. So I just wanted to pass that on. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Locker. Councillor Belton. Until the boundary changes a couple of years ago, I represented this area shown in the map. And anyone who knows it at all will know that. I think I'm right in saying just looking around it quickly, apart from the old Livingston estate, which is now called whatever it's called, was it called the Falcons? It's all council council estate land. The whole thing is council estate land with one or two notable exceptions. They always are, of course, the 19th century pubs. And there's a pub on one of those corners, that one there, which has been converted into flats. Now it so happens that I had a constituent there who was disabled and had a disability disability car. And there's nothing there at all except council estates. And after a long time, I succeeded in persuading the housing department to allow one disabled space allocated on one of the council estate parking areas, which is a long intro to saying, can we have a bit more flexibility on this? I don't know whether that happens ever at all, but can we actually talk to the housing department? Lots of this stuff, as you will know, particularly in Engraves Street, I could go to one estate car park where it's less than half full all the time. And there are people with disabilities who, like, can we get a little bit more flexibility for them for disability cases? That's one point. And my other point, Saturday is referred to, again, when I represented it, I'm sure it's still the case. The main problem that I recall about Saturdays was when Chelsea were playing at home. And it was very specific that on Saturday afternoons, every other Saturday afternoon, you couldn't park there. And was that brought up at all? Thank you. And I think I'm right in saying this one is Mr Chung, not Mr Tippett. So, yeah, I'm going to pass to this end of the table. Residents can request a disabled parking bay outside their house. There's a process and application form to fill in through the parking team. And also we can make representations to the housing team to ensure that provisions are provided where there is a case for one. Thank you, Mr Chung. Okay. And Saturdays? So if a dedicated disabled bay is provided, then it is available seven days a week. Sorry. Councillor Belton, can you speak into that? Just for those who are viewing online, just so that they can hear properly. When I represented this area, which was for a long, long time, until quite recently, the main problem about Saturdays in the winter was when Chelsea were playing at home. And lots of people were asking for specific alternatives, like you had to have a permit between three and four in the Saturday afternoons or something to prevent this happening. I just wondered whether that was still raised at all. I'm sorry. I'm going to have to get back to you on this because it looks like Mr Lane's not online. Thank you. Thank you. Were there any other points or queries on that paper? No, sorry. We may have Mr Lane online. We're just checking to come back to Councillor Belton on that one. Good evening, Councillors. I hope you can hear me. I am here. We can hear you. So just on Councillor Belton's point, the question about whether parking difficulties on a Saturday as a result of fans attending Chelsea matches had been raised in this area. The answer is that it hasn't. But the area, the controlled parking zone immediately to the, we get this right, to the west, which is our Wandsworth town W4 sub zone. He is correct. There was a problem in that area. And we did indeed change the operational days of that sub zone closer to Wandsworth bridge to include a short-ish period of permit holder only parking that operated on a Saturday. So the scheme in W4 operates all day as shared use parking Monday to Friday. And on a Saturday, it has a couple of hours of permit holder only parking designed to prevent the, specifically designed to prevent fans that are attending Chelsea home games from parking in that area. But there hasn't been any expressions of concern from residents about Chelsea fans parking in the B9 zone. I hope that answers it. Thanks. Thank you, Mr. Lane. Thank you for that clarification. So I'm just seeing one final check around. We have nothing further on that paper. So the committee's asked is recommended to note the outcome of the operational review, note that the comments and feedback received during the initial six month operational period, which was introduced on an experimental TMO have been resolved and see instruct the executive director of environment and community services to make the experimental TMO permanent and update the Northwest fantasy area parking consultation website. All those in favor, please raise your hand. And the paper passes unanimously. Thank you very much. Okay. The next item we have on the agenda is the annual petitions review. I think we're going to have a short introduction from Mr. Chung on this one. This is information only paper. It provides an annual updates on the traffic engineering to make this year. A total of 17 valid petitions were submitted for further investigation, and this has resulted in a number of separate crossings to support local schools and active travel. Thank you, Mr. Chung. Do we have Councillor Critchard? You're very fast off the mark. Yes, thank you. Something's occurred to me is, is it possible to have a breakdown of how many of those petitions were sort of paper type of petitions and presented at council and how many of them were just on our website online? Because I think residents can ask for a petition online. They can ask themselves to have a petition put up on the council website, and I'd be interested to know which of which of these petitions were on the website only, partly also because that may indicate on how successful or otherwise they might be. Thank you, Mr. Chung. Sorry, Councillor Critchard. I don't have that information to hand, but I can share that with the clerk so that it's included in the minutes. Sorry. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yes. Sorry. For anyone listening online, there was just some deliberation about what the cause of that might be in case that were there any more comments or queries on Councillor Austin. Thank you very much. Also, it's incredibly rude of me not to say at the start, and I should have done to thank you for your warm welcome to this committee and my first meeting. So thank you very much for that, Councillor Fraser. This is a question for probably for the cabinet member, actually, as anybody might or might not know, I live on Putney High Street and the roadworks that started recently have been a matter of extreme concern. There was a matter of debate earlier on about paragraph four. So the Council's standing orders number 12 states that a petition may be presented by any member of the Council at any meeting of the Council. However, if you look at the standing orders, it says that any petition can be submitted by any member at any ordinary meeting of the Council. So I've decided to dive in both feet first and my excuse here is it's my first day. I have a petition which I would like the cabinet member to consider with a matter of extreme urgency with over a thousand signatures on it from local residents in the Putney area with regards to the roadworks that are currently ongoing on Putney High Street and the extreme traffic disruption that has happened as a result. I understand that these plans have been put forward since 2019 but the management of the traffic situation is obviously not abating in any way, shape or form and we need to take a much closer look at this. So my question is I beg the cabinet member to consider this petition this evening because another nine days for full Council is another nine days wait. Thank you, Councillor Austin and again welcome to the committee this evening. Appreciate you bringing that but under the standing orders and the way that the committee is formed this evening, we don't have the statute or the capability to take that petition this evening. It doesn't mean that your views aren't valid or considered indeed. It doesn't take a petition to have them under consideration but in under the standing orders of the Council, that petition does have to be submitted to full Council next week. Thank you. A member of the public can submit a petition online at any time but I as a Council have to wait for standing orders. It's another nine days wait. So the answer is no. So under the standing orders of the Council, there isn't the proviso for me to be able to accept that this evening. There is in the way that the petitions are formed and appreciate you say it's your first committee. The way that petitions are submitted are to the full Council. That's where democratic services take them. It doesn't mean that just because it's not accepted here tonight because we can't, it doesn't mean that it's not under consideration. It doesn't take a petition to highlight an issue. Indeed, we see reports of what goes on across our borough without the need for a petition. So you might say it's no but there are no formal standing orders for me to allow that to be able to be taken this evening and so I kindly ask you to hold on to that and then submit it at the full Council next week. Thank you. Councillor Critchard, you had your hand up. I hope this is also helpful. Yeah, it is difficult because when you start, normally the petition route is for something not quite as immediate and for example, we've had a lot of problems recently with the Thames Water work on the A24 but the route to handle that is very different working with officers and with Thames Water and with TfL to see what we can come up with and I think I would say that our officer team and in this case it was I think on name check, Mr Olga Nyemi and his team really helpful about coming out to talk through what was happening and the teams about what we could do differently and maybe that obviously it's your first says Council, there are other routes and the one thing I would say with a petition route is by its nature, a petition is more of a long term because the officers have to go away and think about it and deliberate and come back. Whereas if you are talking to them and they are able to come out and help, actually it can be much quicker in getting some sort of anything resolved and also understanding if there is, it's just very difficult. So yeah, that's what I would recommend and our teams have been, are very helpful in that respect, I have found. Thank you, Councillor Critchard and you noted the way that other people submit petitions, some people submit directly to the Chief Executive and that is possible as well but just rest assured that we have a team of officers and Councillors across the borough who are alive to the issues and monitor them and keep them under consideration and it doesn't mean that, it doesn't necessarily, as Councillor Critchard said, there are processes that have to be followed in order for the petition and there are a number of petitions that are evidenced with their dates this evening that we're looking at. So I don't know if anyone had any comments on the paper itself. No, thank you. Okay, so in that case, I'm just going to look, so the committee asked whether they agreed to, I'm just going to double check, I'm on the right paper now, so asked the committee whether they agreed to support the recommendations of the Executive in paragraph 3, noting the list of petitions and instructing the Executive Director to prepare another annual report in 12 months time. All those who agreed, please raise your hands. Unanimous, thank you. Councillors, so the next item on the agenda, item 7 is the Highway Maintenance Programme 2024/2025 and I believe the cabinet member wanted to say a few words just to start us off on this one. Yeah, thank you very much, Councillor Fraser. So I just wanted to say that we're very pleased to bring forward this paper this evening, we think it's a very important paper. When I became the cabinet member, I was appointed in May of last year in discussion with our officers about our highway maintenance programme. I was quite shocked to discover that year-on-year the condition of our roads and pavements was deteriorating year-on-year due to lack of sufficient investment and that really, it doesn't make sense to allow the network to deteriorate and it's very bad for all road users and it was very interesting to hear on the today programme this morning that the AA has just released their pothole index highlighting the UK's worsening pothole crisis across the country due to lack of sufficient investment and they reported that almost half a million cars have broken down in the first nine months of this year, that's 10,000 more than the same period last year and that cyclists obviously are particularly vulnerable to injury when they go over a pothole and 118 have been killed over the past four years due to potholes according to that report. So I think that just underlines how important it is that we do increase our investment in our highways programme. I'm very pleased that we have also now covering our housing estates with a proper technical survey of the condition of the roads and pavements on the housing estates. I was also shocked to discover that there had never been a proper technical assessment as is done for our highways that the borough is responsible for on the housing land. So at my request that was carried out, so there was a detailed visual inspection as there is for the roads and pavements that are the borough's responsibility but not on our housing land and that has led to therefore a prioritised list of roads and pavements that will be resurfaced on our housing land in this financial year and we do expect that that programme will continue and I do really want to thank our officer team leading this work because it is a big challenge to scale up this type of investment. We've gone from 4.75 million last year to 8 million this year and then we'll be going to 10.25 million next year and that is a big scale up in spend of capital resource on resurfacing our roads and pavements that do badly need that. So I really want to thank them, they've been working incredibly hard to achieve the programme and I'm pleased to say they are fully on track to deliver the programme this financial year. But I'll turn with the permission of the chair, I suggest we go to Mr Chung who can give a bit more information about this paper. Thank you. This is an update paper on the highway maintenance programme that was presented in February this year. We've added additional 19 footway schemes and 30 carriageway resurfacing schemes as a result of the additional funding that's being granted. Currently we've completed over 80% of the carriageway resurfacing works and we've done over 30% of the footway works and we're on schedule to complete the current financial programme by the end of the financial year. Thank you Mr Chung and I just echo the cabinet members' comments about the work of our officers in delivering that work so thank you. Questions and queries? Councillor Locker. I have quite a few, I mean I don't know if we want to start with the cabinet members discussion or I can come back to that and just go through the technical points on the paper first to you. You did them in themes before, maybe group them together under a similar theme. Let's do the political bit out of the way first as the outgoing cabinet member last time. I just wanted to check because I went through the last four years worth of these papers to try and work out what's been done and what hasn't and this is perhaps a question for Mr Chadwick because you'll remember that in 2022/2023, so I went back to February 24th of 2022, so February 24th of 2022, we updated the programme and added a number of roads to it, so I found this appendix, appendix B, and I just wanted to check that all the ones that were green were obviously done, the ones that were amber it said were due to be done, were they all done by the end of that financial year, so the financial year that ended March 22nd. That's a cracking test in my memory, in '21/22? Yes, so we invested the extra money which you will remember, did that programme complete I'm fairly confident it did, yes, but obviously it is a very difficult test in my memory, so I'll check that. Well the reason is, so the investment started under the last administration, it started whilst I was cabinet member, in that year we actually did more footways and carriageways than is proposed in this paper, so I completely agree that this investment is needed. I started it, so I'm glad that you're continuing with the policies that I began, but in those years we did 78 pavements and 64 carriageways, in this paper we're only doing 48 pavements, can we do more? Well, put that data there, I think, if that's the case, put that data there, that's the sort of information we should be having if we're able to scrutinise how well the council is doing. I think Mr Chadwick wants to come back on that one. Like I said, I will come back to you, my memory is that it was a £5 million overall investment in a range of matters, including roadway and footpath maintenance, yes. It was a one-off fund, you'll recall, I think that's the difference here that Councillor Yates has described, an ongoing programme. So if I could make a suggestion, what we get each year is a paper sort of outlining the work to be done. We never get the report or an inclusion of what was completed and what has to be carried forward, so I think a useful addition would be in these papers to say of the 48-foot ways that we're doing this year, when we get the paper next year, it said we did all 48, or we did 46, two have been carried forward so that we have that information. At least then we can keep track on the progress that the Council is making. >> Thank you, Councillor Locker. Councillor Belton. >> I semi-jokingly quipped just now when Councillor Locker was talking about this, about the number of pavements, can I just suggest that comparing a pavement in Battersea Bar Road is not exactly the same as comparing a pavement in my road, I mean, Battersea Bar Road is about six times as long as my road, it's got a lot more people on it, a lot more all sorts of things wrong with it. Comparing the number of pavements does not sound to me the correct place to start. Presumably if money is being spent, unless the costs have doubled, and I know under the Tories we had really bad inflation, and you can't control inflation, all that sort of stuff, as opposed to us getting under control, so you can't make any direct comparisons, but surely the money is the more relevant thing, unless of course the workers have stopped working, and according to the money, as far as I can see, we're doing about twice as much here. Is that not right, it's ten million as opposed to five million, so twice as much, I think that speaks for itself. There may be many metrics that you can use, right, I accept that, there may be many metrics that you can use, but my whole point is, and it's been a theme this evening, because we're not tracking the details, we're slipping on delivery, right, we didn't have enough information on the planning side, which I think you accepted earlier in the debate, and similarly here, I don't think it is as easy as saying the amount spent is equal to the amount out, we want to be measuring the outcomes, not the inputs, to make sure that we are being efficient, that we are delivering more. That is what our residents expect. Now I know that I've tested the patience of my colleagues opposite tonight, but please may I gently remind you, my job in opposition is to scrutinise, and to hold this council to account, and that's all I'm doing this evening, I'm sorry if it irks you, but I just - Oh come on John, that's not fair, you know I enjoyed doing that for years. Sorry if it irks you, but I just want to keep track of exactly how many pavements, whether it's square metres, whatever metric you can come up with, there will be methodologies that the engineers can use, so that we know that when we're signing things off, that we come back to a year, things have been delivered, because I've cited a number of examples this evening where we haven't delivered what we've set out and what we committed ourselves to. So thank you Councillor Locker, I think we can take away that we can look at a method of reporting back, I think it's an unfair statement to say that delivery is slipping, because actually there were officers tonight who have corrected those points or have suggested other interpretations, and I appreciate you've got a hard job this evening, because you are kind of, you are a few numbers down, and I don't think it's fair to say you've irked my colleagues, I've seen them irked and they're not irked tonight, I've seen them far more irked, so yeah you should have to try, yeah you could try harder, but yeah they're definitely still in good spirits, so yeah my colleagues definitely aren't irked, so Councillor Austin, see if you can irk my colleagues. I'll give it a very good go Councillor, I mean I'm going to have to get up even earlier in the morning to be able to beat Councillor Belton and Councillor Locker to the punch, I think Councillor Belton does need to realise that since his party came to power, inflation's actually ticked up by 0.3 of a percent, it'll be all those suits that have been bought recently. The question I've got is, on the last page, appendix 2 proposed carriageway and footway servicing it, is actually more to satisfy my curiosity than anything else, it's got planned Haywood Gardens Ashburton and Walgrave House Ashburton Chartfield, pothole repair only by entrance 43 to 52, and then complete resurfacing access road and car park. Seeing that Councillor Dickerton's planning on putting a block of flats on top of that car park, isn't this rather throwing good money after bad? What so you're suggesting that your residents don't need safe carriageways and footways in the interim? Is that what you're arguing? No I think my residents would rather have the car park than have the building on top of it, so by all means do the car park but then don't put the building on top of it straight afterwards. So I take your political point and this is the list and I think representing a ward where I had an estate that was full of potholes that didn't get touched previously, I welcome the fact that we're prioritising our estates and actually giving investment to our estates to make it safer for people to walk around. Councillor Locker. Sorry, going back to the value for money point, isn't that a waste of the money if it's going to be then dug up and built on in a year's time? If it would happen that way. Mr Chadwick then Councillor Critchow. Mr Critchow, blimey. So clearly there's a close liaison between our highway engineers and Henry's team and Nicola Donald's team and the housing team and I can't really foresee, I can foresee that they've had that conversation and have ensured that the works that are proposed are value for money, nevertheless. Thank you Mr Chadwick and the reason I got you mixed up is because Councillor Critchow was signalling to me, so yes, Councillor Critchow you're next. Thank you. I would perhaps like to draw my colleague Councillor Austin's attention to putting aside the one you're particularly interested in, how much on the council side it's all complete resurface, complete resurface, complete resurface, complete resurface. Now we've come in, we've looked at it, the cabinet member has said that she has asked this survey. It obviously looks like that was a missed opportunity for your administration when it was in for the previous very long time and it's not really fair on our council, particularly on our residents and our estates, which include councillors, leaseholders and homeowners that they should have a lower service to other residents on the main highways. Thank you. I see Councillor Austin and then Councillor Belton. Thank you very much. Thank you for pointing it out. You have been in power for two years now, so first question would be why didn't it happen sooner if we were indeed at fault, and on that I would have to defer to my esteemed colleague as he was the cabinet member at the time. I think probably on that point there's now far more place between the transport and housing teams on that, but I saw Councillor Belton and then Councillor Miorco, were you signaling to me? No. Councillor Belton. Thank you. Councillor Locker is having fun enjoying himself, but he does have a point here, and I'm sure Mr. Chadwick is right when he says it won't work out like that, it will be sorted, because when I look at this in light of what he said, that's Councillor Locker, I see for instance in the complete resurfacing Holcroft House and Chesterton House car parks happened to be one of the empty ones that I was talking about and could take disabled, but also the whole of the Winstanley estate is meant to be being rebuilt, bipartisan policy for ages, so both of those car parks I guess in the housing regeneration plan are due to disappear in the next decade, it's taking so long, it might be a long time, it might well be worth resurfacing in the meantime, but there's quite a few here where I happen to know enough about the housing programme to know that the housing people have plans about it, so I think this needs to be checked out a little bit. Yeah, and it's fair point in echoing that point down here, so thank you. Were there any other points that Councillors wanted to raise on this paper? Councillor Locker. I have a question, it talks about drainage cleansing, so a question for Mr Chadwick. I recall at the end in my period that we hired an additional gully cleaning unit, is that still going on, because I'm still seeing a lot of drain gullies which are blocked and I just think it would be helpful if we could try and unblock those. Well, Mr Chung may be able to help more I'd say, but what I do know is that we've got a, since 2021/22, we have up to our game I'd say on gully cleansing and on our liaison with Thames Water where we have gullies that are blocked, or seem blocked, for know what to do with cleansing, mainly because of their capacity, so we've had a really good programme of work through both Natasha Epstein's team and Henry's team on that, but as to the detail of whether we've kept two gully cleanses rather than one, I'm not sure. We do have two gully machines working, so one does strategic cleaning and the other does the reactive cleaning. So we've kept it at two, that's good. Councillor Locker. Obviously as well, if we can encourage TfL, because a lot of them that I've been reporting have been on red routes, so for instance West Hill, you can cycle all the way up and down West Hill and 50% of the gully drains are blocked. I'll pass that on, thank you. Thank you. Yeah, and I just echo my, before I come out I just echo my thanks that I've reported a couple recently, we've had some quite short, sharp showers which kind of have put pressure on our drains and I think that will exacerbate climate change, but I do thank Mr Chung and his team for acting on the ones that I've reported near me, so Councillor Locker. And then another point on paragraph 10, I think the first bullet point, paragraph 10 has a mistake, which perhaps could be corrected before the paper goes to full council. I don't think, sorry it's got 56 which is 36 plus 20, I think what it's meant to be is an average between the two, not the addition of the two, unless I'm misreading it. Sorry, I've just found the, repeat that for me, because I've just got to the bit. Paragraph 10, bullet point, the first one, A and B roads, so it's talking about what the average is on A and B roads, it then breaks down what it is on A and B roads, 36 and 20, but it adds them together, I think you mean the average across the two sets. I can take it up with you offline. Yeah, we'll note it down and we'll come back to you on that one, but thank you. Okay, were there any others, Councillor Critchard? Thank you, Chair. Two small contributions anecdotally, really happy with some gully cleaning, which was actually done in councilor, reported by me in Councillor Mayorkas' ward, the team were fantastic and dealt with a huge water feature very, very quickly. And also to say something on the pavements team, who I think, we have a large number of them are our own staff, who I think are very good and have done an excellent job. I have discovered this new disease called pavement envy locally. People all want new pavements, but picking up on this as well is, we've got the investment put down for the housing estates, is this going to carry on, is this just a one offer, is this going to carry on in the future? Mr Chadwick, will you come? I can quite readily say it's going to carry on in the future, much closer working between the directorates and much more attention to housing estates is clearly one of the administration's priorities, and that's what we offices will match. Thank you very much. I'm just going to do a final scan round for questions, various points. Okay, I'm not seeing anything further, so the committee asked whether they agree to support the recommendations in paragraph two of the report, noting the annual highways maintenance programme, noting an additional list of reserve schemes to be brought forward if further additional funding becomes available, and see delegating any subsequent changes to the programme to the assistant director of environment and community services. Can I ask all those in favour please to raise their hands, and that paper is agreed unanimously. Thank you councillors, that brings us to the end of tonight's business. Thank you all for this evening, and I'll see you at the next committee. [ Silence ]