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Agenda and decisions
December 1, 2025 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
Evening, welcome to the meeting of this evening's Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee. This meeting is being webcast this evening and some officers may be accessing virtually although I do believe we've got everyone in the room with us this evening so but as ever for anyone watching please do bear with us if we experience any technical difficulties. My name is Councillor Fraser and I'm the chair of the Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee. I'm now going to pass to councillors to introduce themselves so I'll start on my left with Councillor Mayorkas and work my way round. Councillor Mayorkas, Trinity Ward. Councillor Tiller, Rehampton Ward. Councillor Apps, Shastring, Queenstown Ward. Good evening, Tony Belton, Battersea Park Ward. Hello, Councillor Anne-Marie Critchard, Tootinbeck Ward. Councillor Canandre Sujeor, St Mary's Ward. Councillor John Locker, Thamesfield Ward. Councillor Nicholson, West Putney Ward. Councillor Daniel Hamilton, Ballam. Thank you, councillors. Also in attendance this evening, to my left is Councillor Yates, the Cabinet Member for Transport and for the first time in a few committees we've got no apologies this evening so welcome to all councillors. Members are reminded to ensure your microphone is turned off unless you're speaking. When you do speak, please do state your name and please do bear in mind the committee must remain quarrant. We also have a number of officers present this evening, some who are regulars to this committee, some for whom this is not their usual committee, so they will introduce themselves when it comes to their papers as well. So moving to the first item of business on tonight's agenda, we have the minutes of the last Transport Committee meeting which was held on the 19th of November. Please, can I accept those meeting minutes as agreed? Agreed. Agreed. Lovely. Thank you very much. And are there any declarations of interest ahead of tonight's meeting? Okay. Very well. Well, thank you, councillors. So we'll now begin the substantive paper. So you'll notice this evening and for those, anyone who is watching, we have split tonight's committee business into, we're starting with strategic planning elements and then moving on to the Transport Committee business. So first up is agenda item three, the catchly named draft, reuse, recycle and waste management supplementary planning. So I'm going to pass to officers, so I'm going to pass to officers and so please do introduce yourselves and say a few words before we open up for questions. Thank you, chair. Thank you. Thank you, chair, and good evening, everyone. So my name is Daniel Goodman. I'm a principal planner in the council spatial planning team. And this paper tonight relates to a draft, reuse, recycling and waste management supplementary planning document. So the purpose of the document is to give planning applicants and developers guidance on what the council expects when it comes to waste and refuse and recycling provision within local developments. It provides additional guidance over and above what's in the council's local plan, but it is ultimately there to guide decision makers, whether or not that's officers under delegation or the planning applications committee on what applicants should be providing in terms of waste and recycling provision. And helps to ensure that applications the council's council receives are of a higher standard and that there's less need for negotiation in terms of meeting the council's expectations. So the document itself would supersede a document that was prepared and adopted in 2014. So since 2014, there have been a number of changes to both national and local policy, including obviously the adoption of the ones with local plan in 2023, as well as the provisions in the Environment Act 2021, and also some changes in local recycling and waste management practices. So it's a good opportunity to update the guidance to make sure it reflects our current expectations as opposed to those in 2014. So we are required under regulations to consult on the SPD before we can adopt it, and we have to consult for a period of at least four weeks. So subject to the recommendations set out in this paper today, Chair, or tonight, Chair, we would proceed to a statutory consultation for a period of at least four weeks, consider the responses we receive and whether or not they justify any changes to the document, and then hopefully proceed to adopting it. And at the point of adoption, it would then become material in determining local planning applications. So very happy to take any questions, Chair, but I'll leave it there for now. Thank you. Thank you very much. I can see Councillor Lopper first out of the blocks, and then Councillor Belton. Thank you. Sorry, thank you. Thank you very much for the introduction. I just wondered, so obviously there have been quite a lot of changes in waste collection over recent times, and we're now collecting food waste separately. But for blocks of flats, that's been quite difficult, and it hasn't been introduced yet. I just wondered if at some stage we were to think about doing that in the future, is this document sort of future-proof? Because I couldn't really see anything in there that if we were saying to developers, when you're developing your bin stores, wherever they may be, you might need a separate location for storing food waste and stuff like that, or would we have to come back and potentially just update it? Thank you, yeah. So the document does – well, the main thrust of the document is to really try and ensure that there is suitable space to enable waste storage, including the separate storage of recycling streams, and also suitable access to that space, both for collectors and the occupants of the building. So obviously when the Council is committed to rolling out food waste services, and that's becoming a national requirement over the next couple of years or so, that's an additional space requirement. So this document does require future developments to ensure that there is suitable space for the necessary separation of the waste, including separate food waste recycling containers. It's trying to build in everything that we know about at the moment, but obviously there's things in the distant future that we can't plan for, so this is really trying to cater for the things that we know about. Thank you. Councillor Belton. Good evening, and thank you for the introduction. I've got a particular interest currently as the Chair of the Planning Applications Committee, and I'd be interested in a series of not terribly difficult questions, but related questions, if I may, about half, doesn't it, I suppose. The Act was 2021. When was it – is it fully implemented in the sense that the ministerial – all the ministerial executive functions that take place after a bill becomes an Act are in place, so is it fully implemented everywhere? How many authorities do you know have actually taken these steps? Because it obviously takes quite a long time to do this. Presumably it doesn't apply to – well, how does it apply, if at all, to existing buildings? Because obviously this is to do with largely new construction. So there's the issue about older developments. And now all the authorities in the country going through this process, and are we just one of a batch, or are we right at the front of operating this? Thank you, Councillor. So I'll answer – I'll do my best to answer some of the planning questions that you've asked, and I might pass to Michael just to answer some of the waste policy side of things. I think from a planning perspective, the documents there are obviously to provide guidance in terms of how the Council will interpret and assess planning applications. So in a sense, it's separate to how existing buildings are managed. Of course, there are other parts of the Council which will have policy and will be implementing things in terms of existing buildings, particularly Council-owned stock, I suspect. But this document is specifically for those that come before the Council for planning permission. So it's not directly aimed at, if you like, retrofitting – to overuse that word, retrofitting waste into old buildings, unless they were to come forward for permission for renewal or for alteration or extension, et cetera. So it is really a planning tool in terms of this document. My understanding in terms of the Environment Act is that it's got a bit of a phased rollout, so there are provisions within it that are kind of phased in that sense, and there are dates and years and things that authorities need to meet by a certain time, and also certain requirements or provisions that allow authorities to implement certain things or not based on kind of local assessment. So Michael may be able to provide more detail there, but certainly I think there are large parts of the Environment Act that are fully in place and that we know what's coming of the parts that aren't. So if I pass over to Michael now. Yes, before you do. Of course, yes. Just following that up, can I ask you, are the planning officers the ones that deal with this, and more particularly is the documentation ready there for things like pre-application inquiries? Is the documentation there to give to potential applicants now, or is that coming down the line when we've agreed with this paper? Thank you. So in terms of planning officers, so development management officers, so those officers have been engaged in the development of this for some time, so for several months now, so they know what's in this, and their feedback has helped shape some of this. So obviously they have a very practical understanding in terms of how policy is currently implemented and in terms of negotiations with developers. So this document is not a surprise to those officers, and they'll have been able to implement and feed some of that into their work for some time. In terms of the kind of material weight of the document, it's only really upon its adoption that we can start using it or start referencing it in terms of decision-making, but there's no reason why officers wouldn't be using it in a discretionary way before then, particularly, obviously, if there's a large-scale scheme that's coming forward that it makes sense that by the time it's built out, this document will have been in place for some time. So there is a slight discretionary element to that, but certainly from its adoption time, which we hope would be later this year, it would start being used as a material consideration referenced in planning application committee reports and in officer reports. Thanks. Thank you. Just to add, so I think the simpler recycling regulations, which contain all the detail for what we've actually got to do in terms of lifting recycling services up to a national legislative requirement level, so the timelines for implementation of those regulations, some of it comes in for most of it for non-domestic premises comes in from the 31st of March this year. For domestic premises, it's the 31st of March 26, and then there's one or two additional requirements for micro firms and plastic films that come in on the 31st of March 2027. The waste service has got to, you know, this is requirements for all households and non-municipal premises producing household, well, no, it's commercial premises as well. So, yeah, there's a wide range of premises affected by this. This document is designed to ensure that new developments are designed in a way that accommodates those requirements. It doesn't really have any effect on existing premises that aren't submitting new planning applications, so it's a problem for the waste service to determine how can we best retrofit, for example, food waste recycling at existing developments. Sometimes it's going to be easy, sometimes it's not. All dependent on the space available, really. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Critchard. Thank you. My first question, actually, is a bit of a follow-up from what you said about the changes coming through from the 31st of March. There's at least two of us at this table who are on the governing body of schools. This probably isn't part of this committee, but what sort of information are we giving to our schools? I know it was schools and it was other groups that have to be doing that, you know, have different targets for recycling. What's the information? What are we as a local authority saying to those people to make sure they're able to meet the target? Thank you. Yes, so for non-domestic premises, the legal requirement actually sits with the waste producer rather than the council. So ultimately it's the school that needs to ensure that it complies with the new simpler recycling requirements from the 31st of March this year onwards. Now, many schools come to us for their existing waste services. There are plenty of educational establishments covered by this requirement that go elsewhere. So what we're doing is working closely with colleagues in children's services to utilise their kind of platforms and channels through to the individual schools so that they know what our service offering is. So we're actively engaging with them at the moment and, yeah, for directly managed schools, there is going to be a free service. There will be small charges for independent schools. Thank you. Thank you for that one. Right. On page six, paragraph 15, the target. It looks like there's something not quite right there. The target was to decrease household waste from 260 to 186 kilograms. Is that per household? Sorry, where's the reference? Page six, paragraph 15, the first line, the first bullet point. I just wondered. No, not the percentage, the amount is the one above. Yeah. That should read. The other one is per head of population. I think that is per household. Would you just be able to? Yes, certainly. Thanks. And then what struck me about this is that for any of us who represent areas where there are flats above shops, and also places where the front door is directly onto the street, which occurs in some other places, is what can we, obviously this will only apply if there's a new planning application, but how do you envisage us being able to make sure those people have proper storage? Because I think that's one of the big problems we have, is people who are living above shops don't have proper storage, and they quite often leave their rubbish out when they shouldn't, or they just leave it by the bin. And also they've got nowhere inside to store it, so it's smelly and horrible. I mean, how is that going to help? And with that, how firm are we going to be? Because I see that we have the option of dealing with, if there's special exceptional circumstances, that we might not apply this policy. But I would be a bit anxious if we started to have a lot of special exceptional circumstances where we didn't apply it. Thank you. So I think Wandsworth has a historical legacy of, we think, something around 10,000 premises, flats above shops, which don't have suitable storage space at ground level, which we can access to collect their waste. And so the only real option at present is for them to place their waste in sacks on the public pavement by their own front doors, and we will collect it from there. Now, in terms of the – well, this document, you can't comply with the supplementary planning document for waste and have no space to present your waste within the – well, it's very, very restricted within the document. So I think the only scenario – let me get this right – yeah, I think according to this document that's under consideration now, if there's an existing precedent with the immediate neighbours that they already have to present their waste in bags on the street, then there is a possibility that you might get planning permission proposing the same. But if there is no precedent in the immediate vicinity, you can't comply with this document and have no space for waste off the street. So we've got to work out how we retrofit food waste recycling services with the existing legacy of those properties. But – sorry, yeah, I think I get it. So there's a couple of streets. There's at least one in the Tonsleys where the – you have to present all the front doors go straight out onto the streets. Whereas in the – when you're looking at the shops, actually it isn't quite like they've got a back entrance and other things as well. Yeah, well, I'm not entirely sure what your point is there. But I think there's a range of kind of scenarios with flats above shops. Some do have a little space around the back. Many of them don't. And one of the things we've got to do to determine how we're going to provide the weekly food waste collection services to those properties is to survey them in detail so we know at each individual one what the best solution is going to be. Great. I think Mr. Chowdhury, we're going to say a few words. But thank you. Yeah, if you – I don't mind, Chair. So, yeah, just beyond the planning issues, just, members, just to say that within the Environment Committee we're rolling out the Cleaner Borough Plan Phase 2, which includes a tackling of this very issue really by ensuring that there are more – there's a greater level of frequency of collection of all-way streams from flats above shops throughout large stretches of the borough. And, indeed, also in some parts of the borough we're placing communal bins at key points as well. So, again, that's beyond planning, but I thought it might be useful to say that. No, and thank you, Mr. Chowdhury, and thank you to your officers who've actually done a trial of that in my ward in South Ballon where we've had that issue in place. And we've reallocated parking spaces on two roads to do that, and that has dramatically decreased the instances of kind of unclean streets that we had each Monday morning when the bags inevitably were broken into by foxes looking for lots of lovely treats. So, yeah, there are other ways to see it. But thank you very much for clarifying. Were there any – okay, Councillor Austin. Thank you very much, Chair. And I'll just thank you for indulging me for a second. I actually do live in a flat above a shop on a high street, on Putney High Street, and it is dreadful. And so I'm hoping – I'm actually just asking if maybe we can offline have a conversation about doing a test area because Token Yard in Thamesfield, Jones Mews in Thamesfield, there are four yards. And the rubbish doesn't get picked up because the – if you leave it on the cobbles in our entranceway, then the waste people won't pick it up because it's considered private property. And if we leave it on the pavement, occasionally we'll get fined. And if we don't, then either foxes run into it or somebody drives over it or it gets thrown about or it is – it is a – it's a genuine problem that it's not a – it's just – it's actually something we need to, I think, look at in quite deeply because there are a lot of – flats and there are also a lot more developments going on that are going to be above this and looking at it. So I would love to actually have a more in-depth discussion as I've lived there for 15 years and it's been a problem since day one. Just following up, I don't think this is in this paper, but curiosity has got the better of me. I go into a lot of blocks of flats and there's been huge advancements in recycling waste and storage facilities in the blocks. What I find is inadequate, though, is actually cycling storage and electric charging points. They seem to be very inadequate in most new developments. And I don't know if that paper's come or if that paper's coming, but curiosity's just got the better of me. Thank you. We'll take the point on board totally, but I think it's probably a different paper that we'd have to consider for that. No, I'd just love to see that, because I don't know. I'm just generally curious in the trees and I'd love to read on that. Noted. That's okay. Thank you. And I think it's worth – in previous papers, I mean, with our backhanger rollout, those papers may have come before you joined the committee, but, yeah, we are – with our backhanger rollout, that's being done on estates, where obviously it's free of charge for residents to use on our estate. So that's where we're trying to address that issue in terms of – because, yeah, it's inadequate when people are pinning their cycles to railings or what have you, so that's why we're rolling out. So we have had quite a few papers come to the committee, and it's probably included in update. But, yeah, I'm going to point to Mr Tidley, who is the voice of authority on all these matters. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. David Tidley, the Head of Transport Strategy. I think we're in the same position, really, insofar as with new-build development, we're able to quite clearly make provision for electric vehicle charge points and cycle parking to the latest standards, and are able to significantly improve provision. But we have exactly the same issue of how we then deal with legacy development, which was built before electric vehicles were around, and consequently, as Councillor Fraser has said, what we have been at least trying to do is to ensure that there's street provision, both for cycle parking and street provision for electric charging points. Thank you. Councillor Critchard, did you have another question? Yes, just on the detail, page 26, paragraph 5.2.1. One of the things you use on the individual houses and blocks is space for 200-litre sacks of mixed recycling. If we're trying to increase recycling, I just wondered how we arrived at that number, and my question would be, will that be enough? As I pack my two bags of recycling for our household this week, and we can usually go beyond that. Sorry, is this in relation to the space requirements or the volume storage? The space, it says you should be able to have containers to be able to store this. I just wondered how we got to that amount, and is it... Okay. Well, there is a link back to BS 5906, which is the standard for waste management in buildings. That was written in 2005, I think, and does detail the kind of volumes of waste associated with different types of premises. However, I think that makes a link with the number of bedrooms. We have simplified it a little bit here and just said this is the requirement per residential premise. In practice, if it's, say, student accommodation and it's single occupancy bedrooms, we would treat that as half a household rather than a whole household. But, yes, I believe this is adequate. It does link in with the British standard for waste management in premises. The first two requirements there are precisely the same, in effect, as the existing supplementary planning document for waste. The big change is the third bit. We now need space for the food recycling caddies as well. Thank you very much. Council to the Sir John. Thank you. It's a question where I have a vested interest in the answer, but I think it's irrelevant, possibly, to a number of people. I help manage a local sports club, and currently we don't recycle because it's really expensive because we're treated as a business. And under the new rules, clearly, we're going to have to change our practices. So I was wondering if the council had any sort of support available for the sort of local community groups, which are not flush with money, and for who that would be a big expense. I'm not sure if I can answer your question fully, councillor. What I can say is that Wandsworth Council is not active in the commercial waste collection market. It's deliberately priced itself out of that market in 2003. So I think much may depend on whether the premise falls within commercial waste or household waste. And there are a number of non-domestic municipal premises that do produce household waste. And where it is classified as household waste, we can provide them with a service. There may be a charge for that service, but it's likely to be lower than what they would pay going to a privately operating collector. I guess the question was, does the... I mean, because there's obviously lots of different ways of supporting local clubs or local community assets, is there any sort of funding available? Because something will happen to a lot of community clubs from March, right, onwards. They are going to have to review those arrangements. So that's the question in terms of where there's any support. So I think for the most part, community clubs would produce commercial waste rather than household waste. So I'm not aware of anything we're particularly doing for them, other than we will be having detailed advice on the website. It's not there yet, but that is under consideration at the moment. So at least we're giving them the correct advice. The types of non-domestic premise that do produce household waste are things like educational establishments, places of worship, places used wholly or mainly for public meetings. There's a number of others, but it's all detailed in the Controlled Waste Regulations 2012. Okay, thank you very much. I'm going to go to Councillor Belton for the last question on this paper. You've just made a very interesting comment, thank you, Chair, about us choosing to move out of the commercial waste business. Was that, that was a political decision in 2003, presumably based on a political choice or because we were losing money on it. And presumably we could, to help Councillor Sejol out of her problem, we could go into the business of collecting. I'm also involved in an organisation, not a club exactly, if you'd call the Labour Party a club, but I'm somewhat responsible for a small office on Lavender Hill. And we avoid as far as possible the expense of commercial waste and make separate, I don't know, paper, what's it called? You know, chopping up paper. We make separate contracts or something. But the Council could get back into that business, presumably. Yes, I think it's entirely the Council's choice how it wants to price its commercial waste services. My recollection of the reasoning back in 2003, I think there was two things I remember there, really. One was a general view that the private sector was better placed to compete in that market. The other one was that we, that the Council was a bit hamstrung by high disposal costs. So, you know, the Council's waste has to go to the Western Riverside Waste Authority and the disposal charge for general waste there is high compared to most other local authorities or what a private company is likely to be paying, you know, a privately operating waste carrier. Great, thank you very much. So, I think we're done there on questions. I feel like we are now straying into the business of another committee now. But with that, when we, the committee are asked whether they support the recommendations in paragraph two of the report. Please can ask all those in favour to please raise their hands. And the paper is agreed unanimously. Thank you councillors and thank you officers this evening for coming. We are now going to move on to the next item of business which is the walking and cycling strategy. So, over to Mr Tidley to give an introduction when we've done some shuffling at the top end of the table. Thank you. The ones worth walking and cycling strategy was adopted in November 2022 after a period of consultation. And this paper provides a review and update of progress since that strategy was approved. It doesn't seek to spell out absolutely everything the council does which is far more again than what's in the paper but it's very much a summary of the main activity that the council has been embarked on in order to help deliver the objectives in the strategy. Just to pick up on a few, the paper I hope is relatively self-explanatory but to pick up on a few of the highlights in the last 12 months we mentioned the continued rollout of the school streets programme and moving as well into some more complicated schools and more sort of highway networks which is a little bit more difficult to manage. We continue to deliver large amounts of cycle parking and particularly the bike hanger programme following the significant deployment of e-bikes in the borough and the significant use that's made of them by residents. We've engaged and provided large numbers of parking bays for those and continuing with a significant programme of road crossing improvements, new zebra crossings, new signalised crossings, improvements of the bridges and the junctions near the bridges and as I say there's a full list there. What we're trying to do is have a borough-wide programme so there are things happening all over the borough. There are some programmes which are borough-wide, some highway schemes which affect certain parts of the borough. Some schemes are small, some schemes are large, some schemes are short term, some schemes take a longer time to implement. There are revenue programmes such as road safety training and cycle training as well to consider. And the other thing I would probably just highlight is that the council is very well funded to deliver this programme. So it's a level of investment that I don't think you'll find in other councils. And then the paper goes on to sort of explain as well some of the things which are coming shortly. I mean, members will note the physical works that are happening, for example, on Old York Road and there are physical schemes planned as well for Burntwood Lane and Queenstown Road specifically but others as well which will come on stream this year. The only other thing I would probably highlight is if members would have been sent a letter by the Wandsworth Cycling Campaign and I'll just refer very briefly to that. I don't think I need to necessarily go through it but it sets out their views on those things which have gone quickly, those things which they would like to see more of or quicker progress on. And so with that, they'll take any questions. Thank you. Great, thank you. Katsa, you indicated that I want to say a few words before we get back. Yeah, thank you very much, Chair. Yes, just wanted to say yes, very pleased with the progress we're making on this ambitious strategy and to, you know, thank officers for all their hard work. A huge amount of work goes into this. For example, very careful consultations before any bike owners are put in, you know, to get resident views, to make sure they're put in the best possible location and take into account any objections residents have. That's just one example of the kind of all the detailed background work that needs to take place in order to actually implement and deliver, you know, the strategy itself. So thank you to officers. Okay. Councillor Tilley, Councillor Hamilton and Councillor Mayorkas. Thank you, Chair. On the subject of bike hangers, they're a great way to encourage cycling by making storage easier, but there's a risk of fees deterring potential users. Is there any way to bring down the cost to cyclists? Yes, is the short answer. There's a few things going on here. First of all, as we procure more hangers, it's clearly in the supplier's interest to, if they want to do, if they want to work in one's worth, we'd expect to see competitive pricing. Another part of this is the Council's Access for All scheme is actively considering introducing discounts for the eligible households to be able to ensure that they're able to access cycle hangers. and that scheme is also considering the same for e-bike mental charges as well. So there's a few areas of the sustainable travel, walking and cycling strategy that will be falling into that programme. Thank you. Councillor Hamilton. Thank you very much. It's a question in relation to point nine, which addresses the issue of the e-bike services operating in the borough. If I just start by firstly praising the positive direction of travel on most of the indices in the paper, one of the areas where I think a lot of us continue to receive emails from residents is about poorly parked e-bikes. I know that there has been a lot of progress made in putting these special bike hangers in place. There is reference in the paper to a further round of the parking bays going in later in 2025. I would just be interested to know can you put a number, it might be a question to the executive member, a number on the additional number of bays that are envisaged for the rest of the year. It would also be interesting to get an update on general enforcement activity that's taken place against those who have ended journeys that are outside of the bays. Do we have any stats about how that's going at this stage? I think it is something that the public do want to see some movements on. I think Mr Tidley is the best place probably on the numbers but then we can, I'll go you through first. Yes, so I wouldn't want to give an exact number on the number of extra e-bike bays that we will need. But I wouldn't have thought the same number again, I suspect it would be a good starting point. We certainly haven't reached a limit. So I would have thought we're putting in 175. I think we'll probably need at least that number again. A lot will depend, of course, on how the e-bike scheme itself evolves going forward because it may be that people move away from it or more people move towards it. So we'll need to be flexible in the bay provision. In terms of the enforcement, the technology has been improving, as you imply, I think, Councillor, that there has been improved behaviour and the operators have been putting in better management of the system. The technology is now largely helping to prevent bikes from being parked in inappropriate locations, but some still are. We have done some enforcement sweeps of those. We wouldn't rule them out. We wouldn't rule out doing more again. But said at the moment, we are seeing improved improved parking behaviour. And I do think, to use the dreaded term AI, everybody's using it, but it, again, is being built now into the end-of-use photographs technology that's being used to try and help ensure that the parking of vehicles is consistent and compliant with regulations. Yeah, Councillor Yates is going to ask. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Councillor Hamilton. Yes, of course, the e-bikes are very good in many ways, aren't they? People really value that flexibility as shown by the extremely high number of regular users that Wandsworth has. We have had a lot of discussion with Lyman Forest about how they can better manage their bikes and they have put more resource into Wandsworth without our request to do that because it's obviously really important that they don't block the pavements and stop people getting by, particularly people with buggies or wheelchairs. and I, you know, have had, obviously, emails from residents who have experienced that and we don't want to see that. As Mr. Tidley says, some of Lyme's improved tech should help further with this. They gave me a demonstration just last week of the tech when you end your ride and in terms of how that, the AI is assessing the location of the bike in real time. I think they need to go further on that. I mean, where we've got bays that you don't have to park in because they're not in the busy town centres, I think the app needs to direct the user to show on the app where that bay is to encourage people to park in the bay because obviously, we don't want to put in lots of bays and people don't use them. So I think, you know, that they are obviously, you know, still quite a new thing and the situation is still evolving but, yeah, I mean, we do really want to see both kind of people being able to benefit from them but not causing inconvenience to residents. So that's kind of where we are at the moment but we'll go on being in very close touch with them to improve the situation further. Thank you, Councillor Yeats. Councillor Mjorkis. I think that, just to add to that conversation, I guess, like we as councillors, we're the eyes and ears of the borough, we cover the whole borough so I think it's definitely like a flexible situation and there's constant dialogue so any feedback you get from residents just pass it on to Jenny and the team and then it's kind of gone. Yeah, just to add that we are waiting the installation of some bays on the Red Routes by TfL and we're very, very keen to see those go in because obviously a number of our busy areas, they are on Red Routes and it's really important they get those bays in and we have been lobbying them hard to get them in and they have got a whole list drawn up for Wandsworth. I don't think we have confirmation yet of when they're going to be installed but they are really important. Yeah, because I think just to add like if you see for example Park Run in Tooting I've noticed that obviously people cycle there so that's something that we'll chat about and then just feed it all in basically. I have a question, a reminder and an appeal so I'll do them in that order. The question is obviously Burntwood Lane has been on our agenda since the election May 2022 and it mentions progress so it'd be good just to get an update on where we are with that scheme. The reminder is that you everyone would have had an email from Officer Responsible for School Streets giving you kind of an audit of the school streets that you have in your ward any historical information about school streets that may have been tried in the past and weren't successful and then an offer to kind of meet alongside myself and him to work through any of those or if we can help with making contact or anything like that so please do go back and look at that and if we can help at all then we'd love to work together with you on that and the appeal is last year there were 39 street closures for car free day which is fantastic if every councillor helped one street in their ward we'd have 58 so maybe we could go for that goal this year it's Monday the 22nd of September so the closures will be on the weekend preceding that date words from our active travel champion there thank you and I think it was your first question on Burntwood Lane to I've got an answer okay yeah Mr Chadwick go on David might correct me but as I understand it the works have started close to Beechcroft Road with a zebra crossing well on Beechcroft Road with a zebra crossing on the way and the pavement renewal works have started and are currently heading towards Marham Gardens so I'm not exactly sure whether that was two or three weeks ago there or thereabouts though when it started lovely thank you and thank you for confirming Katzler Delisadio could you you talk about further work on Wandsworth Bridge I just can't remember where we're at with that what are the next steps please the cabinet member then because I'll probably need to get a programme for that one from the traffic and engineering team yeah I can add to that I mean we're very keen to make the you know the cycle lane going north to put in the proper step track and to put that step track in on the east side we are expecting to do that this year I mean of course we have to be mindful of the network and there is significant work going on on Battersea Bridge Road which is a TFL scheme and then we have our scheme on Queenstown Road which shouldn't cause too much disruption to the traffic but we do obviously need to be mindful of the network so it's very much our aim to make those changes permanent and to put in that nice proper cycling infrastructure on the bridge this year but we will we are working closely with TFL on looking at the network coordination across the whole area because obviously there's incredible pressure on our river crossings so you know and we need to be mindful of that thank you Councillor Critchard thank you a slight aside one of the things I would really like us to be in a position to do though is to also bear down on motorists who hang their cars halfway across the pavement I've got about I've got two cases going on at the moment and so we've talked about e-bikes but those motorists also provide a big obstacle if they're not fully in their driveway I don't know what we can do about it but I think we should be doing something my question wasn't and I've got some other stuff and I looked at the statistics so in the targets in paragraph 17 I'm very interested in the percentage of ones worth residents doing 20 minutes active travel it's due to go up to 58% but I'm pretty sure the health team would really like to see that being increased even more I just wondered how we know what the people are doing and what we're doing in order to encourage walking and cycling as the active travel and the other question on the stats was about the number of people killed or seriously injured and zero by two I mean I can see that there's been a drop but I would also want to understand whether that's a significant that is going down and what we're doing in order to keep to make sure that those numbers keep dropping because I mean in the information that the ones were cycling campaign kindly provided actually there was more in 2022 and then it's dropped to this year and there's obviously some sort of in a normal distribution there would be some variance and whether the variance we see is indicated there's a trend downwards or whether actually it's just a normal variance in the numbers okay taking the first bit public health so the public health team and the also the parks team as well because they're involved so collectively the public health team that enable and the parks team and ourselves are joined up in trying to ensure increasing physical activity and we're working on joint plans to do that this data has come from Transport for London and as I said by that coordination between the various teams we're confident that we will have increased physical activity and we'll be able to demonstrate not only the environmental benefits but also the health benefits in terms of cardiovascular disease and things like that so we will also be looking to see the extent to which these activities help with those health indicators as well and then the second point on the reduction in killed and seriously injured the trend the long-term trend is definitely downwards so we can be quite confident of that that said as we note in the report more needs to be done because that trend downwards is intended to reach zero by 2041 and that's clearly going to be an incredibly challenging target so the trend is downwards but there is still work to do Can I come back about the walking the active travel it just seems to me that maybe 20 minutes per day 58% just seems a bit low I guess that's also a TFL talk that comes through from the mayor I can find out what they count by that because obviously whether it's cycling swimming running I'll find out exactly what that metric and how that's calculated for you because it does seem a bit low doesn't it thank you and we've got Mr Chadwick wants to come on this point as well yes thanks chair so regarding the aside one of my pegs as well I have to say cars overhanging pavements and blocking wheelchairs boogies whatever making it dangerous if you have to step out into the road of course and we do have a regime around that the inspection enforcement team will handle that will enforce that if they know about it of course so as you know Sharon Wright heads up that team so I would suggest you contact her about particular cases thank you and I'm sure most councillors will have been in touch with Sharon Wright she's very we're a very good officer nice shout out for Sharon Wright councillor Locker thank you chair I have just four queries on the appendix and then a generic strategic question at the end would you like me to just run through the four right so page 54 on school streets on the right hand column final sentence says all existing school streets will be assessed for additional signage and ANPR that sounds good because it sounds like more schools will get ANPR it would be good to know the time scales for that my second question is on page 55 it talks about the pavement program and the maintenance and highway renewal I just wonder could we have a split a cost split broken down of what's going on to pavements and what's going on to carriageway my third question it references in the column sorry column the middle column where it's talking about crossing heavily trafficked roads obviously we know that there's been work at Putney High Street and Bridge Junction the intention of which was to make it easier for pedestrians and cyclists it would be good to know how much has been spent on that scheme if you don't know tonight just follow up afterwards how much is still to spend because I'm aware that it hasn't completely finished and there is still work to do and how that compares with the budget and then I think on page 57 there's a section on contraflow cycling I noted that we were emailed by one of the groups expressing concern about the lack of progress I remember signing off an SO83 so it must have been three years ago or more to make Jews Row a contraflow cycle lane it's a little connecting bit by the ship pub but it's really important for the Thames path now I think in previous responses when I've raised this it's been mentioned that we were going to wait for the works on Wandsworth Bridge but having just heard what the cabinet members said it's been over three years should we just get on and do it thank you thanks council Arca thank you thank you so all the existing schools have already been contacted relating to the potential for upgrading to AAMPR so that piece of work has been done it'll take probably I would said it's this next financial year will be the investigation and roll out of additional AAMPR clearly where a school is in a relatively quiet road there's unlikely to be a need for camera enforcement but I think we've got to that point where assuming there's relative traffic flows and the school wants camera enforcement then most schemes will transition to that either as fixed cameras which are there every day or at least the roving occasional CCTV car that might do it where there's no real need to have a presence on a daily basis the second question relating to the pavements and roads I think we've got another paper on the maintenance following this I'm pretty sure we can get a list of pavements and roads certainly for the initial year obviously for years ahead I'm not sure whether that degree of detail is yet available but certainly for the initial period I would have thought there must be a list we we share yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah as I said I think I think that's more likely to be available for the immediate year but maybe not for future years yeah the putney bridge on putney bridge I can say that the budget there was a budget of £927,000 in 2024 25 for putney bridge and high street more generally I cannot say exactly how much of that has been spent on particularly on what but again we'll be able to find that breakdown for you and then Jews row yes I think we can look to see if we can implement that quicker yeah thank you and then Councillor Critchard sorry thank you that answers on my question so the generic question I have which is more for the wider committee is when I read this paper I think we are seeing good progress however I do note that some of these schemes well the vast majority of these schemes have been going on for some time in fact most of the initiatives were started or predate the current administration so I wonder what if any are the new plans to come yes well I think there are probably two things that have probably changed one is the acceleration of the programs which were already sort of in their infancy so for example if we take something like bike hangers as we mentioned in the paper there were x number on site in 2022 but since then the program has dramatically ramped up and that's the case I think across several of these programs where what's changed is that degree of pace and then the other thing which is probably noticeable is that some of the larger corridor projects and we mentioned something like say Queenstown Road they are now effectively got to the point delivery so I think that's the other area where there's probably significant change so we've had design that's now leading to likely big capital delivery coming up and we've had acceleration and expansion of the existing programs things thank thank you thank you very much I'm going to go councillor critchard councillor yorkus councillor apps okay so we'll go it's okay so if we're shifting the order then Anna marie just put herself to the bottom so we're going to councillor yorkus councillor apps then councillor critchard just I guess one of the kind of new pieces that wasn't there before was obviously the quiet ways program the intention of which is to fill in some of those gaps in the network and to start laying the foundations for the utopia of having a crisscross across the borough in the near future I guess I've made this point before in this committee but I made the point again that one of the routes that I've been asked for most as a ward councillor is the north south across Wandsworth Common that route isn't going forward in part due to councillors from your party whipping up hysteria around that plans by insinuating that there was going to be some kind of new motorway across the common and five lanes worth of cycle lanes and new lights and that kind of thing so on those ones I'd be looking to you guys and saying help that if you want to see that progress speak to your colleagues and say to them we believe in active travel we want more people to cycle across the borough and don't let them come to this committee and scare monger and lead residents to be concerned about plans that were never going to be there and that was the most kids go to a manual and they can't cycle with their kids to school because that route isn't going to go ahead so that's one thing where we've tried to make progress one of the things that's come up for us and actually the transport team have been brilliant about keeping us involved and making sure that we're aware of some of the speeding incidents on Queenstown Road particularly the part which is in my ward in Shaft Spring Queenstown and I understand there was going to be some enforcement around that what do we I mean obviously we haven't been able to extend out kind of speeding restrictions in the same way that we'd like or certainly penalising motorists to speed what is possible for us to pursue or what should we be doing in terms of lobbying for greater enforcement against speeding and if you have any news on the Queenstown Road that would be useful to hear I don't have any easy answer or quick answer for the speeding issue I think the two things which immediately come to mind are the redesign of the highway to make it in such a design that it's less conducive for people to put their foot down and so whether that's the installation of strategically placed new crossings or widened pavements things like that which can be integrated into a street scene and therefore will help to deliver reduced speeds without the need for physical enforcement presence on that second bit the physical enforcement presence as you know it's primarily a matter for the police and we're always prepared to be lobbying and pushing for them to address any areas of concern we've also of course noted that quite a lot of speed in or certainly accidents and casualties are predominantly located on the red route network and the main road network so again transport for London introducing speed control measures on the red route network is a critical point part of that and that's something that we will also always be pushing for you mentioned something else Queenstown Road so the plan is to start up in the location between Queen Circus and the bridge to implement that stage first and then to move southwards later on so we will hopefully have a full design that will bring about safety and speed reduction along the entire corridor thank you council critchard oh thank you yeah tfl actually are quite good at picking up on the speeding on their red routes i have two friends recently who've just had to do their speed awareness courses because they've been picked up for going rather not terribly quickly but more quickly than necessary in a 20 mile hour limit my question wasn't about that though we've talked about cycle parking with bikes that they are normally storing at home what can we what are we doing around more Sheffield stands in our town centres so that people who are using their bikes to go somewhere have a good place to safely secure their bikes and yeah tell us a bit more about that and i'm very keen on cycle hoops around you know the ones that you get around a post i like them so in general terms we have a cycle parking budget every year and a cycle parking delivery programme every year and it does go relatively unheralded so we do put cycle Sheffield stands in on an annualised basis what we do have on the website and perhaps we can give it a bit more visibility is there is a request form on the website so people can go on and identify locations or areas where they would like to see more Sheffield stands and we will take that and plot them out and then go and visit those locations and we are happy to do that and we do do that unsurprisingly most of the demand is in town centres and we expect that we will be delivering more cycle parking in all the town centres the only caveat I would put on that is of course there is a lot of demands on the space in the town centres whether it's for benches or street trees or just for pedestrian movement as well so we have got to be a little bit careful not to just make it difficult for people to move around because of the presence of the cycle parking as well last year for example how many new stands did we install and I'd also say just thinking about the loops around the signage which is a good way of adding an extra way of tying your bike up and also Clapham Junction there are some seats where you can actually could use the arm almost to put your bike on as well because it's quite well designed like that how many other ideas have we got making it smarter to park yeah okay the numbers I recollect about 50 cycle Sheffield stands but I'll be able to provide an up-to-date list of that and just how many we put we put in but as I said that's the sort of programme that we would deliver on an annual basis thank you very much councillor Belton would you no change your mind okay okay so I think that's the end of the questions so thank you councillors so in that case for this paper the committee are being asked to support the recommendations in paragraph two please can I see all those in favour of the recommendations please raise your hand the recommendations are supported unanimously thank you councillors and thank you Mr Tidley for that one we then move on and we've touched on it slightly our next paper is on the highways maintenance programme as those of you who are regular to this committee this is an annual update so I'm going to move to Mr Chadwick for a quick introduction on this paper thank you councillor so if I could do an introduction covering three broad themes if you don't mind maybe not that brief it is a lot of money to be spent and that's my first point this is the largest single amount being spent in this borough on its rows and footpaths ever at 2.25 million succeeding this year's budget actually at 8 million quite an increase from last year which was 4.7 5 million so the borough is committed to investment to counter the decline of the condition of our network over the last number of years so that's the scale of it we're not just delivering lots of servicing and lots of new footpaths we're constantly trying to improve how we do it and that's my second main theme for my intro which is that those improvements include I think Mr. Tiddly said the dreaded AI did he artificial intelligence well we are adopting more and more artificial intelligence techniques for constantly making sure that the conditions surveys are accurate so we've got a pilot about to start on AI probably by using cameras on our own vehicles especially vehicles that are constantly running around the network in a pattern and that could well be our waste vehicles to check conditions of roadways we are also always trying to improve in how and when we deliver the works and that gets ever more important given the scale of the work we're undertaking so network management has been touched on already tonight clearly it's not just ourselves doing the works to our network we've got to think about TFL we've got to think about the statutory undertakers like Thames Water and we're constantly improving how we manage that intelligence to best time the works that we do and sometimes we will have to rearrange those works and those timings through the year to suit things we didn't know about to happen and that often is the case I'd say especially with Thames Water actually at the moment and the third main thing I want to talk about or mention is we're working ever more closely with our housing and regeneration directorate for works on estates and that includes now we're using the same methodology for how we judge the condition of roads and pavements and our housing and estate colleagues will be using more and more our framework contractors Conways and I think that can only be a good thing that also helps us to plan the works in and around estates in a coordinated way as well so yeah that's my introduction thank you very much very comprehensive well Mr Chair but Councillor Yates did you indicate you wanted to say something yes thank you Chair yeah no just wanted to say I am very pleased that we're able to make this scale of investment because I think it's so important to improve particularly the condition of the pavements to make them safer for pedestrians particularly those with mobility impairments many of them get in touch with me very keen that we make our pavements as good as they can be obviously also so important to not have big potholes which are dangerous for cyclists in particular but also obviously for vehicles so very pleased we're able to make this level of investment and again I really want to thank the officers who are delivering this programme because it is a very big scale up in quite rapidly and I just wanted to mention Afe Tesfay who heads this programme very ably very efficiently and we don't usually see him at committee but I know how hard he works and his team how hard they work as well and then we've got all the council staff who work in the DSO who do the great majority of the work on our pavements obviously we use Conway's for the carriageway resurfacing so yes just want to thank them for all their hard work on this thank you Thank you Councillor Yates and I'm sure Mr Chadwick will make sure that those recognition go to his staff because I'm sure they'll be watching the transport committee on catch-up but yeah it's always nice to recognise but Councillor Hamilton you're first Thank you Chair and also can I echo the thanks to officers who are delivering this I could certainly particularly in the Ballon Ward see some old favourites on there that residents have been asking for being delivered with this paper just a quick question each year when this paper is published one of the first things that happens is those who are in the nearby roads get in touch to ask why they haven't been included there's also a range of lurid rumours that go around occasion as Councillor Critchard and I have discussed in the past about why some roads are on these lists and why they're not it would be really useful I think we've asked for it at previous meetings but if we could be provided with however technical however detailed however difficult for laymen to ingest just a copy of the document that does explain the type of calculations that it does is about road surfaces so that we can understand and perhaps communicate to residents that this is a technical calculation as opposed to a political one I think that will be helpful for all of us and I do seem to recall and I'm not sure if you can't someone raised this exact point last year and I think Mr O'Donnell yeah yeah and Mr O'Donnell said yeah whatever would be provided would be reams and reams and reams of probably quite I'm sure if he talks he can talk you through the methodology and perhaps terms that we may understand Councillor Apps and Councillor Belton I think that was what I saw next thank you I think Councillor Yates made a very good point earlier about having to make sure that we coordinate different works I mean it's particularly obviously acute in Putney and Bathsea with the bridges but it's also a case with some of our major roads you know if we're doing some resurfacing on some of our major roads like Garrett Lane Mitchum Road Merton Road you know how do we make sure that we're managing the traffic and we're managing that flow through well clearly with this scale up it is a considerable part of our thinking ahead of setting this level of funding a check that we would be able to cope with it against all those other works that are done so the straight answer is that we've got decent and improving network management intelligence and systems I think some of you will know Camilla Donnelly's team they now coordinate and the intel of all the works done by the council in whatever way whether it's by Mr. Tiddley's team on cycle hangers or by roadway improvement schemes or by these works themselves all the works done by TFL that we know about frankly all the works done by the statutory undertakers like Thames like electricity company that we know about are on our intel basically are in our knowledge and therefore allow us to plan the timing of the works as best we can what sets us adrift a little is when emergency works are done and sometimes they are lengthy emergency works like gas works in Tooting like Thames Water works near here they get in our way don't they and they are often things that will get in the will offset our thoughts as to when to do these road works so best I can say is that we got much better improving intelligence of all the work that's been done in the borough and that lets us plan sensibly what it doesn't mean is perfection because of those things that are just unknown that often come out thank you very much just lacking the crystal ball but once we've got that we'll be but thank you thank you and I think Councillor Yates wanted to come in there then I'm going to Councillor Belton then Councillor Austin yeah as Mr Chadwick mentioned it it can be very frustrating when we don't get information from the utility companies when they have to undertake emergency works I mean obviously if there's a gas leak or a burst water main it has to be fixed but I know this is a source asked London councils to take it up particularly with Thames water because they are terribly bad at letting us know so they may start work and we won't know because they won't have told us and then we're trying to ensure there's proper traffic management on the road so it's an ongoing area of concern regarding Thames water but as Mr Chadwick said we've been trying to strengthen our where we do have the case to fine the utility companies when they don't comply with the regulations as they should in terms of how they inform the council then we do do that thank you Councillor Belton just a comment on the last comment I think I've been hearing about utilities and roadworks for something like 50 years it's a constant we're all going to have it always I think as a problem but best we can do to resolve it I've got two comments really one the kind of rules game and one an engineering one you mentioned pavements I managed after some persuasion to get some very seriously rotten pavements reconstructed and the problem with it was it was a continual dispute between the housing revenue account and the general revenue account as to which they were and in the end it was actually Batsy Fields somehow or other people said oh well let's forget about the dispute let's just do it which was thank goodness but I wonder whether we've got over that problem in the generality of things just being held up because it's housing revenue account now it's GRA so that was one issue the other the engineering one I sometimes have argued and certainly feel that the engineers do the work dare I say possibly engineeringly in a competent kind of way but without opening their eyes and I'll give you one particular example of this and that's road humps no one loves road humps I think lots of people can see the real practical reasons for it and what they do but there's a road hump on the short bit of an L shaped road chivalry road in ones as common there's a road hump in the very short bit where it must be at least 30 yards from the beginning to the end of the road getting up to 20 miles even getting up to 30 which is when I first would have a bit of struggle and getting up to 20 really did we need to put a road hump there just causes more problems with cars and the residents because of the noise and it was on a meaningless bit of road in my view but more seriously and more provably we've now got these nice road I don't know what you call them raising of the roads the junctions raised tables and I can't be the only person in this situation but I happen to live in a little valley called Norskot and there's a river at the bottom of the valley and there's little humps all gone in all the way along and I think it's technically called ponding results whenever it rains and you know the last few weeks there's been quite a lot of rain and quite a lot of ice so there's been lovely great lakes all the way along Norskot Road on all the side roads and lots of them become nice ice rinks at the right time of the year surely when people were doing that and this is why I was wondering about the intelligence they bring to the job the design of it when you have that raised table at the bottom of a hill and North can't be the only place in the borough it must happen everywhere and what do we mean by creating these kind of mistakes thank you councillor belton so I'm going to pass to councillor yates for the division on hra in general and then mr chadwick for the intelligence of engineering I think was the point you were driving at thank you yeah thank you councillor belton so yeah we have given more attention to the roads and pavements on our housing land we are very keen that they would be in just as good a condition as the public highways and there was a proper detailed visual survey done of the roads and pavements on the housing land for the first time last year and now you'll see in the paper in appendix two there is the list of roads and pavements on housing land that will be repaired so there is now a proper plan maintenance programme and there is more funding allocated from the HRA so and we have very much requested excellent cooperation between the housing department and the transport colleagues in planning those works so and I couldn't agree with you more in a situation like that the work just needs to get done residents don't care which budget it's coming out of so hopefully that won't happen again and if it does please do bring it to my attention but hopefully there's good collaborative working going on there well I think the engineer Mr O'Donnell and the engineer Mr Chung might have a more robust answer to Councillor Bettland's points than I but I can bring a broader perspective to that question I think what I'd say is that this is the main point I put to you when we do the works more and more we seek not just to replace like for like the previous surface of the road or the previous surface of the footbath we do open our eyes the engineers open their eyes and look at what what is there and what could be improved so I don't think they always get that right and they would admit that because there's an awful lot of planning to be done in these works a lot of volume to be handled but they will try and improve the situation on the ground every time they do a job as I say that's continuous improvement stuff and we're not always perfect what I'd also say is that you raise the point about I think more about gully cleansing okay well if it wasn't that then forgive me but that's my main point we're constantly looking to improve the area within which we're doing the works rather than just as perhaps it was more the case in the past just directly like for like replace if you put your microphone on thank you thank you Councillor Yates for the first answer on the second point you have missed the ponding that's in Northgate Road has happened very recently as a result of our works we've been putting in the raised tables and the water no gully is blocked up we have deliberately I'm afraid this is it we have deliberately dammed up the runoff so the water coming down the hill has got nowhere to go there's no drain that's been blocked there's nothing there except a new raised table and therefore a small pond right across the road including over the Canberra in one of them every time it rains sorry then I have a different answer because I didn't realise it was a very recent point so on that case it is simply a case that we must meet on site with the engineers and look to rectify well I'm happy to do it it's two minutes from where I live yeah I'm sure yeah I'm sure we can follow that up outside of the meeting thank you Councillor Belton and Mr Chadwick so I'm going to go to Councillor Austin then Councillor Mayorkas thank you very much chair I've got a question yeah so on page 61 paragraph 13 in the bullet points it says reduce the claims of council receives accidents and injuries on defective highways how much do we pay out in how much do we pay out in claims and then on page 75 this is actually more of a plea than anything it was just something that came across my desk this afternoon or in my email box this afternoon I've got a lady actually who lives in Hayward Gardens who's blind and she now has to have somebody to escort her from the bus stop on Putney Heath to her flat because the footpath is now so uneven her stick doesn't work in any more in order to find the grounding and could we I know it's not on the list but could we have a look at it I will send a follow up email tomorrow through the system but just take a heads up we could have a look at it because she needs an escort now to get from the bus stop to her flat yeah of yeah of course we can look at that I mean we always use there's a section here isn't there of the way in which we can manage the planning of the work through conditions through inspections by our offices we always use that intelligence as well to determine where we might do more work so I'm very happy to receive that email and to take it further what was the first point yeah sorry I got it there so the payouts are I mean I'm trying to cast my eye towards Alex but he may not know the answer what I do know is they are very very low always because we are able to demonstrate and prove that we got a very good regime of maintenance and that's the key for these claims Alex have you got a figure I don't have a figure but we can definitely get back to you with the figure over a number of years of payouts I mean so lowest I was edging towards saying nominal and perhaps even zero on something in some years yeah we would we would contest spurious claims as well obviously quite vigorously great thank you very much and councillor Mayorkas and councillor Tiller as councillor Hamilton said this is a time where we look ahead and everyone gets excited and some people are disappointed but could we have a two sentence summary of the current year programme that we are in in terms of delivery right now two sentences 94% delivery of roadways to this point 71% delivery of footpaths that latter figure means it's quite tight to deliver all the footpaths this year but the team are determined that they can and will and that's been our consistent performance in previous years Thank you very much for that response Thank you Chair A constituent who uses a wheelchair has flagged up the lack of dropped curbs in rampton and across the borough what are the plans to improve this and also the uneven pavement on Dainbury Avenue I don't know the specifics of Dainbury I reiterate the kind of point I was making to Councillor Belton about every time we go in including on footpaths we seek to correct any problems with lack of drop curves with cambers and we particularly try and improve a lot of those less able so I would hope that we would pick up any points of that type but if you want to contact me about the specifics I'll make WSU that we do thank you and Councillor Mayorkas just to echo that I to those crossings for those with accessibility issues so I think just collaboratively and highlight them we're the eyes and ears on the ground so when we see them just flag them to officers and hopefully something can be done thank you very much thank you and thank you Mr. Chadwick for the stats earlier I hope to maybe see them on the report last time I did ask for an update on how the program goes but my question was about TFL roads and pavements paragraphs 28 sorry 29 onwards and obviously it talks about the pressures on TFL I find myself and I'm sure other ward councillors will agree I get actually quite a lot of complaints now from residents which are about TFL roads and pavements and I'm never sure if it's best for me to forward it on to TFL directly or whatever I get complaints in and just be passing them on to TFL but then also to have a sort of check that will probably help you in your meetings and lobbying with TFL give you real leverage to say look I'm getting lots of complaints about the carriageway service for instance around the ones with one way system and I know I was speaking to a colleague recently who came off her bike there so well I agree with the point and the sentiment I'm not sure what are sitting here and now I'm not sure what data we do have on the TFL network but certainly we'd welcome any info you've got and we'll gather it I do certainly know more and more we are having to send out our street inspectors to rectify issues and sadly we just have to do that particularly when there's a dangerous issue in paragraph 31 I'm very interested in the implementation of double yellow lines on corners and I just wondered if we could have an update on how that's going because there is a lot of bad parking on corners especially in residential streets which makes it difficult excuse me the corner is usually where you cross and if somebody is parked there you can't cross there and also how we will enforce that because obviously we can enforce but the inspectors come out so where I live we only have one hour parking restriction they will come out and inspect for people who are parking at incorrectly at that time but of course you could be parking anytime on the double yellows outside when the parking zone isn't in force so how are we going to manage that sorry did that make sense in the end I was I was just trying to get you to a question but you got there yourself before I need to interrupt I think it's essentially about enforcement of parking yellow lines on corners really really this this is saying that what we do when we do the surfacing works and we do as I said earlier look to improve not just replace so the program really of improving or doubling up on WL lines and corners follows the actual program of maintenance of the roads so I don't know whether you understand that is that clear councillor so there's no independent program for WL lines and corners these works follow and are in conjunction with the road resurfacing works themselves so basically if the road is resurfaced then the double yellow lines on the corners will be put in and if your road was resurfaced quite recently you might be waiting a very long time for those double yellow lines yeah except we are putting in additional budget for a program to improve traffic signs and lines and also street name plates but obviously your expenditure on traffic signs and lines is more relevant to your question so I mean I'll pick that up with Nick O'Donnell like you Councillor Critchard I think it's very important but there is there will be I mean the paper does highlight that we are doing more on that and you know that is important across the borough and as you say it can't just be dependent on where we're resurfacing a road and regarding enforcement of course you'll know better than me that you can request enforcement having been a councillor for a long time residents write to me from across the borough about all sorts of things regarding our roads and whenever it's an enforcement issue I always email the enforcement team to ask them to increase enforcement at that location and then they do that there are some capacity constraints but we do have a lot of CEOs working all the time and if there's a particular problem then yeah we can put more enforcement there yes I think though it's much more random if it's parking on a corner it's usually the delivery vans that do it whereas I don't know what you mean about the enforcement in particular areas because the top end of chestnut grove we've had extra enforcement but that's been easier whereas it's the random people on the particular corners that's I just wondered you know we get double yellows but they might just realize that they might not be in pause thank you Councillor Critchard for that point I'm going to move on there to Councillor Belton and Councillor Mayor No OK Councillor Mayor Just very quick one to officers what is their analysis of future projections of the quantity of electric vehicles and their weight and what impact that will have on deterioration I read the projections can I turn to you David I mean in terms of the weight clearly very significant impact on roads and it costs more in terms of the structural integrity that we need to put in place so in terms of numbers it's rapid increase in the numbers of electric vehicles out there the proportions I could need to dig into to find you the thing I would say that and clearly an electric vehicle being heavier will cause some more damage but the main source of damage to the highways are heavier vehicles so buses and HGVs particularly and as they transition to electric that's where the potential main damage will come here thank you councillors I'm now going to move on to the vote we so the committee is being asked to support the recommendations in paragraph two of the paper on proposed highway maintenance programme for 25 26 and all those in favour please raise their hand thank you councillors that paper is also agreed unanimously thank you Mr Chadwick for imparting your engineering thank you very much we're now going to move on to the final two papers which are finance related so we have our budget monitoring report I'm going to move on to Mr Moylan at the top of the table thank you very much councillors you'll be familiar with this report now it is the update to the transport committee's revenue budget for the current financial year 24 25 the forecast for services for this committee is basically on budget so we're 30,000 under which is a change from the overspend from the previous reports the primary movement from that is for the parking service so we've had a change in the forecast we're now in an underspend whereas before we were effectively on budget it's largely to do with small movements in on street and permit income it represents a very small percentage in terms of the overall variance so it's about 1% so we would expect some volatility in the forecast and the other changes from the previous report is we had forecast costs for the local plan and at the committee meeting in November the budget for that was awarded so there was just a timing difference effectively between the assumption of the cost prior to the budget being awarded the difference for this version of the monitoring report is that we've included an extract from the report that went to the finance committee in terms of the relevant appendices for the transport budget which is in appendix C particular questions that they wish to draw upon thank you thank you Mr Moiland Council Hamilton you first thank you so questions more about the longer term point 15 makes reference to the lack of predictability because of changing attitudes with parking in the borough the fact it's 30 million that comes from the service at the moment I just wondered in terms of us actually trying to plan ahead for the future take into account that might give us a sense of where this could go in the next few years because it does seem to be such a huge amount of money that we are planning around and to get some research about and some modelling about where that could lead to would be useful for all of us and give us some comfort with the figures Thank you Councillor yes it is a key area of risk we highlight it and we do attempt to model the forward look for where we think changes in behaviour might take hold we know that overall there is a decline in car usage and the mileage over time is falling obviously the impact of Covid led to a large disruption to that so we have factored in various elements that we think might drive use of car so there could be active travel policies but also things like the price of petrol and so we have included within appendix C on page 91 on other growth and savings there is a line showing behavioural change affecting parking income so we try and model the changes over time so we we've assumed that in a couple of years time there will be a reduction in our overall parking income as a result of these changes in terms of national kind of modelling I think we would try to incorporate any guidance that we get or any kind of indications about overall trends as well into that so the team would look at that thank you thank you there any more questions on this paper Paragraph 8 talks about the new planning software and obviously a bit of an overspend around that because of lack of planning income and then the project costs with the implementation of the combined planning software system could you tell us roughly what benefits we're hoping to see from that system and obviously how that will affect the budget thank you for that question I'm not an expert in this system but clearly it's a combined system where we're able to utilise Richmond and Wandsworth staff working on similar systems so therefore they can work together and share resilience it forms part of the overall place strategy so there is a lot of work going on to try and make sure that overall the teams will work together I think there will be an expectation that it will provide better reporting functionality but I would need to get back to you with a little bit more information about how that would feed into the overall structure for the planning team but we would expect it to be more efficient and therefore obviously if it is more efficient we wouldn't need the same volume of staff so we would hope therefore that we would be able to generate savings of the result that would be interesting if you could get back to us that would be lovely thank you I will do my best thank you thank you councillor Belton thank you councillor Critchard's comment inspired similar ones from me councillor Critchard knows the planning system as well as anyone authority I know she knows how to look up planning applications as quickly as anyone and it's a very cumbersome system at the moment one of the things that always surprises me though is that the team didn't seem to consider what I consider to be one of his most important users and that was the members because if you're a member of planning applications team you virtually cannot do your job unless you're able to get round the applications programme I think you'd agree with that Councillor Critchard having had experience of it but no one's ever asked for our specifications or whether we find the new system or what it's designed to do look good I'm rather surprised that the members haven't been involved in the specifications thank you I think that's probably more of an observation more than the financial step I think it's been noted down this end thank you very much are there any other questions on this paper councillors okay okay thank you very much yeah we're all good okay so this paper is being asked to note this paper for information is it paper noted thank you very much and with that we move on to the final item on the agenda this evening and back to Mr Moylan for an update on fees and charges please thank you very much chair yes so this paper sets out the proposed levels of fees and charges for discretionary services within the remit of the transport committee so there are broadly five areas that this paper would cover we have charges for the building control service we have charges for planning that are not the statutory charges so not the statutory planning application fees but the work that the team do in pre-application advice and planning purchase agreements we have charges for the traffic and engineering team as well as well as charges for CCTV and also parking so the rationale and the explanation for the various charges is set out within the document I think there are a lot of changes within the overall fees proposed there are a number which have a kind of regulatory element to them so clearly within the first section on page 95 you have the building control service but there have been a number of significant regulatory changes within this and so the fees are trying to reflect some of the additional costs that the council needs to or the council will incur in order to cover the service delivery so therefore there are some new charges but also some relatively large charge increases for building control largely operating within a kind of commercial environment so we're still expecting that these charges will be competitive and offer good value to the user it's also worth pointing out that the charges for parking when assessing the parking charges a number of elements need to be considered I won't go into all of them now but clearly affordability is one aspect of those and so for the current and future financial year the parking charges proposed to be frozen I'm very happy to answer any other questions anyone may have about any aspects of these charges thank you just on that final point about parking I think it was sort of a tradition that we got into that we looked at the parking charges every two years back then one of the reasons was because it was administratively easier to implement because we had to go and change all of the machines I know people do it more on their phones now but just administratively it was easier easier for the signage and all that sort of stuff so are you warming us up to coming back in a year's time to increase parking charges I'm just intrigued I'm only proposing a freeze in terms of this paper this paper only covers 2025 26 in terms of the administrative burden I think parking isn't uniquely different to the majority of other services I think the significant change in signage and going around to look at the machines was more of a problem historically as you say the vast majority of our services are online or through pay as you phone so in terms of the impact it's actually relatively minor so no more complicated than leisure centres I would suggest thank you Councillor Belton thank you I understood the rationale you explained at the beginning and clearly the ones that ordinary punters pay out in a fairly regular basis are all attached to roughly 2.3% or something like that except for rounding situations you mentioned building control in particular which is what I was interested in in terms of it being in a commercial environment in my view the abolition of the requirement to have totally independent building control officers was an enormous mistake made by a previous government and now as you say we are in competition with private sector building control officers who can give certificates in my experience in somewhat dubious circumstances so it's almost a public health issue here I think is about whether buildings get their certificates from totally reliable from a public point of view perspective so I'd be very concerned if we were losing out competitively and I see on page 101 building control completion certificate 103% change I don't suppose if you're getting something fundamentally big done to your house the difference between £47 and £95 is going to make much difference but every bit that discourages people from using legitimate independent parking control officers like the council would provide seems to me to be unfortunate is that really competitive or are we actually worsening well in danger of worsening a bad situation thank you for that question so I would suggest that my understanding of the building control charges as working with the new interim head of building control is that actually a lot of these costs will be mirrored across any provider of building control service so it is his view that these charges still remain competitive we have a range of as you said as a commercial function we have a range of activities to effectively market the council service and those will be continuing to make sure that we can offer the service as widely and as competitively as possible thank you just to add to that I'm glad to find something I can agree with council bellton on tonight which is his broad sentiment on approved inspectors versus council inspectors these approved inspectors worry me deeply as well and I actually was on the panel for the permanent new head of building control recently and I can assure you all that we are we have sought and have got a new officer there who has that competitive edge and will seek to build on the experience and the reputation of our building inspectors in the borough and especially those working in Battersea power station and its environs to ensure we get more of that business for our own inspectors rather than for those commercial approved inspectors thank you can I just add to that chair I mean I got a question no not really we're not desperate for time are we I've got another member who's actually indicated they've got a question so councillor Austin thank thank you very much I'd also like to agree with councillor Belton about external approved inspectors and councillor inspectors so I'll start there but just again if I can use this as learning experience a little bit the parking charges does that include parking permit costs or is it just to pay and display meters it would be permits as well yes okay thank you were there any other questions councillors turning to you councillor Belton this is the last paper did you have the final words you wanted to add it was relevant at the time but you succeeded I deprive you I have a building in my ward which is not only falling down but it's causing all the other houses to fall down because as far as I can see the building control was well it was not done by the council and it's not done terribly well and it's dreadful situation that the government the previous government let me say actually one it was the Cameron government actually ceased to have this independent building control and you can appoint your own building control person nowadays which is fantastic you just think of the abuse of that I do the job and I appoint the adjudicator that says I've done it well thank you councillor Belton so on that the final ask of this evening is to ask whether the committee agrees to support the recommendations in paragraph 3 of the report can I ask all those in favour to please raise their hands so it's one two three four five six six agreement all those against please raise their hands so no against and all any abstentions so one two three four abstentions to the paper so that concludes the business of the transport committee this evening thank you to all councillors for coming this evening and for staying the duration thank you very much
Transcript
Evening, welcome to the meeting of this evening's Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee. This meeting is being webcast this evening and some officers may be accessing virtually although I do believe we've got everyone in the room with us this evening so but as ever for anyone watching please do bear with us if we experience any technical difficulties. My name is Councillor Fraser and I'm the chair of the Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee. I'm now going to pass to councillors to introduce themselves so I'll start on my left with Councillor Mayorkas and work my way round. Councillor Mayorkas, Trinity Ward. Councillor Tiller, Rehampton Ward. Councillor Apps, Shastring, Queenstown Ward. Good evening, Tony Belton, Battersea Park Ward. Hello, Councillor Anne-Marie Critchard, Tootinbeck Ward. Councillor Canandre Sujeor, St Mary's Ward. Councillor John Locker, Thamesfield Ward. Councillor Nicholson, West Putney Ward. Councillor Daniel Hamilton, Ballam. Thank you, councillors. Also in attendance this evening, to my left is Councillor Yates, the Cabinet Member for Transport and for the first time in a few committees we've got no apologies this evening so welcome to all councillors. Members are reminded to ensure your microphone is turned off unless you're speaking. When you do speak, please do state your name and please do bear in mind the committee must remain quarrant. We also have a number of officers present this evening, some who are regulars to this committee, some for whom this is not their usual committee, so they will introduce themselves when it comes to their papers as well. So moving to the first item of business on tonight's agenda, we have the minutes of the last Transport Committee meeting which was held on the 19th of November. Please, can I accept those meeting minutes as agreed? Agreed. Agreed. Lovely. Thank you very much. And are there any declarations of interest ahead of tonight's meeting? Okay. Very well. Well, thank you, councillors. So we'll now begin the substantive paper. So you'll notice this evening and for those, anyone who is watching, we have split tonight's committee business into, we're starting with strategic planning elements and then moving on to the Transport Committee business. So first up is agenda item three, the catchly named draft, reuse, recycle and waste management supplementary planning. So I'm going to pass to officers, so I'm going to pass to officers and so please do introduce yourselves and say a few words before we open up for questions. Thank you, chair. Thank you. Thank you, chair, and good evening, everyone. So my name is Daniel Goodman. I'm a principal planner in the council spatial planning team. And this paper tonight relates to a draft, reuse, recycling and waste management supplementary planning document. So the purpose of the document is to give planning applicants and developers guidance on what the council expects when it comes to waste and refuse and recycling provision within local developments. It provides additional guidance over and above what's in the council's local plan, but it is ultimately there to guide decision makers, whether or not that's officers under delegation or the planning applications committee on what applicants should be providing in terms of waste and recycling provision. And helps to ensure that applications the council's council receives are of a higher standard and that there's less need for negotiation in terms of meeting the council's expectations. So the document itself would supersede a document that was prepared and adopted in 2014. So since 2014, there have been a number of changes to both national and local policy, including obviously the adoption of the ones with local plan in 2023, as well as the provisions in the Environment Act 2021, and also some changes in local recycling and waste management practices. So it's a good opportunity to update the guidance to make sure it reflects our current expectations as opposed to those in 2014. So we are required under regulations to consult on the SPD before we can adopt it, and we have to consult for a period of at least four weeks. So subject to the recommendations set out in this paper today, Chair, or tonight, Chair, we would proceed to a statutory consultation for a period of at least four weeks, consider the responses we receive and whether or not they justify any changes to the document, and then hopefully proceed to adopting it. And at the point of adoption, it would then become material in determining local planning applications. So very happy to take any questions, Chair, but I'll leave it there for now. Thank you. Thank you very much. I can see Councillor Lopper first out of the blocks, and then Councillor Belton. Thank you. Sorry, thank you. Thank you very much for the introduction. I just wondered, so obviously there have been quite a lot of changes in waste collection over recent times, and we're now collecting food waste separately. But for blocks of flats, that's been quite difficult, and it hasn't been introduced yet. I just wondered if at some stage we were to think about doing that in the future, is this document sort of future-proof? Because I couldn't really see anything in there that if we were saying to developers, when you're developing your bin stores, wherever they may be, you might need a separate location for storing food waste and stuff like that, or would we have to come back and potentially just update it? Thank you, yeah. So the document does – well, the main thrust of the document is to really try and ensure that there is suitable space to enable waste storage, including the separate storage of recycling streams, and also suitable access to that space, both for collectors and the occupants of the building. So obviously when the Council is committed to rolling out food waste services, and that's becoming a national requirement over the next couple of years or so, that's an additional space requirement. So this document does require future developments to ensure that there is suitable space for the necessary separation of the waste, including separate food waste recycling containers. It's trying to build in everything that we know about at the moment, but obviously there's things in the distant future that we can't plan for, so this is really trying to cater for the things that we know about. Thank you. Councillor Belton. Good evening, and thank you for the introduction. I've got a particular interest currently as the Chair of the Planning Applications Committee, and I'd be interested in a series of not terribly difficult questions, but related questions, if I may, about half, doesn't it, I suppose. The Act was 2021. When was it – is it fully implemented in the sense that the ministerial – all the ministerial executive functions that take place after a bill becomes an Act are in place, so is it fully implemented everywhere? How many authorities do you know have actually taken these steps? Because it obviously takes quite a long time to do this. Presumably it doesn't apply to – well, how does it apply, if at all, to existing buildings? Because obviously this is to do with largely new construction. So there's the issue about older developments. And now all the authorities in the country going through this process, and are we just one of a batch, or are we right at the front of operating this? Thank you, Councillor. So I'll answer – I'll do my best to answer some of the planning questions that you've asked, and I might pass to Michael just to answer some of the waste policy side of things. I think from a planning perspective, the documents there are obviously to provide guidance in terms of how the Council will interpret and assess planning applications. So in a sense, it's separate to how existing buildings are managed. Of course, there are other parts of the Council which will have policy and will be implementing things in terms of existing buildings, particularly Council-owned stock, I suspect. But this document is specifically for those that come before the Council for planning permission. So it's not directly aimed at, if you like, retrofitting – to overuse that word, retrofitting waste into old buildings, unless they were to come forward for permission for renewal or for alteration or extension, et cetera. So it is really a planning tool in terms of this document. My understanding in terms of the Environment Act is that it's got a bit of a phased rollout, so there are provisions within it that are kind of phased in that sense, and there are dates and years and things that authorities need to meet by a certain time, and also certain requirements or provisions that allow authorities to implement certain things or not based on kind of local assessment. So Michael may be able to provide more detail there, but certainly I think there are large parts of the Environment Act that are fully in place and that we know what's coming of the parts that aren't. So if I pass over to Michael now. Yes, before you do. Of course, yes. Just following that up, can I ask you, are the planning officers the ones that deal with this, and more particularly is the documentation ready there for things like pre-application inquiries? Is the documentation there to give to potential applicants now, or is that coming down the line when we've agreed with this paper? Thank you. So in terms of planning officers, so development management officers, so those officers have been engaged in the development of this for some time, so for several months now, so they know what's in this, and their feedback has helped shape some of this. So obviously they have a very practical understanding in terms of how policy is currently implemented and in terms of negotiations with developers. So this document is not a surprise to those officers, and they'll have been able to implement and feed some of that into their work for some time. In terms of the kind of material weight of the document, it's only really upon its adoption that we can start using it or start referencing it in terms of decision-making, but there's no reason why officers wouldn't be using it in a discretionary way before then, particularly, obviously, if there's a large-scale scheme that's coming forward that it makes sense that by the time it's built out, this document will have been in place for some time. So there is a slight discretionary element to that, but certainly from its adoption time, which we hope would be later this year, it would start being used as a material consideration referenced in planning application committee reports and in officer reports. Thanks. Thank you. Just to add, so I think the simpler recycling regulations, which contain all the detail for what we've actually got to do in terms of lifting recycling services up to a national legislative requirement level, so the timelines for implementation of those regulations, some of it comes in for most of it for non-domestic premises comes in from the 31st of March this year. For domestic premises, it's the 31st of March 26, and then there's one or two additional requirements for micro firms and plastic films that come in on the 31st of March 2027. The waste service has got to, you know, this is requirements for all households and non-municipal premises producing household, well, no, it's commercial premises as well. So, yeah, there's a wide range of premises affected by this. This document is designed to ensure that new developments are designed in a way that accommodates those requirements. It doesn't really have any effect on existing premises that aren't submitting new planning applications, so it's a problem for the waste service to determine how can we best retrofit, for example, food waste recycling at existing developments. Sometimes it's going to be easy, sometimes it's not. All dependent on the space available, really. Thank you. Thank you very much. Councillor Critchard. Thank you. My first question, actually, is a bit of a follow-up from what you said about the changes coming through from the 31st of March. There's at least two of us at this table who are on the governing body of schools. This probably isn't part of this committee, but what sort of information are we giving to our schools? I know it was schools and it was other groups that have to be doing that, you know, have different targets for recycling. What's the information? What are we as a local authority saying to those people to make sure they're able to meet the target? Thank you. Yes, so for non-domestic premises, the legal requirement actually sits with the waste producer rather than the council. So ultimately it's the school that needs to ensure that it complies with the new simpler recycling requirements from the 31st of March this year onwards. Now, many schools come to us for their existing waste services. There are plenty of educational establishments covered by this requirement that go elsewhere. So what we're doing is working closely with colleagues in children's services to utilise their kind of platforms and channels through to the individual schools so that they know what our service offering is. So we're actively engaging with them at the moment and, yeah, for directly managed schools, there is going to be a free service. There will be small charges for independent schools. Thank you. Thank you for that one. Right. On page six, paragraph 15, the target. It looks like there's something not quite right there. The target was to decrease household waste from 260 to 186 kilograms. Is that per household? Sorry, where's the reference? Page six, paragraph 15, the first line, the first bullet point. I just wondered. No, not the percentage, the amount is the one above. Yeah. That should read. The other one is per head of population. I think that is per household. Would you just be able to? Yes, certainly. Thanks. And then what struck me about this is that for any of us who represent areas where there are flats above shops, and also places where the front door is directly onto the street, which occurs in some other places, is what can we, obviously this will only apply if there's a new planning application, but how do you envisage us being able to make sure those people have proper storage? Because I think that's one of the big problems we have, is people who are living above shops don't have proper storage, and they quite often leave their rubbish out when they shouldn't, or they just leave it by the bin. And also they've got nowhere inside to store it, so it's smelly and horrible. I mean, how is that going to help? And with that, how firm are we going to be? Because I see that we have the option of dealing with, if there's special exceptional circumstances, that we might not apply this policy. But I would be a bit anxious if we started to have a lot of special exceptional circumstances where we didn't apply it. Thank you. So I think Wandsworth has a historical legacy of, we think, something around 10,000 premises, flats above shops, which don't have suitable storage space at ground level, which we can access to collect their waste. And so the only real option at present is for them to place their waste in sacks on the public pavement by their own front doors, and we will collect it from there. Now, in terms of the – well, this document, you can't comply with the supplementary planning document for waste and have no space to present your waste within the – well, it's very, very restricted within the document. So I think the only scenario – let me get this right – yeah, I think according to this document that's under consideration now, if there's an existing precedent with the immediate neighbours that they already have to present their waste in bags on the street, then there is a possibility that you might get planning permission proposing the same. But if there is no precedent in the immediate vicinity, you can't comply with this document and have no space for waste off the street. So we've got to work out how we retrofit food waste recycling services with the existing legacy of those properties. But – sorry, yeah, I think I get it. So there's a couple of streets. There's at least one in the Tonsleys where the – you have to present all the front doors go straight out onto the streets. Whereas in the – when you're looking at the shops, actually it isn't quite like they've got a back entrance and other things as well. Yeah, well, I'm not entirely sure what your point is there. But I think there's a range of kind of scenarios with flats above shops. Some do have a little space around the back. Many of them don't. And one of the things we've got to do to determine how we're going to provide the weekly food waste collection services to those properties is to survey them in detail so we know at each individual one what the best solution is going to be. Great. I think Mr. Chowdhury, we're going to say a few words. But thank you. Yeah, if you – I don't mind, Chair. So, yeah, just beyond the planning issues, just, members, just to say that within the Environment Committee we're rolling out the Cleaner Borough Plan Phase 2, which includes a tackling of this very issue really by ensuring that there are more – there's a greater level of frequency of collection of all-way streams from flats above shops throughout large stretches of the borough. And, indeed, also in some parts of the borough we're placing communal bins at key points as well. So, again, that's beyond planning, but I thought it might be useful to say that. No, and thank you, Mr. Chowdhury, and thank you to your officers who've actually done a trial of that in my ward in South Ballon where we've had that issue in place. And we've reallocated parking spaces on two roads to do that, and that has dramatically decreased the instances of kind of unclean streets that we had each Monday morning when the bags inevitably were broken into by foxes looking for lots of lovely treats. So, yeah, there are other ways to see it. But thank you very much for clarifying. Were there any – okay, Councillor Austin. Thank you very much, Chair. And I'll just thank you for indulging me for a second. I actually do live in a flat above a shop on a high street, on Putney High Street, and it is dreadful. And so I'm hoping – I'm actually just asking if maybe we can offline have a conversation about doing a test area because Token Yard in Thamesfield, Jones Mews in Thamesfield, there are four yards. And the rubbish doesn't get picked up because the – if you leave it on the cobbles in our entranceway, then the waste people won't pick it up because it's considered private property. And if we leave it on the pavement, occasionally we'll get fined. And if we don't, then either foxes run into it or somebody drives over it or it gets thrown about or it is – it is a – it's a genuine problem that it's not a – it's just – it's actually something we need to, I think, look at in quite deeply because there are a lot of – flats and there are also a lot more developments going on that are going to be above this and looking at it. So I would love to actually have a more in-depth discussion as I've lived there for 15 years and it's been a problem since day one. Just following up, I don't think this is in this paper, but curiosity has got the better of me. I go into a lot of blocks of flats and there's been huge advancements in recycling waste and storage facilities in the blocks. What I find is inadequate, though, is actually cycling storage and electric charging points. They seem to be very inadequate in most new developments. And I don't know if that paper's come or if that paper's coming, but curiosity's just got the better of me. Thank you. We'll take the point on board totally, but I think it's probably a different paper that we'd have to consider for that. No, I'd just love to see that, because I don't know. I'm just generally curious in the trees and I'd love to read on that. Noted. That's okay. Thank you. And I think it's worth – in previous papers, I mean, with our backhanger rollout, those papers may have come before you joined the committee, but, yeah, we are – with our backhanger rollout, that's being done on estates, where obviously it's free of charge for residents to use on our estate. So that's where we're trying to address that issue in terms of – because, yeah, it's inadequate when people are pinning their cycles to railings or what have you, so that's why we're rolling out. So we have had quite a few papers come to the committee, and it's probably included in update. But, yeah, I'm going to point to Mr Tidley, who is the voice of authority on all these matters. Yeah. Thank you, Chair. David Tidley, the Head of Transport Strategy. I think we're in the same position, really, insofar as with new-build development, we're able to quite clearly make provision for electric vehicle charge points and cycle parking to the latest standards, and are able to significantly improve provision. But we have exactly the same issue of how we then deal with legacy development, which was built before electric vehicles were around, and consequently, as Councillor Fraser has said, what we have been at least trying to do is to ensure that there's street provision, both for cycle parking and street provision for electric charging points. Thank you. Councillor Critchard, did you have another question? Yes, just on the detail, page 26, paragraph 5.2.1. One of the things you use on the individual houses and blocks is space for 200-litre sacks of mixed recycling. If we're trying to increase recycling, I just wondered how we arrived at that number, and my question would be, will that be enough? As I pack my two bags of recycling for our household this week, and we can usually go beyond that. Sorry, is this in relation to the space requirements or the volume storage? The space, it says you should be able to have containers to be able to store this. I just wondered how we got to that amount, and is it... Okay. Well, there is a link back to BS 5906, which is the standard for waste management in buildings. That was written in 2005, I think, and does detail the kind of volumes of waste associated with different types of premises. However, I think that makes a link with the number of bedrooms. We have simplified it a little bit here and just said this is the requirement per residential premise. In practice, if it's, say, student accommodation and it's single occupancy bedrooms, we would treat that as half a household rather than a whole household. But, yes, I believe this is adequate. It does link in with the British standard for waste management in premises. The first two requirements there are precisely the same, in effect, as the existing supplementary planning document for waste. The big change is the third bit. We now need space for the food recycling caddies as well. Thank you very much. Council to the Sir John. Thank you. It's a question where I have a vested interest in the answer, but I think it's irrelevant, possibly, to a number of people. I help manage a local sports club, and currently we don't recycle because it's really expensive because we're treated as a business. And under the new rules, clearly, we're going to have to change our practices. So I was wondering if the council had any sort of support available for the sort of local community groups, which are not flush with money, and for who that would be a big expense. I'm not sure if I can answer your question fully, councillor. What I can say is that Wandsworth Council is not active in the commercial waste collection market. It's deliberately priced itself out of that market in 2003. So I think much may depend on whether the premise falls within commercial waste or household waste. And there are a number of non-domestic municipal premises that do produce household waste. And where it is classified as household waste, we can provide them with a service. There may be a charge for that service, but it's likely to be lower than what they would pay going to a privately operating collector. I guess the question was, does the... I mean, because there's obviously lots of different ways of supporting local clubs or local community assets, is there any sort of funding available? Because something will happen to a lot of community clubs from March, right, onwards. They are going to have to review those arrangements. So that's the question in terms of where there's any support. So I think for the most part, community clubs would produce commercial waste rather than household waste. So I'm not aware of anything we're particularly doing for them, other than we will be having detailed advice on the website. It's not there yet, but that is under consideration at the moment. So at least we're giving them the correct advice. The types of non-domestic premise that do produce household waste are things like educational establishments, places of worship, places used wholly or mainly for public meetings. There's a number of others, but it's all detailed in the Controlled Waste Regulations 2012. Okay, thank you very much. I'm going to go to Councillor Belton for the last question on this paper. You've just made a very interesting comment, thank you, Chair, about us choosing to move out of the commercial waste business. Was that, that was a political decision in 2003, presumably based on a political choice or because we were losing money on it. And presumably we could, to help Councillor Sejol out of her problem, we could go into the business of collecting. I'm also involved in an organisation, not a club exactly, if you'd call the Labour Party a club, but I'm somewhat responsible for a small office on Lavender Hill. And we avoid as far as possible the expense of commercial waste and make separate, I don't know, paper, what's it called? You know, chopping up paper. We make separate contracts or something. But the Council could get back into that business, presumably. Yes, I think it's entirely the Council's choice how it wants to price its commercial waste services. My recollection of the reasoning back in 2003, I think there was two things I remember there, really. One was a general view that the private sector was better placed to compete in that market. The other one was that we, that the Council was a bit hamstrung by high disposal costs. So, you know, the Council's waste has to go to the Western Riverside Waste Authority and the disposal charge for general waste there is high compared to most other local authorities or what a private company is likely to be paying, you know, a privately operating waste carrier. Great, thank you very much. So, I think we're done there on questions. I feel like we are now straying into the business of another committee now. But with that, when we, the committee are asked whether they support the recommendations in paragraph two of the report. Please can ask all those in favour to please raise their hands. And the paper is agreed unanimously. Thank you councillors and thank you officers this evening for coming. We are now going to move on to the next item of business which is the walking and cycling strategy. So, over to Mr Tidley to give an introduction when we've done some shuffling at the top end of the table. Thank you. The ones worth walking and cycling strategy was adopted in November 2022 after a period of consultation. And this paper provides a review and update of progress since that strategy was approved. It doesn't seek to spell out absolutely everything the council does which is far more again than what's in the paper but it's very much a summary of the main activity that the council has been embarked on in order to help deliver the objectives in the strategy. Just to pick up on a few, the paper I hope is relatively self-explanatory but to pick up on a few of the highlights in the last 12 months we mentioned the continued rollout of the school streets programme and moving as well into some more complicated schools and more sort of highway networks which is a little bit more difficult to manage. We continue to deliver large amounts of cycle parking and particularly the bike hanger programme following the significant deployment of e-bikes in the borough and the significant use that's made of them by residents. We've engaged and provided large numbers of parking bays for those and continuing with a significant programme of road crossing improvements, new zebra crossings, new signalised crossings, improvements of the bridges and the junctions near the bridges and as I say there's a full list there. What we're trying to do is have a borough-wide programme so there are things happening all over the borough. There are some programmes which are borough-wide, some highway schemes which affect certain parts of the borough. Some schemes are small, some schemes are large, some schemes are short term, some schemes take a longer time to implement. There are revenue programmes such as road safety training and cycle training as well to consider. And the other thing I would probably just highlight is that the council is very well funded to deliver this programme. So it's a level of investment that I don't think you'll find in other councils. And then the paper goes on to sort of explain as well some of the things which are coming shortly. I mean, members will note the physical works that are happening, for example, on Old York Road and there are physical schemes planned as well for Burntwood Lane and Queenstown Road specifically but others as well which will come on stream this year. The only other thing I would probably highlight is if members would have been sent a letter by the Wandsworth Cycling Campaign and I'll just refer very briefly to that. I don't think I need to necessarily go through it but it sets out their views on those things which have gone quickly, those things which they would like to see more of or quicker progress on. And so with that, they'll take any questions. Thank you. Great, thank you. Katsa, you indicated that I want to say a few words before we get back. Yeah, thank you very much, Chair. Yes, just wanted to say yes, very pleased with the progress we're making on this ambitious strategy and to, you know, thank officers for all their hard work. A huge amount of work goes into this. For example, very careful consultations before any bike owners are put in, you know, to get resident views, to make sure they're put in the best possible location and take into account any objections residents have. That's just one example of the kind of all the detailed background work that needs to take place in order to actually implement and deliver, you know, the strategy itself. So thank you to officers. Okay. Councillor Tilley, Councillor Hamilton and Councillor Mayorkas. Thank you, Chair. On the subject of bike hangers, they're a great way to encourage cycling by making storage easier, but there's a risk of fees deterring potential users. Is there any way to bring down the cost to cyclists? Yes, is the short answer. There's a few things going on here. First of all, as we procure more hangers, it's clearly in the supplier's interest to, if they want to do, if they want to work in one's worth, we'd expect to see competitive pricing. Another part of this is the Council's Access for All scheme is actively considering introducing discounts for the eligible households to be able to ensure that they're able to access cycle hangers. and that scheme is also considering the same for e-bike mental charges as well. So there's a few areas of the sustainable travel, walking and cycling strategy that will be falling into that programme. Thank you. Councillor Hamilton. Thank you very much. It's a question in relation to point nine, which addresses the issue of the e-bike services operating in the borough. If I just start by firstly praising the positive direction of travel on most of the indices in the paper, one of the areas where I think a lot of us continue to receive emails from residents is about poorly parked e-bikes. I know that there has been a lot of progress made in putting these special bike hangers in place. There is reference in the paper to a further round of the parking bays going in later in 2025. I would just be interested to know can you put a number, it might be a question to the executive member, a number on the additional number of bays that are envisaged for the rest of the year. It would also be interesting to get an update on general enforcement activity that's taken place against those who have ended journeys that are outside of the bays. Do we have any stats about how that's going at this stage? I think it is something that the public do want to see some movements on. I think Mr Tidley is the best place probably on the numbers but then we can, I'll go you through first. Yes, so I wouldn't want to give an exact number on the number of extra e-bike bays that we will need. But I wouldn't have thought the same number again, I suspect it would be a good starting point. We certainly haven't reached a limit. So I would have thought we're putting in 175. I think we'll probably need at least that number again. A lot will depend, of course, on how the e-bike scheme itself evolves going forward because it may be that people move away from it or more people move towards it. So we'll need to be flexible in the bay provision. In terms of the enforcement, the technology has been improving, as you imply, I think, Councillor, that there has been improved behaviour and the operators have been putting in better management of the system. The technology is now largely helping to prevent bikes from being parked in inappropriate locations, but some still are. We have done some enforcement sweeps of those. We wouldn't rule them out. We wouldn't rule out doing more again. But said at the moment, we are seeing improved improved parking behaviour. And I do think, to use the dreaded term AI, everybody's using it, but it, again, is being built now into the end-of-use photographs technology that's being used to try and help ensure that the parking of vehicles is consistent and compliant with regulations. Yeah, Councillor Yates is going to ask. Thank you. Yeah, thank you, Councillor Hamilton. Yes, of course, the e-bikes are very good in many ways, aren't they? People really value that flexibility as shown by the extremely high number of regular users that Wandsworth has. We have had a lot of discussion with Lyman Forest about how they can better manage their bikes and they have put more resource into Wandsworth without our request to do that because it's obviously really important that they don't block the pavements and stop people getting by, particularly people with buggies or wheelchairs. and I, you know, have had, obviously, emails from residents who have experienced that and we don't want to see that. As Mr. Tidley says, some of Lyme's improved tech should help further with this. They gave me a demonstration just last week of the tech when you end your ride and in terms of how that, the AI is assessing the location of the bike in real time. I think they need to go further on that. I mean, where we've got bays that you don't have to park in because they're not in the busy town centres, I think the app needs to direct the user to show on the app where that bay is to encourage people to park in the bay because obviously, we don't want to put in lots of bays and people don't use them. So I think, you know, that they are obviously, you know, still quite a new thing and the situation is still evolving but, yeah, I mean, we do really want to see both kind of people being able to benefit from them but not causing inconvenience to residents. So that's kind of where we are at the moment but we'll go on being in very close touch with them to improve the situation further. Thank you, Councillor Yeats. Councillor Mjorkis. I think that, just to add to that conversation, I guess, like we as councillors, we're the eyes and ears of the borough, we cover the whole borough so I think it's definitely like a flexible situation and there's constant dialogue so any feedback you get from residents just pass it on to Jenny and the team and then it's kind of gone. Yeah, just to add that we are waiting the installation of some bays on the Red Routes by TfL and we're very, very keen to see those go in because obviously a number of our busy areas, they are on Red Routes and it's really important they get those bays in and we have been lobbying them hard to get them in and they have got a whole list drawn up for Wandsworth. I don't think we have confirmation yet of when they're going to be installed but they are really important. Yeah, because I think just to add like if you see for example Park Run in Tooting I've noticed that obviously people cycle there so that's something that we'll chat about and then just feed it all in basically. I have a question, a reminder and an appeal so I'll do them in that order. The question is obviously Burntwood Lane has been on our agenda since the election May 2022 and it mentions progress so it'd be good just to get an update on where we are with that scheme. The reminder is that you everyone would have had an email from Officer Responsible for School Streets giving you kind of an audit of the school streets that you have in your ward any historical information about school streets that may have been tried in the past and weren't successful and then an offer to kind of meet alongside myself and him to work through any of those or if we can help with making contact or anything like that so please do go back and look at that and if we can help at all then we'd love to work together with you on that and the appeal is last year there were 39 street closures for car free day which is fantastic if every councillor helped one street in their ward we'd have 58 so maybe we could go for that goal this year it's Monday the 22nd of September so the closures will be on the weekend preceding that date words from our active travel champion there thank you and I think it was your first question on Burntwood Lane to I've got an answer okay yeah Mr Chadwick go on David might correct me but as I understand it the works have started close to Beechcroft Road with a zebra crossing well on Beechcroft Road with a zebra crossing on the way and the pavement renewal works have started and are currently heading towards Marham Gardens so I'm not exactly sure whether that was two or three weeks ago there or thereabouts though when it started lovely thank you and thank you for confirming Katzler Delisadio could you you talk about further work on Wandsworth Bridge I just can't remember where we're at with that what are the next steps please the cabinet member then because I'll probably need to get a programme for that one from the traffic and engineering team yeah I can add to that I mean we're very keen to make the you know the cycle lane going north to put in the proper step track and to put that step track in on the east side we are expecting to do that this year I mean of course we have to be mindful of the network and there is significant work going on on Battersea Bridge Road which is a TFL scheme and then we have our scheme on Queenstown Road which shouldn't cause too much disruption to the traffic but we do obviously need to be mindful of the network so it's very much our aim to make those changes permanent and to put in that nice proper cycling infrastructure on the bridge this year but we will we are working closely with TFL on looking at the network coordination across the whole area because obviously there's incredible pressure on our river crossings so you know and we need to be mindful of that thank you Councillor Critchard thank you a slight aside one of the things I would really like us to be in a position to do though is to also bear down on motorists who hang their cars halfway across the pavement I've got about I've got two cases going on at the moment and so we've talked about e-bikes but those motorists also provide a big obstacle if they're not fully in their driveway I don't know what we can do about it but I think we should be doing something my question wasn't and I've got some other stuff and I looked at the statistics so in the targets in paragraph 17 I'm very interested in the percentage of ones worth residents doing 20 minutes active travel it's due to go up to 58% but I'm pretty sure the health team would really like to see that being increased even more I just wondered how we know what the people are doing and what we're doing in order to encourage walking and cycling as the active travel and the other question on the stats was about the number of people killed or seriously injured and zero by two I mean I can see that there's been a drop but I would also want to understand whether that's a significant that is going down and what we're doing in order to keep to make sure that those numbers keep dropping because I mean in the information that the ones were cycling campaign kindly provided actually there was more in 2022 and then it's dropped to this year and there's obviously some sort of in a normal distribution there would be some variance and whether the variance we see is indicated there's a trend downwards or whether actually it's just a normal variance in the numbers okay taking the first bit public health so the public health team and the also the parks team as well because they're involved so collectively the public health team that enable and the parks team and ourselves are joined up in trying to ensure increasing physical activity and we're working on joint plans to do that this data has come from Transport for London and as I said by that coordination between the various teams we're confident that we will have increased physical activity and we'll be able to demonstrate not only the environmental benefits but also the health benefits in terms of cardiovascular disease and things like that so we will also be looking to see the extent to which these activities help with those health indicators as well and then the second point on the reduction in killed and seriously injured the trend the long-term trend is definitely downwards so we can be quite confident of that that said as we note in the report more needs to be done because that trend downwards is intended to reach zero by 2041 and that's clearly going to be an incredibly challenging target so the trend is downwards but there is still work to do Can I come back about the walking the active travel it just seems to me that maybe 20 minutes per day 58% just seems a bit low I guess that's also a TFL talk that comes through from the mayor I can find out what they count by that because obviously whether it's cycling swimming running I'll find out exactly what that metric and how that's calculated for you because it does seem a bit low doesn't it thank you and we've got Mr Chadwick wants to come on this point as well yes thanks chair so regarding the aside one of my pegs as well I have to say cars overhanging pavements and blocking wheelchairs boogies whatever making it dangerous if you have to step out into the road of course and we do have a regime around that the inspection enforcement team will handle that will enforce that if they know about it of course so as you know Sharon Wright heads up that team so I would suggest you contact her about particular cases thank you and I'm sure most councillors will have been in touch with Sharon Wright she's very we're a very good officer nice shout out for Sharon Wright councillor Locker thank you chair I have just four queries on the appendix and then a generic strategic question at the end would you like me to just run through the four right so page 54 on school streets on the right hand column final sentence says all existing school streets will be assessed for additional signage and ANPR that sounds good because it sounds like more schools will get ANPR it would be good to know the time scales for that my second question is on page 55 it talks about the pavement program and the maintenance and highway renewal I just wonder could we have a split a cost split broken down of what's going on to pavements and what's going on to carriageway my third question it references in the column sorry column the middle column where it's talking about crossing heavily trafficked roads obviously we know that there's been work at Putney High Street and Bridge Junction the intention of which was to make it easier for pedestrians and cyclists it would be good to know how much has been spent on that scheme if you don't know tonight just follow up afterwards how much is still to spend because I'm aware that it hasn't completely finished and there is still work to do and how that compares with the budget and then I think on page 57 there's a section on contraflow cycling I noted that we were emailed by one of the groups expressing concern about the lack of progress I remember signing off an SO83 so it must have been three years ago or more to make Jews Row a contraflow cycle lane it's a little connecting bit by the ship pub but it's really important for the Thames path now I think in previous responses when I've raised this it's been mentioned that we were going to wait for the works on Wandsworth Bridge but having just heard what the cabinet members said it's been over three years should we just get on and do it thank you thanks council Arca thank you thank you so all the existing schools have already been contacted relating to the potential for upgrading to AAMPR so that piece of work has been done it'll take probably I would said it's this next financial year will be the investigation and roll out of additional AAMPR clearly where a school is in a relatively quiet road there's unlikely to be a need for camera enforcement but I think we've got to that point where assuming there's relative traffic flows and the school wants camera enforcement then most schemes will transition to that either as fixed cameras which are there every day or at least the roving occasional CCTV car that might do it where there's no real need to have a presence on a daily basis the second question relating to the pavements and roads I think we've got another paper on the maintenance following this I'm pretty sure we can get a list of pavements and roads certainly for the initial year obviously for years ahead I'm not sure whether that degree of detail is yet available but certainly for the initial period I would have thought there must be a list we we share yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah as I said I think I think that's more likely to be available for the immediate year but maybe not for future years yeah the putney bridge on putney bridge I can say that the budget there was a budget of £927,000 in 2024 25 for putney bridge and high street more generally I cannot say exactly how much of that has been spent on particularly on what but again we'll be able to find that breakdown for you and then Jews row yes I think we can look to see if we can implement that quicker yeah thank you and then Councillor Critchard sorry thank you that answers on my question so the generic question I have which is more for the wider committee is when I read this paper I think we are seeing good progress however I do note that some of these schemes well the vast majority of these schemes have been going on for some time in fact most of the initiatives were started or predate the current administration so I wonder what if any are the new plans to come yes well I think there are probably two things that have probably changed one is the acceleration of the programs which were already sort of in their infancy so for example if we take something like bike hangers as we mentioned in the paper there were x number on site in 2022 but since then the program has dramatically ramped up and that's the case I think across several of these programs where what's changed is that degree of pace and then the other thing which is probably noticeable is that some of the larger corridor projects and we mentioned something like say Queenstown Road they are now effectively got to the point delivery so I think that's the other area where there's probably significant change so we've had design that's now leading to likely big capital delivery coming up and we've had acceleration and expansion of the existing programs things thank thank you thank you very much I'm going to go councillor critchard councillor yorkus councillor apps okay so we'll go it's okay so if we're shifting the order then Anna marie just put herself to the bottom so we're going to councillor yorkus councillor apps then councillor critchard just I guess one of the kind of new pieces that wasn't there before was obviously the quiet ways program the intention of which is to fill in some of those gaps in the network and to start laying the foundations for the utopia of having a crisscross across the borough in the near future I guess I've made this point before in this committee but I made the point again that one of the routes that I've been asked for most as a ward councillor is the north south across Wandsworth Common that route isn't going forward in part due to councillors from your party whipping up hysteria around that plans by insinuating that there was going to be some kind of new motorway across the common and five lanes worth of cycle lanes and new lights and that kind of thing so on those ones I'd be looking to you guys and saying help that if you want to see that progress speak to your colleagues and say to them we believe in active travel we want more people to cycle across the borough and don't let them come to this committee and scare monger and lead residents to be concerned about plans that were never going to be there and that was the most kids go to a manual and they can't cycle with their kids to school because that route isn't going to go ahead so that's one thing where we've tried to make progress one of the things that's come up for us and actually the transport team have been brilliant about keeping us involved and making sure that we're aware of some of the speeding incidents on Queenstown Road particularly the part which is in my ward in Shaft Spring Queenstown and I understand there was going to be some enforcement around that what do we I mean obviously we haven't been able to extend out kind of speeding restrictions in the same way that we'd like or certainly penalising motorists to speed what is possible for us to pursue or what should we be doing in terms of lobbying for greater enforcement against speeding and if you have any news on the Queenstown Road that would be useful to hear I don't have any easy answer or quick answer for the speeding issue I think the two things which immediately come to mind are the redesign of the highway to make it in such a design that it's less conducive for people to put their foot down and so whether that's the installation of strategically placed new crossings or widened pavements things like that which can be integrated into a street scene and therefore will help to deliver reduced speeds without the need for physical enforcement presence on that second bit the physical enforcement presence as you know it's primarily a matter for the police and we're always prepared to be lobbying and pushing for them to address any areas of concern we've also of course noted that quite a lot of speed in or certainly accidents and casualties are predominantly located on the red route network and the main road network so again transport for London introducing speed control measures on the red route network is a critical point part of that and that's something that we will also always be pushing for you mentioned something else Queenstown Road so the plan is to start up in the location between Queen Circus and the bridge to implement that stage first and then to move southwards later on so we will hopefully have a full design that will bring about safety and speed reduction along the entire corridor thank you council critchard oh thank you yeah tfl actually are quite good at picking up on the speeding on their red routes i have two friends recently who've just had to do their speed awareness courses because they've been picked up for going rather not terribly quickly but more quickly than necessary in a 20 mile hour limit my question wasn't about that though we've talked about cycle parking with bikes that they are normally storing at home what can we what are we doing around more Sheffield stands in our town centres so that people who are using their bikes to go somewhere have a good place to safely secure their bikes and yeah tell us a bit more about that and i'm very keen on cycle hoops around you know the ones that you get around a post i like them so in general terms we have a cycle parking budget every year and a cycle parking delivery programme every year and it does go relatively unheralded so we do put cycle Sheffield stands in on an annualised basis what we do have on the website and perhaps we can give it a bit more visibility is there is a request form on the website so people can go on and identify locations or areas where they would like to see more Sheffield stands and we will take that and plot them out and then go and visit those locations and we are happy to do that and we do do that unsurprisingly most of the demand is in town centres and we expect that we will be delivering more cycle parking in all the town centres the only caveat I would put on that is of course there is a lot of demands on the space in the town centres whether it's for benches or street trees or just for pedestrian movement as well so we have got to be a little bit careful not to just make it difficult for people to move around because of the presence of the cycle parking as well last year for example how many new stands did we install and I'd also say just thinking about the loops around the signage which is a good way of adding an extra way of tying your bike up and also Clapham Junction there are some seats where you can actually could use the arm almost to put your bike on as well because it's quite well designed like that how many other ideas have we got making it smarter to park yeah okay the numbers I recollect about 50 cycle Sheffield stands but I'll be able to provide an up-to-date list of that and just how many we put we put in but as I said that's the sort of programme that we would deliver on an annual basis thank you very much councillor Belton would you no change your mind okay okay so I think that's the end of the questions so thank you councillors so in that case for this paper the committee are being asked to support the recommendations in paragraph two please can I see all those in favour of the recommendations please raise your hand the recommendations are supported unanimously thank you councillors and thank you Mr Tidley for that one we then move on and we've touched on it slightly our next paper is on the highways maintenance programme as those of you who are regular to this committee this is an annual update so I'm going to move to Mr Chadwick for a quick introduction on this paper thank you councillor so if I could do an introduction covering three broad themes if you don't mind maybe not that brief it is a lot of money to be spent and that's my first point this is the largest single amount being spent in this borough on its rows and footpaths ever at 2.25 million succeeding this year's budget actually at 8 million quite an increase from last year which was 4.7 5 million so the borough is committed to investment to counter the decline of the condition of our network over the last number of years so that's the scale of it we're not just delivering lots of servicing and lots of new footpaths we're constantly trying to improve how we do it and that's my second main theme for my intro which is that those improvements include I think Mr. Tiddly said the dreaded AI did he artificial intelligence well we are adopting more and more artificial intelligence techniques for constantly making sure that the conditions surveys are accurate so we've got a pilot about to start on AI probably by using cameras on our own vehicles especially vehicles that are constantly running around the network in a pattern and that could well be our waste vehicles to check conditions of roadways we are also always trying to improve in how and when we deliver the works and that gets ever more important given the scale of the work we're undertaking so network management has been touched on already tonight clearly it's not just ourselves doing the works to our network we've got to think about TFL we've got to think about the statutory undertakers like Thames Water and we're constantly improving how we manage that intelligence to best time the works that we do and sometimes we will have to rearrange those works and those timings through the year to suit things we didn't know about to happen and that often is the case I'd say especially with Thames Water actually at the moment and the third main thing I want to talk about or mention is we're working ever more closely with our housing and regeneration directorate for works on estates and that includes now we're using the same methodology for how we judge the condition of roads and pavements and our housing and estate colleagues will be using more and more our framework contractors Conways and I think that can only be a good thing that also helps us to plan the works in and around estates in a coordinated way as well so yeah that's my introduction thank you very much very comprehensive well Mr Chair but Councillor Yates did you indicate you wanted to say something yes thank you Chair yeah no just wanted to say I am very pleased that we're able to make this scale of investment because I think it's so important to improve particularly the condition of the pavements to make them safer for pedestrians particularly those with mobility impairments many of them get in touch with me very keen that we make our pavements as good as they can be obviously also so important to not have big potholes which are dangerous for cyclists in particular but also obviously for vehicles so very pleased we're able to make this level of investment and again I really want to thank the officers who are delivering this programme because it is a very big scale up in quite rapidly and I just wanted to mention Afe Tesfay who heads this programme very ably very efficiently and we don't usually see him at committee but I know how hard he works and his team how hard they work as well and then we've got all the council staff who work in the DSO who do the great majority of the work on our pavements obviously we use Conway's for the carriageway resurfacing so yes just want to thank them for all their hard work on this thank you Thank you Councillor Yates and I'm sure Mr Chadwick will make sure that those recognition go to his staff because I'm sure they'll be watching the transport committee on catch-up but yeah it's always nice to recognise but Councillor Hamilton you're first Thank you Chair and also can I echo the thanks to officers who are delivering this I could certainly particularly in the Ballon Ward see some old favourites on there that residents have been asking for being delivered with this paper just a quick question each year when this paper is published one of the first things that happens is those who are in the nearby roads get in touch to ask why they haven't been included there's also a range of lurid rumours that go around occasion as Councillor Critchard and I have discussed in the past about why some roads are on these lists and why they're not it would be really useful I think we've asked for it at previous meetings but if we could be provided with however technical however detailed however difficult for laymen to ingest just a copy of the document that does explain the type of calculations that it does is about road surfaces so that we can understand and perhaps communicate to residents that this is a technical calculation as opposed to a political one I think that will be helpful for all of us and I do seem to recall and I'm not sure if you can't someone raised this exact point last year and I think Mr O'Donnell yeah yeah and Mr O'Donnell said yeah whatever would be provided would be reams and reams and reams of probably quite I'm sure if he talks he can talk you through the methodology and perhaps terms that we may understand Councillor Apps and Councillor Belton I think that was what I saw next thank you I think Councillor Yates made a very good point earlier about having to make sure that we coordinate different works I mean it's particularly obviously acute in Putney and Bathsea with the bridges but it's also a case with some of our major roads you know if we're doing some resurfacing on some of our major roads like Garrett Lane Mitchum Road Merton Road you know how do we make sure that we're managing the traffic and we're managing that flow through well clearly with this scale up it is a considerable part of our thinking ahead of setting this level of funding a check that we would be able to cope with it against all those other works that are done so the straight answer is that we've got decent and improving network management intelligence and systems I think some of you will know Camilla Donnelly's team they now coordinate and the intel of all the works done by the council in whatever way whether it's by Mr. Tiddley's team on cycle hangers or by roadway improvement schemes or by these works themselves all the works done by TFL that we know about frankly all the works done by the statutory undertakers like Thames like electricity company that we know about are on our intel basically are in our knowledge and therefore allow us to plan the timing of the works as best we can what sets us adrift a little is when emergency works are done and sometimes they are lengthy emergency works like gas works in Tooting like Thames Water works near here they get in our way don't they and they are often things that will get in the will offset our thoughts as to when to do these road works so best I can say is that we got much better improving intelligence of all the work that's been done in the borough and that lets us plan sensibly what it doesn't mean is perfection because of those things that are just unknown that often come out thank you very much just lacking the crystal ball but once we've got that we'll be but thank you thank you and I think Councillor Yates wanted to come in there then I'm going to Councillor Belton then Councillor Austin yeah as Mr Chadwick mentioned it it can be very frustrating when we don't get information from the utility companies when they have to undertake emergency works I mean obviously if there's a gas leak or a burst water main it has to be fixed but I know this is a source asked London councils to take it up particularly with Thames water because they are terribly bad at letting us know so they may start work and we won't know because they won't have told us and then we're trying to ensure there's proper traffic management on the road so it's an ongoing area of concern regarding Thames water but as Mr Chadwick said we've been trying to strengthen our where we do have the case to fine the utility companies when they don't comply with the regulations as they should in terms of how they inform the council then we do do that thank you Councillor Belton just a comment on the last comment I think I've been hearing about utilities and roadworks for something like 50 years it's a constant we're all going to have it always I think as a problem but best we can do to resolve it I've got two comments really one the kind of rules game and one an engineering one you mentioned pavements I managed after some persuasion to get some very seriously rotten pavements reconstructed and the problem with it was it was a continual dispute between the housing revenue account and the general revenue account as to which they were and in the end it was actually Batsy Fields somehow or other people said oh well let's forget about the dispute let's just do it which was thank goodness but I wonder whether we've got over that problem in the generality of things just being held up because it's housing revenue account now it's GRA so that was one issue the other the engineering one I sometimes have argued and certainly feel that the engineers do the work dare I say possibly engineeringly in a competent kind of way but without opening their eyes and I'll give you one particular example of this and that's road humps no one loves road humps I think lots of people can see the real practical reasons for it and what they do but there's a road hump on the short bit of an L shaped road chivalry road in ones as common there's a road hump in the very short bit where it must be at least 30 yards from the beginning to the end of the road getting up to 20 miles even getting up to 30 which is when I first would have a bit of struggle and getting up to 20 really did we need to put a road hump there just causes more problems with cars and the residents because of the noise and it was on a meaningless bit of road in my view but more seriously and more provably we've now got these nice road I don't know what you call them raising of the roads the junctions raised tables and I can't be the only person in this situation but I happen to live in a little valley called Norskot and there's a river at the bottom of the valley and there's little humps all gone in all the way along and I think it's technically called ponding results whenever it rains and you know the last few weeks there's been quite a lot of rain and quite a lot of ice so there's been lovely great lakes all the way along Norskot Road on all the side roads and lots of them become nice ice rinks at the right time of the year surely when people were doing that and this is why I was wondering about the intelligence they bring to the job the design of it when you have that raised table at the bottom of a hill and North can't be the only place in the borough it must happen everywhere and what do we mean by creating these kind of mistakes thank you councillor belton so I'm going to pass to councillor yates for the division on hra in general and then mr chadwick for the intelligence of engineering I think was the point you were driving at thank you yeah thank you councillor belton so yeah we have given more attention to the roads and pavements on our housing land we are very keen that they would be in just as good a condition as the public highways and there was a proper detailed visual survey done of the roads and pavements on the housing land for the first time last year and now you'll see in the paper in appendix two there is the list of roads and pavements on housing land that will be repaired so there is now a proper plan maintenance programme and there is more funding allocated from the HRA so and we have very much requested excellent cooperation between the housing department and the transport colleagues in planning those works so and I couldn't agree with you more in a situation like that the work just needs to get done residents don't care which budget it's coming out of so hopefully that won't happen again and if it does please do bring it to my attention but hopefully there's good collaborative working going on there well I think the engineer Mr O'Donnell and the engineer Mr Chung might have a more robust answer to Councillor Bettland's points than I but I can bring a broader perspective to that question I think what I'd say is that this is the main point I put to you when we do the works more and more we seek not just to replace like for like the previous surface of the road or the previous surface of the footbath we do open our eyes the engineers open their eyes and look at what what is there and what could be improved so I don't think they always get that right and they would admit that because there's an awful lot of planning to be done in these works a lot of volume to be handled but they will try and improve the situation on the ground every time they do a job as I say that's continuous improvement stuff and we're not always perfect what I'd also say is that you raise the point about I think more about gully cleansing okay well if it wasn't that then forgive me but that's my main point we're constantly looking to improve the area within which we're doing the works rather than just as perhaps it was more the case in the past just directly like for like replace if you put your microphone on thank you thank you Councillor Yates for the first answer on the second point you have missed the ponding that's in Northgate Road has happened very recently as a result of our works we've been putting in the raised tables and the water no gully is blocked up we have deliberately I'm afraid this is it we have deliberately dammed up the runoff so the water coming down the hill has got nowhere to go there's no drain that's been blocked there's nothing there except a new raised table and therefore a small pond right across the road including over the Canberra in one of them every time it rains sorry then I have a different answer because I didn't realise it was a very recent point so on that case it is simply a case that we must meet on site with the engineers and look to rectify well I'm happy to do it it's two minutes from where I live yeah I'm sure yeah I'm sure we can follow that up outside of the meeting thank you Councillor Belton and Mr Chadwick so I'm going to go to Councillor Austin then Councillor Mayorkas thank you very much chair I've got a question yeah so on page 61 paragraph 13 in the bullet points it says reduce the claims of council receives accidents and injuries on defective highways how much do we pay out in how much do we pay out in claims and then on page 75 this is actually more of a plea than anything it was just something that came across my desk this afternoon or in my email box this afternoon I've got a lady actually who lives in Hayward Gardens who's blind and she now has to have somebody to escort her from the bus stop on Putney Heath to her flat because the footpath is now so uneven her stick doesn't work in any more in order to find the grounding and could we I know it's not on the list but could we have a look at it I will send a follow up email tomorrow through the system but just take a heads up we could have a look at it because she needs an escort now to get from the bus stop to her flat yeah of yeah of course we can look at that I mean we always use there's a section here isn't there of the way in which we can manage the planning of the work through conditions through inspections by our offices we always use that intelligence as well to determine where we might do more work so I'm very happy to receive that email and to take it further what was the first point yeah sorry I got it there so the payouts are I mean I'm trying to cast my eye towards Alex but he may not know the answer what I do know is they are very very low always because we are able to demonstrate and prove that we got a very good regime of maintenance and that's the key for these claims Alex have you got a figure I don't have a figure but we can definitely get back to you with the figure over a number of years of payouts I mean so lowest I was edging towards saying nominal and perhaps even zero on something in some years yeah we would we would contest spurious claims as well obviously quite vigorously great thank you very much and councillor Mayorkas and councillor Tiller as councillor Hamilton said this is a time where we look ahead and everyone gets excited and some people are disappointed but could we have a two sentence summary of the current year programme that we are in in terms of delivery right now two sentences 94% delivery of roadways to this point 71% delivery of footpaths that latter figure means it's quite tight to deliver all the footpaths this year but the team are determined that they can and will and that's been our consistent performance in previous years Thank you very much for that response Thank you Chair A constituent who uses a wheelchair has flagged up the lack of dropped curbs in rampton and across the borough what are the plans to improve this and also the uneven pavement on Dainbury Avenue I don't know the specifics of Dainbury I reiterate the kind of point I was making to Councillor Belton about every time we go in including on footpaths we seek to correct any problems with lack of drop curves with cambers and we particularly try and improve a lot of those less able so I would hope that we would pick up any points of that type but if you want to contact me about the specifics I'll make WSU that we do thank you and Councillor Mayorkas just to echo that I to those crossings for those with accessibility issues so I think just collaboratively and highlight them we're the eyes and ears on the ground so when we see them just flag them to officers and hopefully something can be done thank you very much thank you and thank you Mr. Chadwick for the stats earlier I hope to maybe see them on the report last time I did ask for an update on how the program goes but my question was about TFL roads and pavements paragraphs 28 sorry 29 onwards and obviously it talks about the pressures on TFL I find myself and I'm sure other ward councillors will agree I get actually quite a lot of complaints now from residents which are about TFL roads and pavements and I'm never sure if it's best for me to forward it on to TFL directly or whatever I get complaints in and just be passing them on to TFL but then also to have a sort of check that will probably help you in your meetings and lobbying with TFL give you real leverage to say look I'm getting lots of complaints about the carriageway service for instance around the ones with one way system and I know I was speaking to a colleague recently who came off her bike there so well I agree with the point and the sentiment I'm not sure what are sitting here and now I'm not sure what data we do have on the TFL network but certainly we'd welcome any info you've got and we'll gather it I do certainly know more and more we are having to send out our street inspectors to rectify issues and sadly we just have to do that particularly when there's a dangerous issue reading paragraph 31 I'm very interested in the implementation of double yellow lines on corners and I just wondered if we could have a bit of an update on how that's going because there is a lot of bad parking on corners especially in residential streets which makes it difficult excuse me the corner is usually where you cross and if somebody is parked there you can't cross there and also how we will enforce that because obviously we can enforce but the inspectors come out so where I live we only have one hour parking restriction they will come out and inspect for people who are parking incorrectly at that time but of course you could be parking anytime on the double yellows outside when the parking zone isn't in force so how are we going to manage that sorry did that make sense in the end I was I was just trying to get you to a question but you got there yourself before I need to interrupt I think it's essentially about enforcement of parking yellow lines on corners so really really this this parry are saying that what we do when we do the surfacing works and we do as I said earlier look to improve not just replace so the program really of improving or doubling up on WL lines and corners follows the actual program of maintenance of the rows so I don't know whether you understand that is that clear councillor so there's no independent program for WL lines and corners these works follow and are in conjunction with the road resurfacing works themselves so basically if the road is resurfaced then the double yellow lines on the corners will be put in and if your road was resurfaced quite recently you might be waiting a very long time for those yeah except you yeah we are putting in additional budget for a program to improve traffic signs and lines and also street name plates but obviously your expenditure on traffic signs and lines is more relevant to your question so I mean I'll pick that up with Nick O'Donnell like you Councillor Critchard I think it's very important but there is there will be I mean the paper does highlight that we are doing more on that and you know that is important across the borough and as you say it can't just be dependent on where we're resurfacing a road and regarding enforcement of course you know you'll know better than me that you can request enforcement having been a councillor for a long time residents write to me from across the borough about all sorts of things regarding our roads and whenever it's an enforcement issue I always email the enforcement team to ask them to increase enforcement at that location and then they do that there are some capacity constraints but we do have a lot of CEOs working all the time and if there's a particular problem then yeah we can put more enforcement there yes I think though it's much more random if it's parking on a corner it's usually the delivery vans that do it whereas I don't know what you mean about the enforcement in particular areas because the top end of Chestnut Grove Joe Rigby we've had extra shops whereas it's the random people on the particular corners that's I just wondered you know we get double yellows but they might just realise that they might not be in pause thank you Councillor Critchard for that point I'm going to move on to Councillor Belton Councillor Mayor No OK Councillor Mayor Just very quick one to officers what is their analysis of future projections of the quantity of electric vehicles and their weight and what impact that will have on deterioration I read the projections can I turn to you David I mean in terms of the weight clearly very significant impact on roads and it costs more in terms of the structural integrity that we need to put in place so in terms of numbers it's rapid increase in the numbers of electric vehicles out there the proportions I could need to dig into to find you the thing I would say that and clearly an electric vehicle being heavier will cause some more damage but the main source of damage to the highways are heavier vehicles so buses and HGVs particularly and as they transition to electric that's where the potential main damage will come here thank you councillors I'm now going to move on to the vote we so the committee is being asked to support the recommendations in paragraph two of the paper on proposed highway maintenance programme for 25 26 and all those in favour please raise their hand thank you councillors that paper is also agreed unanimously thank you mr Chadwick for imparting your engineering yeah thank you very much we're now going to move on to the final two papers for which are finance related so we have our budget monitoring report I'm going to move on to Mr Moylan at the top of the table thank you very much councillors yes so you'll be familiar with this report now it is the update to the transport committee's revenue budget for the current financial year 24 25 the forecast for services for this committee is basically on budget so we're 30,000 under which is a change from the overspend from the previous reports the primary movement from that is for the parking service so we've had a change in the forecast we're now in an underspend whereas before we were effectively on budget it's largely to do with small movements in on street and permit income it represents a very small percentage in terms of the overall variance so it's about 1% so we would expect some volatility in the forecast and the other changes from the previous report is we had forecast costs for the local plan and at difference effectively between the assumption of the cost prior to the budget being awarded the difference for this version of the monitoring report is that we've included an extract from the report that went to the finance committee in terms of the relevant appendices for the transport budget which is in appendix C I'm very happy to run through aspects of those if anyone has any particular questions that they wish to draw upon thank you thank you Mr Moylan Council Hamilton you first thank you so questions more about the longer term point 15 makes reference to the lack of predictability because of changing attitudes with parking in the borough the fact it's 30 million that comes from the service at the moment I just wondered in terms of us actually trying to plan ahead for the future has there been any research either in the borough or across the UK that we could take into account that might give us a sense of where this could go in the next few years because it does seem to be such a huge amount of money that we are planning around and to get some research about and where that could lead to would be useful for all of us and give some comfort with the figures Thank you Councillor yes it is a key area of risk which is why we highlight it and we do attempt to model the forward look for where we think changes in behaviour might take hold we know that overall there is a decline in car usage and the mileage over time is falling obviously the impact of Covid led to a large disruption to that so we have factored in various elements that we think might drive use of car so there could be active travel policies but also things like the price of petrol and so we have included within appendix C on page 91 on other growth and savings there is a line showing behavioural change affecting parking income so we try and model the changes over time so we have assumed that in a couple of years time there will be a reduction in our overall parking income as a result of these changes in terms of national kind of modelling I think we would try to incorporate any guidance that we get or any indications about overall trends as well into that so the team would look at that thank you thank you there any more questions on this paper Councillor Critchard thank you paragraph eight talks about the the planning the new planning software and obviously a bit of an overspend around that because of lack of planning income and then the project costs with the implementation of the combined planning software system could you tell us roughly what benefits we're hoping to see from that system and obviously how that will affect the budget thank you for that question I'm not an expert in this system but clearly it's a combined system where we're able to utilise Richmond and ones worth staff working on similar systems so therefore they can work together and share resilience it forms part of the overall place strategy so there is a lot of work going on to try and make sure that overall the teams will work together I think there will be an expectation that it will provide better reporting functionality but I would need to get back to you with a little bit more information about how that would feed into the overall structure for the planning team but we would expect it to be more efficient and therefore obviously if it is more efficient we wouldn't need the same volume of staff so we would hope therefore that we would be able to generate savings of the result be interesting if you could get back to us that would be lovely thank you I will do my best thank you thank you councillor belton thank you councillor critchard's comment inspired similar ones from me councillor critchard knows the planning system as well as anyone authority I know she knows how to look up planning applications as quickly as anyone and it's a very cumbersome system at the moment one of the things that always surprises me though is that the team didn't seem to consider what I consider to be one of his most important users and that was the members because if you're a member of planning applications team you virtually cannot do your job unless you're able to get round the applications programme I think you'd agree with that councillor Critchard having had experience of it or whether we find the new system or what it's designed to look good I'm rather surprised that the members haven't been involved in the specifications thank you I think that's probably more of an observation more than the financial step I think it's been noted down this end thank you very much are there any other questions on this paper councillors okay okay thank you very much yeah we're all good down at that end of table good okay so this paper is being we're being asked to note this paper for information is it paper noted thank you very much and with that we move on to the final item on the agenda this evening and back to Mr Moylan for an update on fees and charges please thank you very much chair yes so this paper sets out the proposed levels of fees and charges for discretionary services within the transport committee so there are broadly five areas that this paper would cover we have charges for the building control service we have charges for planning that are not the statutory charges so not the statutory planning application fees but the work that the team do in pre-application advice and planning purchase agreements we have charges for CCTV and also parking so the rationale and the explanation for the various charges is set out within the document I think there are a lot of changes within the overall fees proposed there are a number which have a kind of regulatory element to them so clearly within the first section on page 95 you have the building control service but there have been number of significant regulatory changes within this and so the fees are trying to reflect some of the additional costs that the council will incur in order to cover the service delivery so therefore there are some new charges but also some relatively large charge increases for building control largely operating within a commercial environment so we're still expecting that these charges will be competitive and offer good value to the user it's also worth pointing out that the charges for parking when assessing the parking charges a number of elements need to be considered I won't go into all of them now but clearly affordability is one aspect of those and so for the current and future financial year the parking charge is proposed to be frozen I'm very happy to answer any other questions anyone may have about any aspects of these charges thank you just on that final point about parking I think it was sort of a tradition that we got into that we looked at the parking charges every two years back then one of the reasons was because it was administratively easier to implement because we had to go and change all of the machines I know people do it more on their phones now and the machines that just administratively it was easier for the signage and all that sort of stuff so are you warming us up to coming back in a year's time to increase parking charges I'm just intrigued I'm only proposing a freeze in terms of this paper this paper only covers 2025 26 in terms of the administrative burden I think parking isn't uniquely different to the majority of other services I think the significant change in signage and going around to look at the machines was more of a problem historically as you say the vast majority of our services are online or through pay as you phone so in terms of the impact it's actually relatively minor so no more complicated than leisure centres I would suggest thank you councillor Belton I thank you I understood the rationale you explained at the beginning and clearly the ones that ordinary hunters pay out in a fairly regular basis are all attached to roughly 2.3% or something like that except for rounding situations you mentioned building control in particular which is what I was interested in in terms of it being in a commercial environment in my view the abolition of the requirement to have totally independent building control officers was an enormous mistake made by a previous government and now as you say we are in competition with private sector building control officers who can give certificates in my experience in somewhat dubious circumstances so it's almost a public health issue here I think about whether buildings get their certificates from totally reliable from a public point of view perspective so I'd be very concerned if we were losing out competitively and I see on page 101 building control completion certificate 103% change I don't suppose if you're getting something fundamentally big done to your house the difference between £47 and £95 is going to make much difference but every bit that discourages people from using legitimate independent parking control officers like the council would provide seems to me to be unfortunate is that really competitive or are we actually worsening well in danger of worsening a bad situation thank you for that question so I would suggest that my understanding of the building control charges as working with the new interim head of building control is that actually a lot of these costs will be mirrored across any provider of building control service so it is his view that these charges still remain competitive we have a range of as you said as a sort of a commercial function we have a range of activities to effectively market the council service and those will be continuing to make sure that we can offer the service as widely and as competitively as possible thank you just to add to that I'm glad to find something I can agree with councillor Belton on tonight which is his broad sentiment on approved inspectors versus council inspectors these approved inspectors worry me deeply as well and I actually was on the panel for the permanent new head of building control recently and I can assure you all that we have sought and have got a new officer there who has that competitive edge and will seek to build on the experience and the reputation of our building inspectors in the borough and especially those working in Battersea Power Station and its environment to ensure we get more of that business for our own inspectors rather than for those commercial approved inspectors Thank you Can I just add to that Chair I mean I've got a building Is it a question Councillor Val No not really We're not desperate for time are we I've got another member who's actually indicated they've got a question so Councillor Thank you very much I'd also like to agree with Councillor Belton about external approved inspectors and councillor inspectors so I'll start there but just if I can use this as learning experience a little bit the parking charges does that include parking permit costs or is it just to pay and display meters It would be permits as well yes Okay thank you were there any other questions councillors turning to you Councillor Belton this is the last paper did you have the final words you wanted to add it was relevant at the time but you've succeeded I were nonetheless saying that you've invited me yeah I've got a building in my ward which is not only falling down but it's causing all the other houses to fall down because as far as I can see the building control was well it was not done by the council and it's not done terribly well and it's dreadful situation that the government the previous government let me say actually one it was the Cameron government actually ceased to have this independent building control and you can appoint your own building control person nowadays which is fantastic you just think of the abuse of that I do the job and I appoint the adjudicator that says I've done thank you councillor Belton so on that the final ask of this evening is to ask whether the committee agrees to support the recommendations in paragraph 3 of the report can I ask all those in favour to please raise their hands so it's one two three four five six six agreement all those against please raise their hands so no against and all any abstentions four abstentions to the paper so that concludes the business of the transport committee this evening thank you to all councillors for coming this evening and for staying the duration thank you very much ers to then to all that
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