Transcript

Transport and Economic Growth Decisions Tuesday, the 25th of February at just gone 12pm. I'm Matt Furness and I'll be chairing this meeting. So declaration of interest, I have nothing to declare. We got no member questions, but we do have two public questions. The first one is by Mr. Wickham, who's here in the room with us today, supported by Mr. Anderson, co-chairs of the Fetcher and Residence Association. Would you like to put your supplementary question? I see it's come through on the email, but it's quite long. So if you'd like to set it out, I'm quite happy to do that. I will try to summarize the question because you've got the full one in writing and hope that is useful. So thank you for your response to existing question, earlier one. Councilors, residents and interest groups are frustrated that engagement and consultation arrangements are following the existing Surrey County Council LC WIP model described in the response. Following discussion with Surrey County Council representatives in June 2024, it had been hoped a new model will be piloted in Mole Valley. FRA believes that effort and budget are being expended unnecessarily on cycle routes unlikely to be used by the majority of cyclists. In our view, the level of consultation does not bear any relation to existing guidance and to the latest Active Travel England guidance published on February the 12th this year, entitled A Best Practice Guide to Community Consultation and Engagement. I'll provide just two quotes here, though there were three in our written question. One point is, as a minimum, you should consider community engagement and involvement at the beginning of the project and during between the design stages. And then, under feasibility design, the current stage of the LC WIP for Mole Valley, this is the time to get everyone else, including decision makers and key stakeholders, more involved. Approaches you can use to discover the project area with the community include walking audits, workshops, presentations, individual and group creative work and discussions. This is indeed the time, so will this committee and its chairman please instruct officers and the feasibility design consultants to implement a stakeholder engagement policy that is more open, positive and in line with government guidance, starting with a full working session with Fetch and Residents Association in person on the current LC WIP proposals within the next three weeks. Thank you. Were you wanting to say anything as well? No, no. Okay. No, thank you for that. We will do a formal response as well to your supplementary questions to cover the bits that you hadn't raised. But, yes, we will be doing a series of consultation events which will be with the public over this period. I will ask the team to specifically contact the Fetch and Residents Association to set up a design workshop effectively so you can run through the points. On your point about routes that people wouldn't necessarily use, I would emphasise that all funding is external funding granted by Active Travel England, so only projects which do have public support and the support of the Council will actually go forward into those funding rounds. It might be interesting for you that Active Travel England now allocate the funding based on an allocation process. We don't bid, but we do have to submit our bids to Active Travel England for schemes. So they need to have that public level of support going forward. As I said, I will speak to the team about that. We will get something better set up specifically for yourselves and your Residents Association and I'll make sure that the divisional councillor, Claire Curran, is invited as well. And Tim Hall. Tim Hall, yeah. And Tim Hall, yeah. The cross is the border, isn't it? So, yes. Two divisions. Yeah. Fetch and West and Fetch and East. Correct. The emphasis is that there was guidance which did indicate that closer stakeholder engagement as opposed to public consultation should take place. place uh and there's new guidance which does emphasize that very recently yes if you haven't had the chance to look at it the it is striking the latest once the process is underway um there should in fact be even more dialogue not less during the process than previously actually quite useful so i do commend that yes thank you so um when i say conversation it will involve engagements as well but um the consultation element is that that formal part of the engagement process which we do have to go through to demonstrate that level of support but as i said with through the engagement we'll make sure that um federal association has a specific work there we go thank you um so we'll just move to um question uh two now which is being asked by uh sue cooper um sue i think you're online so i've just uh you've had a response but i just wondered if you have a supplementary if you'd like to ask that now i do and i could have sent that through but i will send it through after the meeting as well just for just for clarity um so thank you for your um original response and i do just have a point of clarification in terms of your reply you reference um the trees in question in wharton high street as having been damaged during the works carried out in april 2023 um i would um just want to point out that they were those trees were not damaged um during works they were actually intentionally semi felled by council operatives um and as part of a wider um surrey county council plan for the high street however my follow-up question is i understand that the outcome of the most recent consultation around the trees um is going to be form formally communicated via the council's website and i note that response um i have a bit of a commonality here with um the previous questioner um in respect of community engagement and i really want to encourage the council to encourage the council to put notices um old-fashioned as it may be on the trees in question and on local notice boards adjacent to the high street because i am really aware highly aware of digital social digital exclusion and then not everyone will know that um the council has made its decision about the trees whatever that may be and um that they should look on the website to find that um and was 245 responses were received to the council's recent consultation it that is really very much because a lot of local people have been out on the streets notifying people of the council's proposals rather than that they had actually um read about it um elsewhere i just really want that to be a request for better community engagement and future consultation and not always relying on people being able to access um the website and other digital means thank you uh thank you uh sue um so yes in your point of clarification um because the trees were not fully filled they were left in a damaged state but we've got a supplementary bit which we can send through to you on that one that's not a problem uh in regards to uh notifications on the trees yes we can do that it's something we do at the moment with uh ash dieback to notify people that tree is at risk we can do the same here um i don't know if you're aware but this is a relatively new uh process where we have to consult when we do anything around trees i think it was a bit of a response to what happened in portsmouth when they started filling their trees in the high street so uh yes we can do that and we can notify uh on the trees itself but as you can imagine the the easiest way for us to disseminate information is is uh through our website website absolutely yes but i do think it's really important to remember that not everybody has easy access to the website so thank you anyway if you're applying thank you yes great thank you and i will just move now to item three um so it's a petition for traffic lights outside west by county fleet infants and junior schools on uh camp hill road um do we have no member of the public um for us today um so as the petitioner uh hasn't ascended uh thank you gentleman um was there anything you wanted to add to the petition xena so i don't want it to be a way to check for you otherwise i am working here so thank you for your consideration um uh we have given a full uh reply and we do appreciate definitely see that with the uh just shy of a million pounds to to deliver so um because there's no sort of further questions i'll i note the uh the response uh to the petition uh and as that's our last item of business i will close the meeting at uh 12 13.