Subscribe to updates
You'll receive weekly summaries about Wiltshire Council every week.
If you have any requests or comments please let us know at community@opencouncil.network. We can also provide custom updates on particular topics across councils.
Please note, emails for this council have been paused whilst we secure funding for it. We hope to begin delivering them again in the next couple of weeks. If you subscribe, you'll be notified when they resume. If you represent a council or business, or would be willing to donate a small amount to support this service, please get in touch at community@opencouncil.network.
Environment Select Committee - Tuesday 4 June 2024 10.30 am
June 4, 2024 View on council website Watch video of meeting or read trancriptTranscript
[BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] [BLANKAUDIO] Welcome to the Environment Select Committee meeting everyone. My name is Ellen Jai. I'm a Democratic Services Officer and I'm the Clerk to the Committee. I'd like to open today's meeting by asking for nominations for a Chairman for the Environment Select Committee for 24-25. Can I nominate Councillor Joe Conkler please? And a seconder? That's Councillor Derek Walters. Wonderful. Thank you. Is there any other nominations? When you were so elected, I can confirm that Councillor Jerry Conkler is duly elected as the Chairman for the Environment Select Committee for the forthcoming year 24-25. Thank you everybody for your support. Disappointing as a few missing still and were not apologies. I would do my best to serve like I have in the last few years and try to be fair to everybody here. But my next thing is the election of the Vice Chairman. So please can I have nominations for Vice Chair please?
This is working. Can I nominate Councillor Derek Walters as Vice Chairman? Okay. Any other, any others? No. Okay. Seconded. I am. Okay. Any, any, any other, just before any, any other assisting case? No. Right. Then I declare that you are the duly elected Vice Chair. Congratulations. Right. So let's get on with the business end. So, apologies and membership update. Please do we have any apologies? Please Simon? Yes. We have apologies from Councillor Charles McGraw, Councillor Stuart Wheeler and Councillor McLennan is joining us online. Right. Okay. So currently then we don't have. Nick Murray, Tom Rains or Brian Matthew. So hopefully they're on their way. Right. Minutes of the last previous meeting, which was held on the 20th of March 2024, they will not be submitted until the next meeting environment select. You glitches going on and incomplete work. So apologies for that. And apologies from the officer's point of view and they will be submitted on the 18th of July. Okay. Declarations of interest. Are there any declarations of disposable interest or dispensations as granted by the Standards Committee? I have none. Okay. Right. So you may have noticed that the agenda packet for today's meeting includes a new document on pages seven, eight titled suggested scrutiny questions. This is a list of the standard scrutiny questions that can be applied to almost any topic of the scrutiny committee might encounter. It will be included for members referenced in all overview and scrutiny agendas. I encourage members to make use of the document. My hope is it will prompt some questions that we might otherwise not have thought of. If you think the list is missing something, do contact the member of the scrutiny team and we'll be glad to add further questions into that. I've agreed to slightly reorder the agenda today and we will take item 11 as the first main item. I'll take that out of public participation. Yeah. Okay. So the reason that is council received has got a train to catch and he just wants to do his report. So I do item 11 straight after a public participation. We've received a statement from Mr. Blye. It's Mr. Blye here today. Oh, well, Mr. Blye, welcome. So I will now ask you, Mr. Blye, if you'd like to read out your statement. I'm going to turn it out to the committee to get a microphone for people online. All right. Thank you. So working. Good. I did circulate a document last Thursday, but so I'd like to take the opportunity now to. Just take a moment to examine the assumptions made by the council. And I'm looking at a document entitled Business Case Warm Minister Jim improvements, which is dated 2022. And this document is not sadly publicly available. And it was obtained through a freedom of information request. The foundation on which this business case is built is a figure for latent demand for the gym. So we should expect that this number is going to be rock solid. And extrapolating from this latent demand figure, the business case supposes that if the gym is increased in size by just 31%. From 118 square meters to 155 square meters at a cost of the taxpayer of one and a half million pounds. Then the income from memberships to the sport center would more than double. This is a huge leap of faith, even if we could trust the figure for latent demand, which we absolutely cannot. In the same document in appendix one. It says latent demand figures provided in 2015 by pulse. As part of the tender for the fitness equipment contract. So the figure. Is pro was provided by pulse fitness. Who would supply the gym equipment if the plan goes ahead. So to misquote Mandy Rice Davies. Well, they would say that wouldn't they. So there's one figure. From one party with a clear vested interest. And that doesn't create the sound business case for spending one and a half million pounds. As if that were not enough. The bigger is nine years old. Nine years ago. Knapp fitness did not exist in warm. Snap fitness has over a thousand gyms around the world operating 24 hours a day seven days a week. With state of the art equipment group classes and personal training. This is serious competition right in the center of town. That is not even being acknowledged. So as the Bible says it is a foolish man who builds his house on sand. I urge the committee. To scrutinize this decision very carefully. Thank you. That's all. Thank you for that. I think it's a rejection. This is your area and although we can't scrutinize it today because it's not a gender item. But thank you for taking the time to come along. I don't mind that. Can't reject him. If you want to say something perhaps we can. Move this to some other point. Thank you very much, gentlemen. I think Mr. Blyde has raised some important issues. None of which have been answered satisfactorily by the administration. I would move that this be included in our forward work plan to scrutinize this decision. And I'll seek a seconder. Right. So you proposed and came through Jackie Lay seconded that. Well, I don't really want to debate. If yes, you can break it then. Yeah, very quickly because I did read Mr. Blyde's email when it came through. I'm very much aware because I've got people in my area who are very keen on badminton. Badminton is now since the 90s been an Olympic sport. And we have as a country had three medals in the Olympics for badminton. And we have a team going this 2024 to Paris. So I think it's something that we need to be looking at as to if you're losing badminton and squash. Where's the other facilities in our county for our badminton players? And as Tony Jackson said, I think we ought to be scrutinizing this. Okay, so if all members are happy, I'll take you take your point there, but some say this is not for debate today. And then we'll get the relevant officers at the long of the next meeting. So if all members are happy today, then we'll put this on the forward plan. And perhaps see if we can slot it in for the July for a scrutiny. Okay. Are we happy with that? I'm very happy with that, Chairman. But I think we should be confident that it will be on the agenda for July because if it's not. It may be all too late. Okay. We'll do our level best to get it on for the July meeting. Okay. Thank you. Thank you for that. Thank you, Mr. Blythe for giving us the time to come along and. I think it's your decision to put it on forward plan, etc. It would be helpful if questions like this could be considered. In detail first by officers so that. When it's presented to committee offices can inform you of where we are. Is there a different way we could address the concerns? Thank you. Are you happy with that, Tony? Yeah. Okay. That's fine. Me and I think that's a correct procedure. Okay. Yep. In that case, if we can have, I don't know if it's been circulated already, but if we can have that. And, and write to the chair and say how it can be taken. Thank you. Okay. Right. Thank you. So now we'll go to the main agenda which I am moving number 11. Forward, which is the task group of dates. So we have gone at the seed and we also have Graham right for the second. We'll be doing both together. So we meet these and receives updates from the task group. So on pages nine to 16, the APAC, we have an update on the work of the climate emergency group and the speed limit test. Jonathan, welcome and you'd like to give your report, please. Thank you, Chair, and thank you for bringing this item forward is much appreciated. The speed limit assessment task group has met three times since the last update. We've discussed the implications of the revised department of transport guidance setting up setting local speed limits. And seen and considered some examples of speed assessment reports. We've had a further meeting with senior highways officers and representatives from Atkins. Realists who undertake technical aspects of speed limit assessments, and I have to say this was a particularly positive meeting. We've also spoken to a selected group of local highways and footpath improvement group chairman to get their feelings on their experience of the process. We're moving forwards towards the latter stages of our deliberations, and we hope to bring back a final report. With recommendations to the next meeting of the select committee, although we did have a quite a gap, trying to get members to agree a meeting date of quite a few weeks earlier on. So I'm happy to answer any questions that select committee might have. Okay, then I'll throw it open and first hand up is chancellor Jackie late so Jackie. Yes, thank you for that. Thank you for the report. Council seat. Only one question and that was, have you been looking at any of the data on accident hotspots and coroner's reports and any of their recommendations as to whether, you know, the Council is going ahead with recommendations or. Hopefully there are no recommendations and that accident hotspots are what they are. We've looked at general data, but we haven't specifically taken into account. Coroner hotspots or look specifically at Coroner hotspots, but we have looked at general general data. Thank you for that. Just as a matter of interest. Have you been able to compare notes with representatives from any other highways authorities? We have discussed the approach by other highways authorities in general. We haven't in in specific because actually trying to find a matching or similar authority with similar outlook is quite difficult. But we, the answer is we have in general people have made points. Okay, Richard. Yep. Thank you. Any other Tony, can I have some Jackson? Thanks. Jonathan, really interesting. Well done. Just wondering the thrust of it seems to be looking towards perhaps further or increases in assessments. And I'm just wondering whether the cost of that, the increase in more assessments is presumably more cost. Just wondering how that fits in. Thanks. Actually, I wouldn't say that that is the thrust that we've uncovered at the moment. I think where members have generally been focusing has been a perceived lack of transparency from highways in the investigation and the assessment of applications. And worry that the results of those haven't always been taken as the community wanted. We got some interesting figures from the cabinet member in that. I think he said of 37. I think 26 were grant applications 26 were granted. Most of the remainder were pending works to allow highways works to facilitate them. Those figures need and it needs quantifying and we accept that. But I think the general thrust, and I don't want to prejudge the report, but the general thrust of where members have told me individually that they want to see changes and recommendations is to is a more transparent approach is a slight change in the way the data is assessed, and particularly where results don't don't meet the expectations or the aspirations of those who apply for them. It's a very transparent and meaningful appeals process. And I think in all those things we are. I'm saying pushing it an open door but not far off I think highways to their credit have come a very long way from where we started in this journey to considering where members are indicating that they may want to go in the final analysis. That sort of progress. I think we will have done a reasonable job. But as for increasing the number of applications, I don't that hasn't been something which has jumped out of us during our investigations. Just that I hope Council Jack answers your question. Many thanks. Okay, any other questions? All right. Okay, well, thank you for that, Jonathan. We do recommendations after I've taken the second part of this thing with. Thank you, Jonathan. And I hope you catch the train on time. Thank you. Council Graham Wright, you are with us as well from the chairman of the Climate Emergency Task Group also joining us remotely. So, I'll give you an introduction for Council Wright and then I'll ask anyone any questions for you. Welcome Graham. Thank you very much. And it really is an innovation actually to go on early with these reports because it may sort of structurally easier for us with our diaries but thank you very much. Right, recent activity for the climate task group was the, we reviewed the, excuse me, the air quality action plan 24, 29. We were concerned that the results will mainly do, there is an improvement, but it was mainly due to the fact that vehicles are more efficient these days than they were. Having said that we will be continuing on with looking at this report. I also attended the Wesick Community Energy Network event on the 16th of May, which was really interesting. A lot of good networking came from that and opportunity to see how solar and how energy networks work. You have our forward work program, but what I would like to highlight if I may chair is that you reappoint the climate emergency task group and its membership listed in the report to commence 24 for this 24 25 council year. I'm very happy to take any questions but I could go on and on and I'm sure that it's everything's in the report. Any questions from anybody please chair. Okay, I'm looking around the room. Are there any questions and. Mel, Councilor Jacob has got a question for you, Graham. Thank you. Oh, there we go press the wrong button apologies on the. Work plan you've got something about tree and woodland program. We've recently had a big tree planting grant in Trowbridge and some of the challenges around tree planting seem to me to be a lack of. Well, lack of different departments have got different priorities and it's quite hard to move forward with planting trees in some environments. I know they've had some tried to apply to do it in devices, I think, and getting permissions from highways and things. I just wondered what was included in your program and how do we get a joined up approach across departments to. To try and move forward and take advantage of things like these grants and we had £140,000 and there's more money in the fund, but. Trying to find the spots to do it, particularly in urban settings. I don't know if that's something that's included in your. Tree and woodland program. Well, it's it's it's in for June, which is this month, so we take everything you just said on board and I would ask if you're happy to join that when we have a meeting. If you would like to join us, I'll have a word with some Bennett was there with you at the moment to see if we can get you on. If that's possible so that you can have your input as well. Would that be acceptable? Yeah, that would be great. Thank you. And anything else, please feed through to us because it's on our. To do list and we want to make sure we do it properly and scrutinize, you know, robustly. Okay, thanks very much for your question. Thank you for that. Well, and Simon has nodded his head, so you'll be able to attend that. Just make as we are. To the public, they wouldn't seem ahead to go down and up, so he has agreed to that. Okay, Derek. Hello, Graham Graham. I've organized some. Visits to a number of well to the wind farm over the West Mill wind farm in Swindon, and also the by digested down in. So I'm really interested to see that you've had this communication with the community energy network group. Do you feel that the members of the council are sufficiently up to speed with some of these technologies? And with organizations like the Bath and West community energy, who locate solar on top of buildings like schools and so on, where you can get a win win. The school gets a reliable and cheaper form of energy without having to put the upfront costs of installation. And if you feel that the members are sufficiently well informed. Yeah, thanks very much, Derek. The answer would be when you say members, if you mean our whole council, the answer would be no. If you mean the task would be yes. And again, we welcome any opportunity to people come to our meetings. And we would also include this and I'm just looking back down through our forward work program to see where that would fit an irrespective of whether it fits or doesn't fit. I will make sure that we we look at that. Thank you for getting those invitations to various places organized. Have you got any information you could share with the output from that or please. I'm sure I can find that. What was what was really useful and very helpful was the fact that the cabinet member for the waste came on the to see the Malabi by a digestion warm and stuff. And, you know, it was really helpful because we were able to understand the fact that the it's the the plastics and things like that that end up in the waste that make it very difficult to deal with it. So he was able to take away a lot of helpful information. So, yes, I'll, I'll do what I can. Thank you. And, and chair, can I encourage all your members, you know, we aren't an aloof task group. If anybody's got anything that they want, we are available 24/7 via email. Just come to us with ideas and we're very happy to take them on board. Okay, thank you for that Graham. Right. And so I've got some recommended draft resolutions here. One, to note the notes, the update of the task group activity provided above. Two, that we that reappoints the climate emergency task group and the membership listed in the report with the commencement of the 2024 25 council year. Three, notes, the activity of the climate emergency task group, June 23 to June 24, where you can see on appendix one. And four, notes, the climate emergency task groups draft forward work plan seeing appendix two. Can I have a seconder for that, please. Okay, so Jackson, I don't have any objections, all in favor. Okay, well, thank you for that, then Graham, you can go on your merry way and take the rest of your day off and whatever you're doing. Nice day. No, exactly. Thank you. Thank you. Right. Now we're going to go back to the correct thing. I think we're going to go back to item eight, which is the community infrastructure and infrastructure levy the sale. So we're going to receive a verbal update on the community and infrastructure levy has agreed at the meeting with the cabinet member on the 18th of October of 2023. And I think that's Nick, I think so, Nick, welcome. Thank you, Chairman, you have to be right. It is me. And so I'm only going to say a few words to kick this off. And it's going to be picked up by the officers but just to set some scene and to give some, you know, feeling as to how the administration views this so So was originally brought in with the intention at the time, I understand it to replace section 106 is which some people I remember described as a sort of legalized bungs because of the way that they operated. And, you know, in return for planning permission, you know, you got you gave your set the entity to a section 106. So it was originally intended to provide a more robust and transparent way of harvesting developer contributions. If you will. And so what is it that we are, you know, trying to do to do here. I think the first point I make is there's an absolute need to use these resources that are provided strategically. And this was something that was picked up in our corporate peer challenge, the need to align all the forces and influences that we have the maximum strategic gain. And I think that has to really underline all the thinking that we undertake here. Development, as we know, particularly if we've had a lot in our areas, comes with significant challenges and, you know, a whole range of challenges. And we need to, you know, use all the benefits that also come and still being one of them to maximum effect to mitigate maybe the wrong word but to ameliorate all that they impacts that come from from from development. And that's what this administration wants to, you know, is trying to do. And, you know, to have clear thinking about what is the strategic objectives that we need to address and how do we do that. And still has got to play a part in that thinking. And I think, you know, there's a lot of sort of woolly thinking around about, well, it'd be nice to do this would be nice to do that. You've actually got to be very clear what it is that you're trying to do. And the business plan obviously is our first port of call. But, you know, I want to see the sort of rigorous thought going into how we use so, I mean, so, you know, so what they want to run off benefits these they're not going to come again. I mean, yes, there'll be more development, but the development we've had. This is a, this is, this is a one, one opportunity to use that money wisely. That's probably all I want to say. So, so that that's the background. We've got to the point that we have to review the way we allocate this investment. And is it does our procedure meet the objectives and is it fit for purpose. So we were due to bring in just a normal update on sale today to this committee. However, because of the whole thing going under review, we said that we're working towards having a report to cabinet later this year, which will come to an environment select first for your comments. But this is just an update, if you like mid flight of where we are with review and sale. One is the decision making process. Now, the decision making process, which has been agreed and has been adopted by this council was seen not to be fit for purpose anymore. I'm going to say to you why it relied on everything happening in a very timely manner. Reports coming to cabinet and to this committee once a year and decisions regarding sale allocations being made on long intervals. What's happening in reality is very different requests for use of still come in. Regular intervals, they normally require a quick decision by the council. Hence, it requires a far more dynamic process in order to respond to the demand coming in. So one thing we are reviewing is how can we create a much more dynamic process whereby as requests come in, it can be considered fully against other demands and a decision being made. I will not go into solutions today on that, but it will come here later in the year. The second issue that needed addressing was allocations. So in previous reports to cabinet, big chunks of still income has been allocated to schemes. But when you look back and look at how much of that has been delivered, you'll find that vast majority of it still sitting in the bank is not being used. It's for schemes which have been allocated to in the last four or five years, but will not be delivered possibly several years from now. So is it right for this council to allocate monies, knowingly, when we know that the expenditure isn't happening for many, many years, and that there is other income from still between now and delivery of those schemes. So we thought that we need a far more real time analysis of what money is available, what are the demands and better allocate the money against. So we've set up a group to look at that. How can we make sure that that's the real time information is available and cabinet and members of better informed about, you know, what are the, what are the possible more immediate demands on that money. So that's happening. And in fact, just so that, you know, as we're doing that, we've decided that perhaps we can do that for Section 106 as well. And also, there are other planning related incomes that the Council administers now under the Environment Act, which are growing by the month. And perhaps we can have a similar dashboard of income versus expenditure. So things like phosphates, which we take income from planning applications for, and then invest in mitigation. So there's a new opportunity, nature recovery, all these new strategies that local authorities are supposed to have in place, and, and fund. So we'll have, if you like, a better monitoring of sale and other planning incomes in order to inform members regarding allocations. And that was a second area, which is under review. The third one is, as you may know, part of the sale income is devolved to towns and parishes. There's a different rate of devolution of that funding. In some cases, it's about 15%. And in some cases, it's 25%. Basically, if you've got a neighborhood plan, you receive a bigger portion of the sale in the town parishes. So that has been devolved so far. We've come to the point that there's been several years of this devolution. We don't really have visibility of if this money is being spent, whereas it's being spent. And there is a, there's a callback clause in all this, if towns and parishes don't spend it, the council can close that back. Do we need a system for clawing back, if anything, to encourage towns and parishes to, to better plan forward for investment of those monies. In that conversation, we've actually noticed that it's not just down to towns and parishes. We have to get smarter. In a way, we allocate and devolve these monies to towns and parishes. They need to be better informed, rather than I give you an example of us just calculating how much sale is due to be devolved for a certain town. You know, whenever we get around to do it, that's not fair, because these monies are rather large for towns and parishes to manage. So we're also looking at, perhaps, more real-time informative discussions with towns regarding the sales, which may be coming on on the horizon. So they're better prepared in spending. So, Chair, there are these three areas, decision-making, how allocations are made and regarding devolution of monies to towns and parishes, which are being reviewed. As I said earlier on, we hope to bring a report later in the year to environment select and then to cabinet. I don't know if there's anything Nick Thomas wants to add. Just a couple of things. Thank you, Chair. So last year, we carried out an audit, our internal audit carried out a review of Section 106 processes, and we had brought this here to a meeting and had a discussion about that. But that made a number of recommendations about some of our internal processes, and I think a review of the way we deal with Section 106 at this stage is quite timely because a lot of those changes have been implemented now. And it helps us to build upon some of the processing improvements, our internal ways of working and the ways that we can monitor and invoice for contributions. So I think that's quite useful. The other one, which did come out of that process, was how we negotiate and secure funding for contributions from developers. And again, that policy strategy side is something that we want to progress and develop in parallel with this work on the cell side of things. So yeah, a number of pieces of work, I think, but it's a good time, I think, to be doing that. And it's not going to be immediate. It's going to take a few months to do that, but I think it's going to be worthwhile for them. Thank you. Yeah, so I'll throw out a question. I just, I know that some of my old on the old Paris capture that have been doing it for donkeys here still call it 106. They don't really want to recognize the word to sell at this stage. There is a slight difference in the two. It's just getting them to get used to the idea, because I mean, I'm known a part of money and not being parochial too much, but in my area, 14 years before the skate bar, which is finally opened on May the 25th of this year. That money been put away and just, but if that had not happened, then that money would have probably gone. I don't know what they did, but it finally got opened anyway. Anyway, didn't want to be parochial apologies. Jackie. Oh, I'm going to try not to be parochial. It's going to be hard to be a record. Obviously, as you were talking, I was writing written it all down. But there was a few questions that were come to my head. One of them was the parish element, because I'm very conscious that my parish seems to hold a large amount of money in their bank account. And actually, that money would be better off in our bank account, and then allocated to the parish when they were ready to deliver their scheme, because that might encourage them to deliver their schemes. But, you know, anyway, that's a sad point. But one of the things I'm very aware of is every time we have a planning application, the developer only deals with the areas around their sites. They don't deal with the wider things, which I know Sill could deal with. But I'm talking about an additional footpath, a cycle route, you know, perhaps improving some of the public rights of ways. They can't do that, because they're saying,
Well, that's not part of my site, so I can't do it.It would be useful if we could use the Sills, or have a portion of the Sills, to be allocated for which Council to spend on improving some public rights of ways, putting in extra footpaths, byways, whatever. And I don't know how we do that as to how we can bring that about. The other questions was mitigation, and this is going to be in parochial, is that I'm aware, in my community, we had mitigation for modern view, huge amount of money that was to be spent. And it went to, in the end, Bradford on Avon, which is great. But it took years and years and years before that money got there. And one of the Councillors at Bradford on Avon said to me one day when I was talking generally, we wondered where that money came from. So they didn't know that it had come from a loss that we had in my parish, but they got the gain, which was great, but it just took so long. So I don't know how we improve that. And, yeah, I agree with you. This issue around the town of parishes, we do need to know what they're going to use it for and what they're going to spend it on and when, because it is taking so long for them to spend their money. And meanwhile, you know, there's the issue that we as council here get criticized because things aren't being delivered. So, yeah, I think that was it. Because the last question was that the money should stay with us until they're ready to spend it. Once they're ready to spend it, we can give it to them. So it doesn't sit in their banks because basically their bank accounts are only guaranteed up to 85,000. And would you like to dissect those forms of questions there and perhaps because I'm not sure they were all questions to statement. That's fine. That's fine. So, if you think about still as so two tiers, one is that the one we keep here, and then the ones which are devolved to 1000. We do have some kind of loose framework of what we can spend, which a council can spend the money on. So, 1000 parishes, however, have a much freer hand on allocation of the sale. They can't pretty much spend it on, on anything that is their priority. So, we don't have the control of the town and parish expenditure. We do have the control of the main sale. I should say that it's in budget reports that a cabinet have previously allocated still for LHP's, for example, two lots 400,000 pounds last year, 400,000 pounds this year for allocated from sale. And the money is allocated last year was fully committed by an HP's that spent all of it. So that sort of allocation can be made of the lump that we will, and that's the discretion of our cabinet to do that. But the ones devolved to 1000 parishes, spend it as you will really on anything, including LHP's or anything else that parish feels is a priority. On the money is transferred from your parish to a bathroom. I'm afraid I cannot think which one that may be and I don't know whether the sale or it was, it may have been a different, different money. I was only going to say that perhaps what we would be clearer then at the planning stages, that when we grant planning permission that we actually say that the sale money that's allocated to parish could deal with some of these issues raised by our local residents when they say, oh, you know, there's no footpath and because that can't be delivered by the developer, but we can then say in the planning application as a advisory, perhaps they could use the sale money by the parish. So you were sort of saying like targeted, I guided investment for the parish to make help them spend it. I think I think legislative, they have freedom to decide what they want to do. I think that's the problem. Okay, just cut the conversations across the play floor here. Richard, you want to say, I think you want to come in on this a minute. Just two comments on this. I think we have to bear in mind that legislation facilities laid down by central government. We are required to give the money to parishes. There is no legal room in that. There's no discussion in that. I think it's also worth noting the government has consulted several times on significant changes to sell. And my understanding is that as a result of the general election, either of the main political parties are inclined to continue with significant reforms in the area. And I think it's just worth bearing in mind before we get too focused on tweaking the system. We may be able to be put into that consultation, but I suspect things will be imposed upon us with regard to changes to still moving forward. Okay, I have another question. Ian McLennan, you've had your hand up. I hope it's not in your car anywhere, but joining us remotely. Yes, congratulations on your appointment as chairman again. Very inclusive chairman so happy to see you and I would have voted for you as well. So congratulations Jerry. Right, just really disagreeing with Jackie Lane s 106 money. You can input to the planners and the developers about how all that money is accrued and what the what the schemes are. So we've got input into those things and if you need money for issues off offsite, then those monies can be obtained as well we obtain them for all sorts of transport stuff to make things better to get in and out of those new developments. So there's no restrictions on those. And in terms of the sale, you know, the parishes getting the sale, as a power system said, I've got every right to spend it on on how they want to spend it. And that's important, you know, local democracy is what we're about. And the parishes is is the first line of that. So getting the sale money and having the schemes to do it is all up to the community. Yeah, if the money comes into the parish and there's money sat in the bank, they can invest it and get some interest. And spend it when they want, and if anyone who's been around a long time, and remembers the s one are getting money out of the s 106 from Wilshire Council we were holding it all. It was a real pain in the neck for for a parish to get it. They had to do all sorts of leaps to try and extract a few quick. So the fact that still go straight to the parishes a good thing. And it's up to the communities to encourage their parents council to spending on what the community needs. So, thank you. James, that's just a comment or was that a question. Is there an answer to that? Anyone gentleman? No, that's it was a colleague, a balancing of Jackie Lays points so that when they go away and think about it, the officers will remember what I said and not not change it. As Richard said, the law of this stuff is decided by government anyway. Okay. Derek, you've got a question. Not so much question, more of a statement that I think that the notions of localism are very important and that there's levels at which decisions are most appropriately made and some decisions are much better made at parish level. Some decisions are much better made at a county level and I think that it's important to maintain that funding for the parishes and allow them that freedom to be able to use the money where they think it's most appropriate. Okay, right, so the only car I'm not not being broke about housing development in one of my areas I live very close to many years ago, when the 106 money was granted, the money had to be spent within one kilometer of development site now. No, that'll still apply with sale because I think it can go further away but some that was a specific request. Does that still will that still exist or not with so I'm probably not. So that's basically the crux of the matter is that 106 is specific to the development. Still is for that cumulative effect of developments, which individual developments don't take care of so silly is a strategic investment which can go anywhere. And can I have a button you got a question. I don't I don't disagree with anything that's been said, just an observation in the case of parishes. One of the issues is visibility, transparency, how much is publicly known in the area. And I take the point that the operation for scheme is laid down by central government, but there may be some tweaks to the way in which we implemented in Wiltshire to encourage Paris Councils to be more open and to make this these things more public. That in turn will encourage implementation use and value for money. I see you agreed that not in your head there Nick completely I think part of this review process is about working closely with our town and parish councils and supporting them through this process it's quite daunting for some of our small parishes. There's potentially lots of money comes in at different times, some more than others. So yeah, assisting them to make sure they spend in times really important. Thank you very much. Firstly I'd like to congratulate on the approach because I think it's very very sensible. The one note of caution I'm striking is the word strategic and I wouldn't want to think that because we're going strategic that we're losing the importance of community. So the first word in sale is community and the understanding of community needs is much better focused on parishes. And otherwise, thank you, Chair. Okay, thank you, that counts the rounds. Just a quick observation of our major and I have to say I do echo a lot of the sentiments that have been expressed so far around the table. And I always shudder at the use of that word in the context that you can always sense the smell of corporatism following very quickly behind the use of the word strategic. And it strikes me that here we're looking at the council trying to control the money is coming into it and then handing it out to the parishes as and when they they require still coming down to the towns in parish councils are really, really important because it has been said so far here. It is a classic case of localism and so we devolve down to the local people how they want to spend on money granted it's not a perfect system insofar as it's not always spent as quickly as we should. But that is something I think that councils need to be aware of and be more sensitive to in the use of of sale money so I'm very leery about, you know, but certainly on paper to me. It looks like a grab to control, so money is right across the board rather than just the portion that wheelchair council has and returns. Thank you. No, the short answer to that, nothing that I said about the strategic nature is about is to do the parish councils they are, they have those elements by way of legislation and you know we can have an interesting discussion about how they spend it and what time scales but the fact is at the moment. That's up to them, so there's no attempt by this authority or the administration to take to take control of that, that process. So, so, no, not at all I'm talking about the element that is retained by Welsh council. And, you know, okay, I hear you what you say about strategic versus community but, you know, just to look at it from the other way around. You wouldn't say, Oh, well, we'll do it in an unstrategic way or base it on some sort of notional sort of distribution. I mean, you know, this is this is money that comes to the public sector. It may not be taxpayers money directly but it is still something that we have to ensure that every penny we receive is spent wisely. And, you know, that's all I'm saying that we need to think about how we're spending it and we need to spend it in the areas which make the most sense. If you don't like the word strategic or we'll try and think of another one but that's all I'm basically saying. Okay, lots of comments on that one and not so many questions but anyway, thank you. So we just look at the two records too on the draft resolution. One is that the select notes the update one and two received at the CIR the civil review report before the end of 2024. So we'll get a report by the end. Is that okay with you? Obviously. Yeah. Okay. Fine. Mr Jackson, did you want to all in favor of that? Sorry. All the hands. Yep. Okay. Thank you. Right. Thank you for that one. Then we're going to move on to the next item, which is the update on the town's program at development. I think we've got Victoria here for that one. Oh, no. Sorry. Apologies. Right on the wrong line. And a page. Counselor, clear of the leader. I'm very sorry, Richard. And you'll be joined by Paris and Victoria on this one. Richard, you also. I'm delighted to let Victoria do most of the speaking on this one. Actually, I think it's probably more appropriate. The last program. You know how much I like evidence. The evidence is pretty good that the town's program is delivering the. Not consistently, but the evidence is good. There was a particularly nice bit of granular detail around throwbridge and the increase in football when the event last summer was on using mobile phone. I was a significant boost. I can't remember if Victoria probably can, but I can't remember the. Three and a half thousand extra extra visitors in Cambridge as a result of that event. For example, that's just one little bit of granular data. The work on the apps has been continuing. Explore Wiltshire is out. Things have been being added to it. We need to look at creating static locations as well as the tools on on explore wheelchair. We are very close to events. Wiltshire launching now, and we have now finalized the term wheelchair mark as the title for the wheelchair markets always been called that, but we wanted to make sure that we actually we didn't predetermine the name, but on balance from from the research we've done. That's the right name to be going with. I will let Victoria get the rest of the update and come with questions if needed. Thanks Richard. So obviously you have seen the report and I'm not proposing to go through that in a lot of detail, but just to highlight some of the updates that I've had since that report was sent in. So many of you will be aware that the vibrant Wiltshire scheme is currently operating. That is a grant that supports new businesses to open up in the high street, recognizing that a lot of startup costs can be a barrier to new businesses beginning. Currently we have 29 businesses that have been supported, and we spent about 54% of the funding. We are expecting to pause that over the summer, because summer is very busy period for our high streets. So it's very unlikely that businesses will have the time to engage with that program. That program is complemented by another program, which is energy support for existing businesses. So we didn't want to be in a position where we were only supporting new businesses. We wanted to make sure we got the balance with existing businesses. That program is currently going through procurement, and we're hoping to launch it over the summer. But that is about providing really, really practical advice to those businesses about reducing their energy costs. On a range of levels, everything from as simple as having a policy of turning the lights off or getting the right door fittings all the way up to this is the sort of system you would buy in a kitchen that would make sure you reduce your energy consumption. And that will be supported with grants because we know that it's difficult for businesses to be able to take up those measures. We've been doing a lot of master planning work. We started with our principal settlements where we have the highest number of retail businesses. So I know that we've done some prioritization in the different programs, just to reassure you that assure you that that is evidence led and it's based on the number of businesses in that town and the number of people that are supported in employment in those sectors. So we've begun our master planning work prior to the commencement of this program, we had a plan in Solesbury and we had one in Trowbridge, both of which were successful through the Future High Streets Fund. We then obviously pivoted to Chippenham where the Chippenham one plan is taking shape. We are delighted that two projects are out of the blocks on that one. So we have got a Chippenham even project where consultation closed on Monday the 28th. And then we have the Acorn Emory Gate project, which is obviously private sector led. We're also aware that we're coming to the end of what those frameworks can deliver. So we're currently operating on two tracks. The first is to expand the number of towns that we've got those plans for. We have a lot of historic master plans that we haven't been able to deliver. Are they still relevant? Do they need to refresh? And then we're also refreshing these existing plans to make sure that we have opportunities available for bidding in the future. So with the wider plans, we are working with Westbury at the moment on a project and we are also in discussions with devices. We've continued to run the activity generation grants. Those are the grants that go direct to town councils to help them with events and activities to support the High Street. What we've done each year is try to move away from responding. So quick get people in, get people to hold events to a more strategic view. So helping towns to think about, well, actually, what's the role they play for their catchment? What makes Brabford and Avon and Milksham different? What makes caution and Brabford and Avon different? So shifting them over time to that more strategic view. And we're hoping to do that again this year and possibly go for more than a single year of funding to give them that long term certainty for more structural changes. As Richard said, the Wilcher mark is in development. That is our provenance scheme for food and drink producers. I think I joked to this committee last year about Wilcher Ham, so I won't play that joke again. It's very famous in weather spoons, but we'd like to him a little bit higher. Had quite an interesting workshop on that one, full of marketing questions like,If the Wilcher mark was a person, who would it be discovered that I'm really bad at marketing?And then, of course, we do have the two apps. So explore Wilcher is the trails app primarily, and when that came into place, what we discovered were a lot of terms. We're using the events platform of that existing app because that was part of the package. We were really keen to not have to take all of that information into a second platform. So the events Wilcher app is a web app. That means that it will operate both on your phone and also as a website. It's really important for us in terms of maximizing its Google impact, maximizing the kind of questions that it answers. If you literally Google,What can I do at the weekend in Wilcher?That's where we're aiming for. And as Richard said, that's due to launch shortly, will be this month. Those are the key highlights, but I'm happy to take any questions. Okay, I'll start against the range, and then I'll come to the connection. Thanks, Jeff. I just really want to ask the question,Is there still life in the dead body of our town centers?Interesting though, this program is, and it's to be congratulated for it. But I sometimes wonder given the sort of prevalence of online shopping, that we're flogging a dead horse here, really, for our town centers. Absolutely, it's something that we review on an ongoing basis. What I can say is that at the moment the majority of our towns have returned to pre-pandemic football. So we're doing a lot of football analysis to look at what the patterns are. So we have seen the majority of our towns return to pre-pandemic level of football. What we've also seen is that those trips are at a higher spend. So people are coming, they are spending more money, not just due to inflation. They are spending more money in those trips. So there is still a very active high street. What I would say is that's not going to be a consistent picture forever. So a lot of people reacted to the pandemic in three years of kind of being at home by really engaging with their local community. Really kind of returning, really supporting local businesses. We will see that impact shift over time. So it's going to have to be an ongoing question for us. But at the moment, we've seen a full return to most of our high streets, a couple of exceptions. In Solesbury, where obviously we are too incidents in, we've seen some really impressive shopping figures with new businesses like Primark and Bradley as opening. I think we received a report that General retails them was 30 times higher than the competitor cities in quarter three last year. So a real kind of reversal of the trend. Our job is to understand which towns are going to be able to maintain and which towns have to do something different. And so what we've done is stereotyped effectively those towns that are lovely, that are nice, that have really vibrant small centers or really large populations. And we have towns where we're slightly more worried where they've got lower populations, less attractive streetscape. What does that mean for them? So I think it is a really competitive market, but I don't think we've seen the end of the pandemic impact. So we are going to have to look more long time. I do appreciate, you know, I suppose towns, cities like Solesbury probably, Trobe region and the like, do you have a greater attraction for football? Because they're probably providing a wider variety of shopping items or places to shop at. But I'm from calm and it just nothing is happening in there. And I mean, I don't wish to be broke in that sense that I would talk specifically about calm, but I'm sure there are other towns around the county that are like calm that are just dead on their feet. There is very little footfall when shops set up and closed down and go away. And I wondered whether or not there was something in this program for towns like calm and others or whether at the moment you're just focusing, you know, on low hanging fruit, so to speak, and then you will move on eventually. I rather hope that you move on to looking at towns like calm and others. Absolutely. So, calm is what one of what I would call our transition towns towns where we do expect to see that retail transition happen. I was expecting within the four years of the program that we would start to see that trend emerge more. What I'm saying is currently we, from what we hear from our high streets, we are still very much in the recovery stage, rather than the new pattern of a post COVID landscape, which I think is quite interesting because I think it's quite slow to emerge. Calm will require structural change. That is effectively something that we recognize within the program. When we set out our previous when we get it gave three stages. So response is around saving the businesses revitalization is around reengaging with the community and, you know, testing the market. What does a sustainable high street look like? And then we move into transformation stage, which is where we go. Well, okay. This isn't working. Something different needs to happen. And we are moving into the transition stage this year and next year. And then it's a case of which towns do we need to support to address those challenges and calm is one of those towns. So yes, we are moving to that stage. We're just not quite there yet. It's moved a little slower in market patterns than I had anticipated. Richard, I can be blunter than the Victoria. I think where we are getting the most headway on these are where we have got engaged town councils and what they are coming up with their own ethos and ideas to help drive towns forward. I think is a much better place now than it was. But I think it's fair to say a year and a half ago, it was more resisting than engaging. And I think that's really important. If you look at what, for example, Westbury has done where the town councils been very engaged. Well, you know, have nice red sign is the only entry to Westbury advertising the chili fair is part of the inherent fabric of the town. So, I would, we can provide the structure, we can provide elements of funding, we can provide the infrastructure support, but we need the town council to also be saying, this is what we're about. This is what we want to sell ourselves for. This is, this is sort of our, our view that we want to use to use the support that wheelchair can give to shape almost the narrowest of the one with the branding of the town. Okay. Okay, so Jackson. Thanks, Chair. Firstly, I'd like to congratulate Victoria on the progress she's made because it is not easy. I do appreciate that. So well done. I do have three or four questions if you will indulge me. Firstly, have we lost all links with visit Wiltshire? Secondly, do we foresee that this program is going to last for two years, five years, ten years? How do we maintain the infrastructure that you're developing now? And my third question is about the links to events. So, I think events are a very powerful driver. And the link to events is something which I think is very important for making this successful app. Thank you, Chair. Victoria. Absolutely. So we have not lost all links with visit Wiltshire currently, we meet with them at the same way that we do the FSB and the chambers of commerce, which is a regular dialogue without a contractual relationship to the apps. We can request one. They may require us to be a membership. That will be a decision for them, but we certainly haven't lost our relationship. We are still in regular dialogue about the things that we can collectively do to support the tourism economy. Simply without the funding behind it, which is the same as how we work with the FSB and the chains of commerce. In terms of how long the funding last we've got funding for this year and next year, you may recall as a committee, we had a year of funding during the pandemic, which we weren't able to operationalize because we were doing business grants. So that means that we are perhaps a year behind where we would have been, but that means that we will continue the program for a further year subject to budget decision making. What we are doing is obviously preparing what's worked and what are the lessons that we've learned and how easy and impactful have these interventions been, because growth funding is pretty cyclical. We had UK share prosperity funding from government, which came in after we launched the tax program. So we obviously didn't duplicate it, but it would be the case that if there was a further round, what are the interventions that we would want to keep going. How do we keep those going? Those are regular economy conversations. We don't really have a sense of where future funding is coming from at the moment, but what we do know is any future funding that comes from central government has to be aligned against any local funding to avoid any overlap. So that is very much an ongoing process. However, there are things that we can do to, as you say, maintain the infrastructure of what we're doing. So maintain regular dialogue with the town councils. We're looking at things like legacy agreements, legacy structures, legacy partnerships to make sure that we are able to embed at the very least best practice into those towns. You talked about setting up events. That's quite burdensome. It's quite complicated. There is more that we can do to make that easier for towns and communities. And so where we may not have, if it were the case that the financial resources come to the end, there's still things we can do in terms of advice and support for those towns. So we're kind of planning for a number of futures, shall we say. We have elections as well to council next year. One administration cannot fatter the way and future administration spends funding. So what we did for this administration is provide four years of funding. I think that there is enough evidence coming out of this that there are the very least elements that would need to continue. That would be dependent on whoever wins the election and whatever the budget state of the council's time and what the evidence is showing. So it's not something that you can simply say, yes, we can guarantee it was all a discretionary spend. It's got to be handled really carefully. Okay. Right. I've got four people waiting to speak. So I'm going to go in. I've done the right rate and order in first. So firstly, I'm a huge fan of the town's program. I think it's exactly how we should be investing in this sort of area as a former small business owner and a former lobbyist with the FSB. This is what we were asking for. And this is exactly what I think we should be doing. So thank you for doing that. The questions I have really are around the events and the website, which is live. I'm on it at the moment and been playing around with it. One of my frustrations with Visit Wiltshire, who have an absolutely awful website and an awful events program on there was that all the events were very high level. You couldn't find the things that were going on. This is a better looking website, but my frustration is certainly looking at now and I realized this, you know, not even properly launched. It's there is that, again, it's very high level. It's the big events. It's the big things. And coming from devices, which you will know has hundreds of hundreds of events going on. There's loads of stuff, probably more than a lot of times. And I would like a way, and I've raised this a couple of times you've come before with this, is getting the community involved. How do we get those events on? And I've had a play on the website and I eventually found how you add an event, but it doesn't actually tell you how to add an event. It's an event itself. You click on it. It says you have to be a trusted partner. It doesn't tell you how to be a trusted partner. And my worry is, you know, how do we get those smaller events on those gigs in pubs, those small page in villages, all of those things, which are really important and actually become big events themselves, like the H1 Scarecrow Festival, all those sort of things. How do we get them involved and make sure that this is the place to go for events, so you don't have to go to hundreds of different Facebook pages websites that this is where we want to go. Absolutely, apologies, I should have turned that off. So at the moment, because of the volume of events in Wiltshire and the resource of getting them onto the website, there are some banner events that I would turn that say things like, you know, arts festival and you go in and you have to get the full program. In the future, we would like the individual events to be listed separately. You know, this is an arts program event one, this is arts program event two. However, in the interest of getting the app launched, what we have done is taken the decision to put on some quite big programs and to put some kind of, you know, town center links in there, which is not what we would want to do going forward. We would want to see that individual detail. But from our perspective, it's the case of working with our towns and our trusted partners to make sure that they are going through that process of putting their events on. It was always our intention and I will check and come back to you to make sure this is clear that if you were not a trusted partner, there would still be a route for you to submit an event to us. So I will make sure that that is made clearer and that we give people guidance on how to do that. And then from our perspective, it's very much around that network and making sure that everyone's aware of it. So we've been working with the culture and communities team. So we've recently sponsored the summer arts program through culture team. And then it's a question of making sure, okay, if we sponsor that, put it on the app. So making sure that we're making best use of that network is very much around getting the volume of events onto it. And I referred in the report to the emerging cultural strategy. And while it's not published yet, the evidence base is incredibly clear. The publication and awareness is a massive barrier to participation in Wiltshire in terms of cultural activities and having fun. Things actually being on and being able to get to them were also challenges, but that's not something the economy and region team can address. What we can tell you is we can make it easier for you to find out what is on. So it will be an ongoing process. But from our perspective at the moment, what you see is not what we're hoping for in the future. It's just a case of making sure we capture as much as possible right at the start. Let's come back quickly on that. Yeah, it's not clear at the moment how you get in touch if you're not a trusted partner. So that would be great if you can. Adjust that. But also one thing I meant to say earlier this evening, I have a 10 council meeting with devices 10 council, and this is on what Richard said about getting 10 councils involved. We have been approached by the FSB in a number of businesses in the town who are asking for sorts of things and saying we want more help. I'm actually just going to take this agenda item because everything that you've put in here in this report is exactly what they want to see. So I would encourage all councillors to really engage with 10 councils on that and encourage the town's parishes to take what you are doing and let them know. Absolutely, and could I just say the web page is technically live for events, which just to allow us the ability to work with partners to get some of that content on there. So while it's not officially launched, you can see it. And if you are looking at it and you do have any feedback, please do let us know. We are launching. I think in a couple of Mondays time. So there is a little bit of time to do that tweaking so I'll make sure that we get somewhere a guide for people to add events. Okay, so Brendan picking up on that picking up on Richard's comments about calm reflecting on the issue of how you encourage communities to take control of their own strategy and build a program and focusing without wanting to be parochial on communities that are below the threshold for your own active involvement. You know, you talk about 13 market towns with a lot of communities that are below that scale. It strikes me that in addition, it will be really helpful if there was some kind of guide to methodology. How you do these things, even such things as how do you measure the footfall, how do you compare footfall now with what it was pre-COVID for smaller communities. These are these are things they've never managed to do properly. So I think there's something about sharing your expertise and bringing it down to smaller communities as well that will be very valuable. Absolutely. So we do work with 22 towns and settlements. So we go. We've got the official towns and then we've got Pusey, Tisbury, Mere are also on there. And so we do try and get to that smaller reach what we're finding in terms of the resource we've got and the terms of results that smaller communities have. That's the real barrier. So like you say, we have to look at different ways to engage different ways to kind of support. So absolutely things like advice and guides on best practice for marketing, best practice for events, all of those things are in our consideration for the villa. As we move into the kind of final two years of the program, we are technically at the midpoint, which is quite exciting because there is still room to respond to feedback and to adjust to the changing circumstances and, you know, do that structural work. So yes, we will add guides and advice to our list. Okay. So, did you want to, do you want to come in there? No, okay. Sorry. You're up. You're up, Jackie. Sorry. All right. Okay. So I was listening to everything and I was hoping people could ask all the questions. So I don't have to keep asking questions. I think that the whole problem with anything is getting the public on board and counselors, because there's just so much stuff that we've all been bombarded in our lives as to where do we go for this information. And I found the app, but I don't like downloading apps on my computer because it's councils. And I don't use apps as such as I have to. So how are we going to get this out to the public? And I think we need to do some more PR again on this and get it out more about we're going live soon because the site is not available because I've tried that. I'd also wonder, one of the questions I wrote down when I read the report was, are we going to also have links to the outside bodies and going back to I sent to you, which you might have seen the treasure trails. So if people want to come visit Khan and do the treasure trail, that would be good to promote them for Khan. And so we need to be promoting all these other sites because the internet's full of sites, you know, where can I go in Wiltshire and where can I go to eating Wiltshire. We need to have all these links all together so people can find it because otherwise you just go to a random site and you never come on to our site. We need to come to us. So the questions I came up with, sorry, Victoria, when I was reading the document was very conscious about if we're going to get people into our towns and supporting our towns is about the public transport. A lot of our major towns have got good public transport, but others don't. So we need to know how we're going to get people from the rural areas, the pewsy bus. Great. That's going to bring them in. We need to fund for the town councils on page six. Are we also giving funding out to the parishes and villages because some of the parishes, they had shops, they've lost their shops, would they be able to get their shops back if more people went to visit. And also, you know, what kind of shops are being opened up. I mean, it's all very well giving funding for shops, but if they're the wrong ones, you know, Primark, great, but not all of us go to Primark. Obviously, the 11 towns you mentioned, there's 11 towns that are in the scheme. I think this is for your. I was quite sure what there's power of 15, I think. That's 11 towns currently on the trails. There's 22 towns in the program. 22 in the program. And also, what are you going to plan? What's your plan for the future? All towns. Yes. Great. And obviously, when we go live, we know who the 11 towns are and the 22. So that would be great. So those are the sort of questions that came to mind mind when I was reading that report. Absolutely. So taking them in order. That's what I was writing down. So completely understand that people don't download apps and don't wish to download apps. That's why the events with your platform is a website as much as it's an app. So you will be able to Google it and you will be able to get to it via a browser. You can also save that icon onto your phone and operate it as an app. It is entirely your discretion. It is live, but not. Ian's got it there. It's live, but not published, because it's live while we get the events on. So we will be doing a formal launch, but it is there for people to tell us about their events and it's just to test it with the range of partners we've got going it had to be published. You talk about linking to other links. So under the Trails app, which is Explore Wiltshire, we have free trails. We don't have any financial transactions and the link you sent me the pay for offer. So I would suggest that they add themselves as an event on Explore Wilts on events wheelchair to make sure that we are connected, but we do recognize there's always going to be competing marketing. That's what marketing is. It's about promoting and promoting above and beyond where everyone else is. So we just will have to recognize that. But if there's anything particularly you want to add, please do send it to me. You talked about how do we get people into towns and this isn't something we're doing under the towns program, but I manage another fund called the UK Share Prosperity Fund and we recognize that access to towns and services and employment is critical. So one of the things we've done is put more funding into the demand response of transport things like the PC bus. So we're working with highways and transport to expand that network. Equally, you talk about villages. So where we drew the line on the towns program was an old definition of what meant what a high street meant, and it was something that had been used previously and it's something like 14 shops in a row. Don't quote me, I will get the official definition, but there's a particular definition about what makes a high street, and we use that threshold and some numbers of shops and numbers of employees to draw the line about who was effectively in and out. But with villages, we are currently designing and to launch shortly a program called Rural Hubs, which is about support for rural enterprises. Often the last shop or pub in a village to make sure that they are able to access a different kind of support because what they need is very different to what a kind of commercial town center business would need. So we have got support for them, but it's under again under the UK share prosperity fund rather than under the world towns program. You mentioned about which shops are we supporting. Broadly, our challenge has been making sure that businesses are ready to take on those shops that they have a business plan that they, you know, that they are actually developed enough to become a commercial enterprise. So we haven't really guided them in terms of what we would consider acceptable. That is for the market to determine, from our perspective, what they need to show is that they're credible, which actually has been quite substantial challenge. Loads of people have really good ideas, but there's quite a lot of formal steps you have to go through in terms of, you know, how are you going to do that? Do you have your contracts in place? You know, we recognize that actually the level of lease that we're after is quite a challenge for some businesses, but in spending that public money, we have to know that they're able to provide that benefit. And we have had businesses that haven't survived after having received grant funding. So one of the things that we've done is made sure it's capital, so it's invested in the premises. So the benefit remains, even if that business goes out and another business goes in. And that's a balance because you don't want to be too restrictive, but we also want to make sure that we are not seeing a lot of businesses go under after they've been supported. I think those are the list of questions, but anything else, please do come back to me. Thank you, Jackie, for those very short questions. Thank you for the Jacob now. Probably most of the things I was going to say have been covered already, but I just a couple of things I downloaded the Explore Wiltshire app last time we were here, and this meeting is probably a year ago. But when I go on to it now, there's nothing on there. It doesn't show me anything like the pictures on the website. So I don't know whether I'm doing something wrong, so that maybe I'll have to get someone to show me because I've got nothing on there. The link to that was when is that, how is that going to be expanded? Because if it's only 13 towns or 13 locations at the moment, that's quite limited in terms of promoting people. I know that you have a plan in place, but I just wonder what the timescale on getting other towns on there was because to me, if it's going to be successful, there has to be lots on there because I don't want an app that I don't have to swap to a different platform to find out about something that's not on there. On the events thing looks like it will be great if everything is on there, and there are so many events platforms. How are you going to direct everyone to be on yours because I've organized lots of events myself, and it's a real pain to have to go and put your event on lots of different websites, and you don't know which one is which. And still, if I Google obviously what's on in Wiltshire, visit Wiltshire comes up top. So it's just how are you going to direct everybody. And then the thing that everybody's been talking about supporting town councils and Richard talked about engage town councils that are more engaged than others. And I was just wondering whether what your support looks like because sometimes people need more hand holding than just this is what's available. They might need actual help to do it because they don't know how to market their town and maybe they don't know what they want their brand to be if you're in a particular town you might not have anything that jumps out like a chili festival or a cheese rolling event or whatever it is. So how are we going to help people to identify what their USP of wherever it is, is are you have you got the capacity to be more interventionist than just giving advice. Because that feels to me that sometimes might need that and maybe they're not engaging because they don't know what to do because it is really hard if you look at your high street and there's nobody going there to think what we meant to do to make our town more attractive without having loads of money. It always comes back to that and there isn't loads of money so what we're going to do to help people come up with that exciting thing that makes their town special. So on the number of towns on the app. We actually curate the trails ourselves so working with the colleagues at a history center who to be honest lead on the delivery of the app they go out and they create these heritage trails they work with the community. So we are, as with all of this a little bit dependent on the community working with us on those things. So I will get a more detailed timetable for you but it's the case of you know people express an interest they tell us what they want to see. We go in and help shape the content and then it gets uploaded so it's a little bit iterative. Completely recognize with events, the complexity of trying to advertise across Wiltshire is actually the real challenge and that's what we are trying to provide one way of solving it's not going to be the only way ever. Because there are people who you know wouldn't even think to look at something that was called Wiltshire because they're in X or they're in X. So we need to make sure that it's, I think for me the USP of our system is that it's really, really user friendly that it is really, really searchable and active. And then it's just a case of constant promotion and constantly embedding it into all the different groups where you might have found an event previously. And so where we'll start with that is the people that run events, so making sure that they are supported and they're able to get their content in at the same time as we launch it with the public and say, here is this facility, you can use this you can look and see, you know, what's on that evening. You know, that's why we've got so many accessibility tags so we're really focusing on something that's very, very user friendly, but I think it will take a lot of time to embed across what has evolved as a very complicated landscape. And during COVID we try to do something around shop local. But there were so many existing shop local groups for all the different towns and often more than one. For each town in the end we just ended up doing a directory of like all the different ways that you could look and see what was shop local might look like in your area because everybody had created their own and we never want to stifle initiative. But we also want to, from a consumer perspective, provide that use of information. So that's a very long way of saying it's going to take a lot of effort and a lot of time to bed in. Point around capacity and health is a really good point we are struggling with capacity across 22 towns we don't have 22 offices. We have a program lead and a team in regeneration who have other work to do as well. However, what we are able to do is to provide more concrete examples so where we've written out about the activity generation grant we have included examples of projects and the different ways that towns can spend money and with the strategic allocation. What we are saying is if you don't know how to do something you are able to pay for a plan. So, mom's repaid some funding towards their towns a refresh of their town plan that talks about how to market and you know what do they want their USP to be. We are very open to towns doing that because actually that's part of the challenge for them is knowing what to do. So, where we aren't able to provide that direct kind of this is what you should do. We are very open to towns using that funding to get that advice. Richard. I think the only other thing I'd add there is that we need to remember that town councils are sovereign in their own right their elected bodies. We can't tell them what to do. They can raise funding if they want to raise funding to do things we what we're trying to do is provide that infrastructure that support for all of our towns to give them. That sort of broader skills that you wouldn't expect a town council to be able to pull together but somewhere in there we can only take that so far. We can't do it for towns and there's a limit to how much funding in that we're looking at description you spent here and let's not forget that we are primarily a social care provider as an organization. We put significant resource into this but there is a limit to what we can do. So, it's about enabling and somewhere in there towns are going to need to look themselves at their own budgets. That's what they need or if they need to have a member of staff part time to help drive events or something. We're going to need to work out different solutions in different places. I got Derek. My impatiently. Thank you. I'm going to be very brief. I think you will be grateful. Victoria, I'd just like to say what a splendid presentation that is. You've covered it at high level and you drill right down into detail. You're covering all the bases there. Very superb. I would just like to ask a question which relates to something that Richard mentioned, which is the data that you use to determine things like football and so on. Where do you get that from and how comprehensive do you feel that that data is at present time? So, when we started the program, what we used was some work that had been done from the local plan to look at the number of shops and the number of vacancies, which was a study done at a particular snapshot point in time. And it just gave us the benchmark for who had the biggest retail sectors. That was pretty much where we were. As we then started the program, we bought into a football solution that does allow us to provide. Much more detail. The reports are still starting to embed. So we got essentially we got a bunch of historic data, which we're looking at, which allows me to tell you that we're kind of back at pre pandemic levels in quite a few of our towns. And then what we have got is monthly reports for each of our towns that show things like what's your foot for this month compared to where it was last year? Where are these people coming from? What does an event look like in terms of how much football impacted you have? And we've trained the town councils up on how to use these reports. I will check with the team as to whether or not we're able to issue an example, because it might be of interest for you and we could maybe do a more detailed session on that if you'd be interested. It is emerging for us, but essentially, right now we've got a lot more detail that we've ever had before, and we're currently working out. Is everyone confident using it? And what does it mean? But it is things like, you know, what's the postcode they came from? You know, how much of it is the town versus the catchment versus a wider region. All of those sorts of things are things we're starting to understand. So, sorry, are those samples being taken? Then do you go to an outside agency to do that? We have an outside agency. They base it on mobile data, and they have a formula by which they extrapolate for non-mobile. Yes. Yeah, so they use mobile data to basically understand what that picture looks like, and then they apply statistical formulas to extrapolate for people who don't carry a smartphone and for, you know, what that might look like in an area. So, what we wanted really was to understand where people were coming from. That was our core question. We didn't just want to understand the level of football, but we wanted to understand where you were target marketing. You know, who was coming? So that is what this system allows us to do. It allows us to know where people have come from. I don't normally let you come back, Tony. It gives us a second bite, but you can have another bite go on. I'm in a good mood today. I'll be very brief. I raised this, I think, three or four years ago in this committee, and I'd like to pay tribute and commend the administration for its progress in this area. This is discretionary spend. We don't have to do anything, and I think the initiative that the administration has taken and the excellent work by the current officer team is to be commended. Thank you very much. And as I let Tony in for one, you can have your last bite. Just the final question. I just want to be clear in your answer that Derek Walters. So I'm delighted the football data is there. You're saying there are monthly reports. If I want to see the monthly reports for somewhere or anybody wants to, how do I get all of them? So I would need to check what our licensing requirements are, but certainly as a counselor, you are able to see a report. We could take a look afterwards. I don't think we're able to publish them because it is commercial data. So I just need to check what the licensing arrangements are, but we will check that and come back to you as a committee, because I imagine others would also be interested. Would they be available to parish councils down to that level? That's the question I suppose that follows on. So each each town and parish council that's a member of the town's program. So the 22 was asked to provide a named login and that person is able to log in and access reports and I will check any areas that you would like me to. But is it possible that we could present to environment select that the troperage one that showed the granularity of data or is that not just to give an example of, because I mean, it was literally pulling out where people wear phones will come. I'm pretty sure you could track my phone coming to troperage every day. I would need to check the licensing arrangements. What we can't do is just publish commercial data. Yeah, I'm sure we could. Sorry, if we had a part two to a future committee, I think it would be very useful for members to understand the granularity of data we've got. How scary that is and perhaps how far back we need to pull ourselves to actually make use of the data and not get lost in it as well. I'll check with the members at the end of this. Jackie, boom, very small and then I'm going to move on. Very quickly, just say, I've put it onto my Facebook page. Hopefully, I've got it all right. I've put it out on my personal Facebook page. And I know that I have an elderly arm living in Kate's room who keeps picking up my posts and says she's desperate to come and visit me to visit all these wonderful places that I keep promoting. So, you know, give us the information. We'll promote. Absolutely. We'll make sure as we formally launch that we include those in members newsletters, we try to announce all of our funding in members newsletters if we're ever doing a call for like businesses that can access funding. We do put it in there. But if you ever want more of an update, just let me know. Right. Very well done, everybody. Did you want to come back? No, it's not happening. No. Right. So, we just very quickly added something into this trial resolution so that the select committee notes the update to receive and further update in 12 months time, and then three to deliver a session on football data as a part two item. Would you all be interested? Would you all be happy with that? And then we can get to the number of it. Okay. So, all in favour of that, please? And that is carried unanimously. Thank you, Victoria. I bear it with you. It says a great report. You're a very, very assured person of what you do. And a lot of questions answered very, very confidently. So, probably just sat there and remember their arms. It didn't need to get involved, did they? And why don't Richard the leader come in and your input is very valuable as well. But now we'll go on to the number 10. Update on the Broadband Division in Wiltshire. And these are on page 11 to 18, the agenda supplement. We don't have Kate slash the O'Neill here today. So, oh look, look, I guess it could be introduced by Victoria Maloney, head of economic achievement in generating. So, we've got a couple of other people here with us as well. So, sorry, Victoria. Oh, where are you going again? Not a problem. And yes, apologies from Councillor O'Neill, but he couldn't be here today. And happy to present this next item on Broadband provision. Before I take you through the main highlights of the report, I just wanted to highlight for any members who've historically been on this committee that this version of Broadband provision is much different to previous programs that you may have witnessed or been part of. Previously, Wiltshire Council have been the contracting body for these contracts. That is no longer the case. The contracts go directly through building digital UK, BD UK. There may be a lot of acronyms today. That doesn't really mean a change to the level of activity that Wiltshire is supporting and providing. It's just a change to the governance of the program. So, that's just something to bear in mind from a scrutiny perspective. Does anyone have any questions on that before I go into the main report? Are there any questions before we go into the main report? No, so go on then into the main report you go. So, just very quickly, the key highlights are, of course, the signing of the GigaClear contract around 19 million to provide 14,500 properties in South Wiltshire with gigabit capable Broadband. Gigabit capable means about 1000 megabits per second. It is fiber all the way into the premises. Previously, Broadband builds have been fiber to the cabinet, copper to the premises. And the copper is what can slow the speed down. So, gigabit capable means fiber to the premises. North Wiltshire continues to be in the procurement cycle with BD UK and work is progressing on what's called a cross-regional connectivity solution. So, that's looking across the wider area, what providers are out there who might be able to undertake that build. It's known as a type C procurement and we are expecting further announcements this year. The reason why there's a North Wiltshire and a South Wiltshire is in response to market feedback. So, BD UK have done a lot of work discussing with the market what the options are and the feedback was that North and South Wiltshire were very different builds. This is particularly because of Salisbury Plain. Don't think that's news to anyone. Because of all the procurement activity that's going on, project gigabit vouchers are paused in Wiltshire. Project gigabit vouchers are available to groups of homes and businesses that meet criteria. And one of those criteria is that there's no government funded contract planned or in build. Now, because we've got North Wiltshire and South Wiltshire, that means that for quite a few of our premises, they would not be eligible for a voucher because there is already a planned build on its way to them. However, there are some existing voucher projects that we are aware of and the broadband manager is continuing to work with those existing communities to make sure that they are considered when the vouchers are uncorbed. Alongside the technical delivery of project gigabit, we are also looking at how we maximize the impact we're having on connectivity. So, the role of the broadband program is to deliver the project gigabit contract. But what we're very aware of is that connectivity for the public is a broad question covering mobile and broadband connectivity. So, we are discussing with suppliers their plans for what is called the Shared Rural Services Network, which is whereby the big four mobile infrastructure providers will share their rural infrastructure to maximize coverage across our rural areas. So, what we're doing is working with them to understand when those plans are happening, but what impact there might be on coverage and to make sure that we've identified any not spots. In particular, we're aware of concerns from around the garrison areas where connectivity is so important because a lot of them are away from home and we continue to engage to kind of understand the problem of what the solutions might be in those areas. We also, we've done a lot of these projects because we've been asked to, because, you know, governments put funding in, but what we haven't really taken the time to do so far is to understand what impact that has and what requirements there are in Wiltshire. So, this year, we were pleased to work with UE to put together a project that actually says, well, what does connectivity mean in Wiltshire? Who's benefiting? What further improvements could be made and how do we maximize the impact we're having? And that report intends to report in April next year. And those are the highlights. Well, there's the highlights. Jackie, have any questions this time? It's a very quick question. Okay. Right. Okay. There you go. First one. So, we've all been told that the copper lines were going to get disconnected. Is that still happening? So, what happens to the homes that are still connected to copper line and don't have fiber, but the fiber's just down the road. I mean, you can see it. But you can't actually stretch it as far as your house. So, my understanding, and I will check this, is that the decommissioning of the copper network has been postponed because the build had not completed to the level that one might have hoped. We were trialing it in Salisbury, and that has gone ahead because Salisbury was the first full fiber city in the UK. So, it's the place where that connectivity trial has happened, but across the wider area, I believe it's been pushed back to 2027. Slightly worse than that. There was a bit of a vague statement. It was pushed back until at least 27, and then there was a requirement for a guarantee to be provided that older people wouldn't be disadvantaged in the process, but it wasn't to find what that meant. So, I think they're trying to work through a number of areas that I'm afraid it's not clear. Sorry, it's just that I am aware of, being parochial, that giga-clear have put their ducting up, but they've missed connections down private roads. And so, there's people down private roads who are not building, but they have no access to fiber. Well, they're getting it because they're getting it from the green cabinets, from BT, but obviously they're not getting the super fast, and with people working from home, it's a problem. Absolutely, so that would be in Northwilcher, and what we can do for any postcodes that you're interested in is work out whether or not they are classified as being eligible for public subsidy. So, that will tell us whether or not there is a private build planned, or whether or not a public build would need to take place, and that's the work that BDUK are doing at the moment. Now, obviously, there has been a planned build in that area that hasn't taken place, so one of the pieces of work we're doing is being very, very clear with BDUK that that build has not happened. And that they need to make sure that they have got confirmed which properties are going to be connected by the private sector, because we are aware that in the documentation, there was a time where they were going to get a private build that's now not happening. So, we just need to make sure that information's accurate so that it can be considered in the public provision going forward. So, I'm happy to check those postcodes. You're very lucky that Councillor Wheeler is not here today, because he's living in the Far East of Wiltshire, he's always been harping on about the broadband and not being brilliantly there. Right, so I've got Councillor Bowden, and then you've got your hand up, Tony? No? Okay, so Councillor Bowden for a second. So, picking up on the Chairman's comment, so you're saying that by this time next year, we will have a report from UWE Bristol on connectivity across Wiltshire, and that will inform future work. But I should have thought that you would probably have some ideas, some notion that if all the plans that are in place are fulfilled, how big will the problem be this time next year? Can you share that with us, even if it's not definitive at this point in time, and give us some idea of how big a task will still remain for those parts of the county that aren't covered? Absolutely, so Project Gigabit, which is the current program operating, aims to deliver 85% gigabit level connectivity across the UK. So, what is the challenges understanding? Well, if it's that level across the UK, what does that mean in terms of delivery and Wiltshire? And until we've got the North Wiltshire contract in place, we won't know the scale of houses that are undelivered under the two contracts. So, there is still more work to do this year in terms of understanding that problem, because it's about the number of premises that make it through into that contract, the number of premises that might seek through vouchers. So, it is a constantly moving picture in terms of the scale of the problem. What we do is report, you'll see in the table, through Think Labs, what is our overall level of connectivity? And so, what we can tell is, from that level of connectivity, with the planned investment going in, where does that raise us to, and what is the remaining gap? What the UE report is doing is less about the infrastructure, because the infrastructure is centrally government controlled at this time. It's more about the additional technologies, the additional requirements. So, things like, you know, a lot of people talk about digital by default, cashless banking, all of those considerations. It's making sure that we're planning for those as we're implementing broadband, because what we found is that where we're implementing projects, people can get quite concerned about what that means they're going to lose. And that's obviously not what we're doing. So, we just need to make sure that we've got that support network around and we're thinking about this holistically. If we've delivered gigabit capable broadband, how do we support people to take that up? Do they want to take it up? What does that look like? So, apologies. The UE work is less about where the infrastructure goes and more about what does this mean for businesses? Is it sufficient? What does this mean that people can achieve? So, it's slightly more academic. But in terms of understanding the scale of the problem, there is a monthly report that goes to think broadbands that we monitor, and then we put against our plans, but we are aware there will still be not spots after that the build has taken place. The builds are quite long, I should say, they are five-year builds. It may help. I had the contractor come along to one of my villages to start, who apparently tops the list because of ease of connectivity for the cabling coming in from somewhere in Dorset, I gather. Quite how that works, but apparently it does. So, for the southern area, they do have a plan. I have asked them to share it. I've said they need to share it with councils so we can explain to communities, at least in the south, when this is coming, because everyone's asking the question. I'm afraid they haven't done that yet. I don't know if we can chase it up, but it would really help if we have that list so we can tell people,You're this year, you're next year, you're the year after.It's about who's on the list, and also, who's not on the list, and having really interrogated this, and I got in trouble with my crash council for being a bit too detailed, there are going to be small pockets of houses that are likely to not be on the list, and they've got a really granular map and they're trying to add the ones they've missed to it. So, I think we're all going to have a job to do as councillors in our own areas, certainly in the south, where this is coming, and as government gets the contract for the north, I think the same will apply. Absolutely, so the operational plan for the south is due to be submitted and approved by September, so we're hoping to see it around that time. What I should say is that individual premises being connected is often due to the landowner, often, you know, there are landowner concerns required, so what we can't say for certain is which premises are definitely going to get it. What we can say is which postcodes are eligible, that's publicly information, the rest is, there's a lot of commercial levels of sensitivity, but it is also, I mean, we were talking earlier, one way leave gets denied because a landowner doesn't approve it, that may impact the build. So it's a constant process of understanding the moving picture, but what we are committed to doing is to continuing to do that work, and to make sure that we have that sense of who's left at the end of the builds. Okay, thank you for that answer. Okay, so Jackson. Thanks, Chair. I have one comment and one question. The comment is about the work of Graham Huxter, who has taken a particular interest in some of our more isolated communities, and I thank him publicly for taking that interest. My question is about the shortfall. Is there any possibility or have we explored the possibility of any shortfall or any gaps being made up by satellite. So, there have been projects in Wiltshire that have taken a non standard approach to broadband infrastructure, and there was one in the chalk Valley, there was one up in Hamilton, about five, six years ago. So they have looked at things like satellite and different ways of accessing that signal. We deliver the public funded program, which is the infrastructure build. When we get to the end of that program, when we have the remaining properties left, I think it's a question then about what the technologies are that can address them. The build is five years. I couldn't even begin to speculate what technology will look like in five years in terms of delivery. I'm a local government officer and not, I don't know, Tesla, but actually what we are trying to do is make sure that we are aware of a, the scale of the problem, the properties that are remaining, and be what are the opportunities to support them. So currently, if an individual property was eligible for subsidy, but not, which means available support, but not included in the main contracts, they could apply for voucher. And that is the kind of standard answer is you get a voucher, and then you pay that towards the cost of a provider connecting you to the network. So currently there's a lot of support available for physical build. And I think we will have to exhaust that support before we look at more creative solutions. But I also believe that currently we don't really understand the scale of the problem partially because the North Wilcher contract, but partially because of the discrepancies in the build, not discrepancies. The dependencies of the build. Arish, you were going to come in on that one. I was just going to say that the first PD UK contract was let on. So it was technology neutral tender, and it was, it was so science at the time, proved that hard hard wiring or hard. So it was a hard work, a hard work, a hard work, a hard work, a hard work, a hard work and a hard work, a hard work, a hard work, a hard work, a hard work, a hard work, a hard work. Okay, I've canceled the waters. You and your hand up, didn't you? Obviously, the perspective of the council, the questions I'm asked are in a rural area is, when am I going to get my, my fiber? Is there any, any way I can help them? Is there any? Thank you. So any inquiries like that, please do pass to broadband@wilcher.gov.uk, which is managed by Graham, as Council Jackson said, and he will provide a detailed answer for that community. Effectively, tell us the addresses. We check the postcode. We tell you whether or not there's a private build coming, whether or not there's a public build coming or whether it's still to be determined. And then from there, we can extrapolate a timescale. If it is South Wilcher, the build starts in September and is five years. If it's North Wilcher, it's expected to be a five year build, but the contract hasn't been met yet. So it's, I think those are the broad timescales, obviously not as short and as sharp as we'd like, but that's the kind of operational requirement. I should mention that there is something called a universal service obligation. It's not part of this program, but it is effectively a level of broadband that customers are entitled to. It is not particularly high to mega megabits per second compared to 1000 megabits per second we're talking about currently. But that is an avenue that people can inquire about if they are really struggling. Ian. Yeah, very quick one for me and going back to you mentioned the conversation we had just before the meeting and I'm lucky enough to live in an area that does have gigabit broadband I've had it for about a year now and as I work from home it's excellent. One of my neighbours, a couple of streets over is obviously in an area that is covered. They are unable to receive it because one of their neighbours has objected to the cable coming to the pole in their garden. And this particular resident is saying that they are now the only resident in the area who cannot get the gigabit broadband. I would imagine therefore that you know they wouldn't be entitled to subsidies or things like that. So in an area that should be able to get it. So what powers are there to you know if we have residents in this situation, who through no fault of the company and no fault of the resident they cannot get this broadband what what can be done to provide it to them. So the powers to enforce a constant policy discussion and they are limited, but I'll look into that one and come back to you because it may be the case that is there a different build that might be more expensive. Do we understand what that cost would be those are the sorts of questions that we need to answer. So if you could send me the details, I will look into that one and see what can be done. Okay, there's no more hands up which is good. Right. Okay. So we will one note notes the update to to note the future delivery plans across Wiltshire and three will reserve receive an update in 12 months time. So if you're all in favor of that, all I've shown. Okay, I'm happy we're done. We've come a long ways and smoke signals and drums. I think I think people just don't appreciate the fact that in the 60s 70s you had to tell about my four digits on it and we've come a heck of a long way. I think we still want more good right forward work plan 12 17 to 26. Anybody's got any queries but we have added I've added one on to the very end of that work plan which is, are there any questions on the work plan. No, well then on that the draft resolution is that the committee approves a forward work plan with the inclusion of a report regarding the Warminster Sports Center. What are you all having that all in favor of that. Yeah. Thank you very much. Urgent items. I don't think there are any date of the next meeting scheduled to be on the 18th of July of 2024. So I want to thank you all for attending. Thank you for your card words. Ian sorry I see you're still online. Ian McLaren you've been listening very patiently. Thank you very much for attending. Thank you Chairman. And thanks to all and I declare to me in close and thanks to the officers for attending and well done Victoria. You just a sterling job today. Thank you. [BLANK_AUDIO]
Summary
The meeting primarily focused on the election of the Chairman and Vice Chairman for the Environment Select Committee, updates on various council initiatives, and a discussion on the Warminster Sports Center improvements. The meeting also covered updates on the town's program, broadband provision, and the community infrastructure levy (CIL).
Election of Chairman and Vice Chairman
Councillor Joe Conkler was elected as the Chairman for the Environment Select Committee for the year 2024-2025. Councillor Derek Walters was elected as the Vice Chairman.
Warminster Sports Center Improvements
Mr. Blye raised concerns about the business case for the Warminster Sports Center improvements. He questioned the reliability of the latent demand figures used to justify the £1.5 million investment. The committee decided to scrutinize this decision further and include it in their forward work plan.
Towns Program Update
Victoria Maloney provided an update on the town's program, highlighting several key initiatives:
- Vibrant Wiltshire Scheme: 29 businesses have been supported, and 54% of the funding has been spent. The program will pause over the summer.
- Energy Support for Existing Businesses: This program is in procurement and aims to provide practical advice and grants to reduce energy costs.
- Master Planning Work: Ongoing in Salisbury, Trowbridge, Chippenham, Westbury, and Devizes.
- Activity Generation Grants: Continued support for town councils to hold events and activities.
- Wiltshire Mark: A provenance scheme for food and drink producers is in development.
- Explore Wiltshire and Events Wiltshire Apps: These apps aim to provide information on trails and events across Wiltshire.
Broadband Provision Update
Victoria Maloney also provided an update on broadband provision:
- GigaClear Contract: A £19 million contract to provide gigabit-capable broadband to 14,500 properties in South Wiltshire.
- North Wiltshire Procurement: Ongoing, with further announcements expected this year.
- Project Gigabit Vouchers: Currently paused in Wiltshire due to ongoing procurement activities.
- Shared Rural Services Network: Discussions with suppliers to maximize mobile coverage in rural areas.
- UE Report: A project with the University of the West of England to understand connectivity needs in Wiltshire, expected to report in April next year.
Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Update
Nick Murray provided an update on the CIL:
- Decision-Making Process: The current process is seen as not fit for purpose and requires a more dynamic approach.
- Allocations: A need for real-time analysis of available funds and demands.
- Devolution to Towns and Parishes: Reviewing how funds are devolved and ensuring towns and parishes are better informed about upcoming funds.
Forward Work Plan
The committee approved the forward work plan with the inclusion of a report regarding the Warminster Sports Center.
Next Meeting
The next meeting is scheduled for July 18, 2024.
Attendees
Documents
- Agenda frontsheet Tuesday 04-Jun-2024 10.30 Environment Select Committee agenda
- Task-Groups-Update4June2024
- FINAL-ESC-FWP-2024
- Public reports pack Tuesday 04-Jun-2024 10.30 Environment Select Committee reports pack
- Standard Scrutiny Questions
- ESC Report - Update on Broadband Provision in Wiltshire VM Final v2
- Agenda Supplement 1 - Reports for Agenda Items 9 and 10 Tuesday 04-Jun-2024 10.30 Environment Sele agenda
- ESC Report Wiltshire Towns Programme_June_24