Transcript

Good afternoon and welcome to the meeting. I am Councillor Tina Mannering, Chair of Employment, Business and Investments Group New County. I will be assisted today by my Vice Chair Councillor William Baldwin online. As this is a multi-location meeting, we have a number of members present in the room as well as others joining remotely. In this room, if you wish to speak, please raise your hand. Remote participants, please raise your virtual hand. When called, unmute your microphone and turn it off when you have finished. The microphone for remote participants is active to enable them to hear proceedings. Therefore, please only speak when contributing, minimise all background noise and turn off mobiles. Non-committee members may be in attendance. These members are entitled to participate when invited to do so but are unable to vote. There are a number of officers in attendance including the committee officer who will be acting as the Zoom host for those members attending remotely. This meeting is being recorded and will be published as soon as possible afterwards. Zoom participants, please make a note of the meeting ID. If you experience any technical difficulties, this will allow you to rejoin by telephone. If there is a shorter German, you will be able to rejoin using the same codes. If the meeting is adjourned, you will be informed of a revised date and time and a fresh appointment will be forwarded. In the event of an alarm sounding, please evacuate as quickly as possible using the nearest safe fire exits. Please then assemble via the Guildhall reception on Cluenysaf Green. I don't think we need to introduce ourselves today as we've all met quite a few times so moving on to the agenda. The first one is apologies for absence. I have Councillor Ross Shepard, Councillor Jeremy Kent, Councillor Mark Jones. Are there any other apologies in the room? No, wonderful. Thank you. Moving on to agenda item 2, confirmation of minutes. We have page 3, page 4, page 5, page 6, page 7 and page 8 is blank. Is everybody happy with the minutes? Do I have a mover and a seconder? Wonderful. Thank you. Everybody online? Okay. Wonderful. Okay. So moving on to agenda item 3, decorations of personal interest. Councillor Galandas, have you got? Yeah. Thank you, Chair. Run a business and town centre. I might have worked closely with the VISTA app developers. It's personal and not prejudicial. Thank you, Chair. Okay. Thank you, Councillor Galandas. Has anybody else got any decorations of personal interests? No. Okay. Wonderful. Moving on then to the agenda item 4, the work programme of hand you over to Craig. Thank you, Chair. Just run through the work programme for committee to consider. 4.2 updates you on the changes that were made to your work programme at last time. The committee sat in March. 4.3 outlines the fact that the April meeting was due to be a site visitor around the town centre to look at various parts of destinations in the town centre and how they are all into length. Unfortunately due to a very dire weather forecast on that day, that was postponed. And it's now proposed that that take place later in the summer where hopefully we can have a bit more assurance on the weather on the day. Two further changes to the work programme are outlined at 4.4 and 4.5, 4.4 in respect of the civic leadership group item. There's been consultation with the Chair of that group and it suggested that that report comes to you at the next meeting in June. 4.5 references the change in the destination management plan to be considered the October meeting so as to include the latest in data. And if I can just take one more second, Chair. Just advise members that since the work programme has been compiled and dispatched that information has been sent on the teapower audit request of the last meeting to all members. And I'll take any questions on that work programme. Thank you, Chair. Can we just make sure that on the July's site visit to the aqueduct? Can we ask that we invite the destination manager whilst we are to see him in October. I'd like a verbal update for what activity is going to happen over the summer and the tourism period. I think that would work really nicely. Thank you, Chair. Okay, thank you. Anybody else got any points on mine? No? Okay. I'd be happy with those. Wonderful. Thank you. Moving on then to agenda item 5, Smart Towns. I believe member Nigel Williams, I'd like to welcome our Smart Officer David Evans and Andrew Harrodine. Leave it to you, Nigel. Yeah, thank you, Chair and Committee. Good afternoon. I'm pleased to introduce today's report to the meeting which provides further updates on the Smart Towns initiative in Rexham, which is now run 18 months old. As you'll be aware from previous reports, the Smart Towns project came about as part of the council's placement and activity, which in itself was informed by the town centre task and finish process overseen by this committee. In the last 18 months, progress has been maintained on the centre of pilots, which as you will see from the presentation are having an impact on choices and decisions taken by businesses and the council. Key relations have been deployed, so developed with mobile phone operators following the feedback received through the city of culture application process. This is resulted in Rexham leading the way the first open access agreement in Wales, allowing council street lighting to be used to host small cell technology to boost the signals. Furthermore, data gathered by the Smart City Development Officer and shared with the mobile networks has now resulted in significant upgrades to six mobile phone masks, which has increased capacity for users. I had the pleasure in March to speak at the opening of the Rexham's first ever Smart Towns conference in Wales, with over 100 delegates attending from all over the UK to learn and share from each other. The event was arranged by Mentor Mon, was held in Rexham in Teapau as the result of the progress and profile work that has been undertaken here. I would like to thank the chair for also attending the conference and various other committee members who were able to come also. The conference highlighted how Rexham are leading the way and embracing Smart Town technology. Rexham's visitor app has also been launched in the first 18 months since it went live as attracted over 80 businesses, which are now promoting their offer. The app has already been downloaded over 3,300 times, making it the largest visitor app in Wales and will continue to grow from here. I would encourage anyone that hasn't downloaded it yet to do so and keep spreading the word. Trails have also been uploaded onto the app representing points of interest within the urban villages and the rural areas, which is as a direct result of feedback received again from this committee. Although the Smart Town's project was initiated to support placemaking, it was clear from day one that there will be other benefits and considerations going forward. The work undertaken in Rexham to date has been of interest to the Welsh Government, which has made some £70,000 available to the council to run further pilots, the look at potential service improvements and cost savings. This value of support is much appreciated and now we'll assist the whole council in going forward. Before I post it over to the officer, I'd just like to take this opportunity to thank the chair for her time in role over the last two years and wish her well as a new position as Deputy Mayor and also to Councillor Bethel Blackmore, who sits on the committee, will be taken over as Lady Mayor escalated on this month as well. So I'll now hand over to Dave Evans, the Smart Councils City Officer, who will take you through the presentation that we put together for you. Thank you. Good afternoon. So I'd just like to take the opportunity really to kind of share with you the journey that we've been on so far and the outcomes really of what data has achieved for Rexham, some of the next line I'm doing. So one of the first things we're putting was a digital screen at the library, very large, if you noticed it. The reason for this really was from data that I've gathered, it's more likely 60%, more likely people would see a large digital screen rather than a poster in a window. So it was about getting information and sharing events, et cetera, out there. Feedback from the library was really positive. Two weeks after we put an advert on the screen, they actually told me to take you down. I said, well, why would you do that for? And she said, well, we're at capacity, we haven't got any more books to go around. We haven't been at capacity for seven years. So that's kind of proofing the pudding really of what a large screen can do. We set up the lower one infrastructure, so four gateways, we're now sitting on six, and these can hold thousands of sensors. So we've got the infrastructure in the city center and it's starting to grow further out as well. The sensors that we've been installed, the footfall, traffic counting, air quality, moisture and parking sensors, obviously the dashboard that I've brought to you before. We've got some examples later on. The first open access agreement in Wales, which is a bigger achievement, really. As Nigel's kindly said, it's kind of when the council says, you know, we're open for business, we need your help mobile network operators. You know, planning takes a long time to put mass in place and improve infrastructure. You know, it's close to people's heart, mobile phone signal. So when we can use our assets, i.e. street lighting, buildings, et cetera, you know, the mobile network operators are more encouraged really to approach recs and help us with improved mobile signal. Built a relationship with BT, I'm now working with O2. The relationship with BT, we shared some survey on your voice online and we just gathered five simple questions from our residents of, you know, what mobile network you want, location, time and what it's usually having with your network. We got all collated all that data. We shared it with BT, who have run EE. From that data, they've gone back to the networking team and they've actually upgraded six masks in Rexxham, which I'll describe to you in more detail as we go along. I was invited to guest speaker at Tech Week Wales. So that was a big tech week down in South Wales, again, recognition of Rexxham, where we've come on the journey through smart towns, making data-driven decision-making. I was invited down there to do a presentation for about an hour in front of about 300 people and it's really put Rexxham on the map as well as of a forward-thinking council of where we can use technology to improve the economy, to make better services better. So, yeah, it's a bit of a really good new story. The Rexxham app, so we launched the visitor app on St David's Day and the reason why we kind of chose the visitor platform was, you know what, I've spoken to many app developer throughout the UK, but these guys in South Wales are really, really focused on the town centre thriving. It's not about the tech, it's about the place more than anything. They spent six weeks up here going around businesses, talking to businesses, and even after the app launched, they're up here every two weeks now for the next six months and they come up once a month for the next two years. So it's still an ongoing platform which is developing. So hopefully that will drive some extra footfall into the city of Rexxham. And then the safest streets project, so the smart benches will come onto that in a while. When I was going around looking at footfall centres in some of the nighttime economy businesses, some of the feedback was some vulnerable females were wanting to go into the premises courts who were 11 at night to charge their mobile phones. So you know it was quite evident that an issue with taxis is not enough taxi services to provide, you know, between the hours of 12 o'clock and 2 a.m. And I went back and I thought, well what technology could support that? And we thought about the smart benches where you could charge your mobile phone up because I thought if I was an 18-year-old daughter in the middle of Rexxham, that by itself, a friend of left there, that mobile phone is kind of a lifeline. Rather than going into a pub by itself, you know, there's facilities in the street that could support that. So we got some extra funding from the safest streets project and that was to extend the CCTV cameras as well at PlusCork, much needed, talking to the CCTV team, you know, marketing expenses, big retail outlet, it now moved up to that part of the city. So, you know, extra security measures were needed. So, I'll just go through. So, check. Could I just check that members on the screen are seeing the slides advance? I know I've had some issues in the past where we've all been seeing it live here, but it hasn't quite been translating. I just wanted to double check. Thank you. Yes. Yes, we are seeing it. Thank you. Okay, thank you. So, the library screen, I take it. You've all seen it. Hopefully, I have. And again, you know, we've had more and more content coming through now. There's more people wanting to get adverts on their focused whales, their steadfast, the library, the events team, the police have asked to post National Women's Day. You know, it's just going from, you know, just going from, well, it's just growing all the time. Next slide, Andrew. So, the census that we put in, again, you know, this is not new to you. So, this part of the dashboard was the moisture sensors in the city center. We installed these in spring last year. And over the summer period, you know, the feedback from the street scene supervisor was fantastic. You know, with the council, I've had to make cuts. You know, he said he's had to lose a couple of guys from the city center team. But when this is on, this is on a foot, on an app on his phone, and he could actually see what flower beds need watering. One, it saves time on filling up a big tank of water, so they don't have to go water all the flower beds in the city center. And plus it saves time on council resources as well. It's just a smarter way of understanding how to water flowers and give them the optimum growth, I suppose, in the city center. Next slide, Andrew. Again, just moving on that there's another snippet of the dashboard. So, on the left hand side, you can see the actual, the temperature of the soil and on the right hand side would be the moisture levels. So, again, you know, the street scene officers can actually see this data on a mobile app, which helps them understand which flower beds need watering throughout the summer. The car parking, so the car parking sensors, we'll go on to it later on in the presentation, but the success, the output from this really, we just had 20 sensors across five car parks, four car parks, sorry, measuring the dwell time of certain bays, a mixture of disabled bays and non-disabled bays, just to understand the behavior of certain parts of the car park. Some of the data we got back was quite astonishing. I want to go to the next slide, Andrew. So, you can see there, so the red line is when actually a car drives into it, and there's the time on the right hand side, and when it becomes green, that's when it becomes available, that's when the time is left. And, you know, certain car parks, there was cars parking for 18, 24 hours a day, it highlights a problem to enforcement, say, you know, are we getting value for money, but also, you know, it elaborates really that. Visitors coming in to wreck some can't really park, you know, for a certain amount of time, or they're not able to have that accessibility. Next slide, Andrew. So, thoughtful counters, so that's just an example. We've placed some thoughtful counters in some businesses. We've tried to choose a couple of businesses, so cafes, some nighttime economy, some shops, similar kind of offer really, just to see how they compare with one another. This also, you know, it helps, right, if we, the council, run an event in wreck sum, or there's a big event coming into wreck sum, we can see how it impacts one business compared to another business. From that, we know kind of what works in wreck sum, what doesn't kind of work in wreck sum. So, again, the feedback from some of the business owners has been really, really positive. Next slide, Andrew. The air quality, these are quite basic air quality sensors. We've put one by St. George's Crescent, and the other one in King Street, just to gain really about air quality and CO2 levels. The King Street one was obviously of interest as buses go in and out all day, so it's just a deterring how traffic really affects the air quality in that area. These sensors are very real, they're about 120 pounds. Again, battery operated, so we can move them at locations all around wreck sum, and it just gives us that kind of data that we're interested in. Next slide. What's that for? That's an example with football and air quality. So, these are kind of putting some of the cafes. Again, we put CO2 sensor in some of the cafes. Again, coming out of the COVID pandemic, some of the elderly people were quite hesitant to go into large public spaces because they're still kind of close to their hearts. So, the sensors that we put in, they've got a little digital screen with a smiley face or sad face, and that was just to kind of support the business owner really to promote when you come in here, the air quality is really good. And again, some business owners have really welcomed it, other business owners have not really made a difference to those really. Next one. This is another sensor that we've got. This is a pilot for the public protection team. So, it's a little bit more expensive sensor, but we've put it on near within role by the guys in within role that we've got an air quality unit there. It's quite a large unit. It costs hundreds of thousands of pounds, I think it belongs to Deafra. But the sensor that we bought was to kind of monitor the same sort of particulates, PM1, PM2, PM10, CO2 as well. So, it's just to really to trial it to see how it works compared to a more expensive device. Next one. The traffic counting. And again, you know, this is nothing new to you. It's just interesting to see what times on the peaks throughout the day, the traffic's coming in to wrecks them. So, you know, it helps make decisions in the environment team. If they want to make road closures, if there's, you know, planning applications going in, you know, we can see the number of cars coming down that road at any one time. I think this one is at the, the, the high-town one yet. So, you can also determine the types of vehicle. So, because it works from radar, it measures the length of the vehicle as it's going past. So, we can determine if it's a two-wheeler or a motorcycle, a car or a HGV or a bus. So, again, you know, that data over a period of time, you know, we can, we can build a bigger picture really. Next one. The other one in High Street. It's the same sensor, but we managed to configure it to speed. And as you can see on the, on the bottom right of that, of that presentation, you know, this car is traveling down high school. We're traveling down High Street at speed. Again, we give police access to this dashboard. So, you know, they, they can have the data to see when, when there's a problem of speed, again, to enforce safety, especially in, in the nighttime economy. This is a quite a new sensor. Actually, I've got one here. It's for you. It's a lookout. Tina, you were at the event. So, some of it? Yeah. So, so this is it. It's a simple unit. It costs about a hundred pounds. We've, we've put them in, in three premises now in Reksum. Cafes is one in the well-being hub. And that's just to gather kind of information feedback really. So, customer satisfaction in the cafes. Again, the business owner have got access to this. So, again, they can see peak times or times throughout the day. If they're giving great service or they're not giving great service for the well-being hub, they're using it for a different kind of measure. So, every event, see if they have a dementia event on there, they can get feedback and say, how did you think the event went? And it's just a dead, simple way of gathering. It was like a simple way of a survey, really, in gathering information. Again, the car parking, I believe the leads of the council have seen some of the data from the car parking, which is, which is great, because we know, we know that evidence has been considered into the car parking strategy. And that was something I got off reksum.com, those parking for 18 hours a day. And I suppose we wouldn't have had, we wouldn't have known that if those car parking sensors were in the car parks to begin with. As Nigel explained before, so the power of data. So, this slide is showing, so that's really the capacity of the EE network. So, as you can see, up to October, it was running at 75% throughout reksum. When I shared the data from your voice platform and handed it over to BT, which obviously got EE involved, you can see a reduction there. So, it's now running at about 40%. And the kind of, the proof and the pudding, I suppose, that the BT guys came up to reksum. I walked, and how this journey started was that the record shopping in Teapal, on the entrance, I witnessed there 18, well, about 15 months ago, taking a car payment. And the lady in there had to fizzly walk out into the street to take a car payment, because obviously that car payment machine links to a mobile phone. And I thought, you know, this day and age, that shouldn't be happening. When the BT guys came up, the first thing I did, I said, I'd like to go to Teapal, and they did a download speed test, and it was full 5G. So, you know, it shows that they've done their bit on their network. There is some more work to do with the old 2s, the 3s. And, you know, I'll continue to work to improve the mobile connectivity throughout reksum. Freshwave, again, we spoke about that. So, that was Freshwave's post on their socials. So, welcome to reksum, open access. We're excited to have the signed, first ever open access agreement in Wales. So, again, it just shows reksum at the 4th point. We're trying to improve digital connectivity. We're reaching out to, you know, the private sector, and trying to get one step closer to the city of culture bid. The visitor app, like I said, you've probably seen all those around reksum. We kind of flooded the city centre for about a month with those on lampposts and banners around flu and stuff, social media, etc. There's still a lot of work to do. We've got the platform in place. When I went down to Cardigan many months ago, that was kind of considered as a smart town in Wales. We've passed them now. The technology in Cardigan kick-started something. So, it's not about the tech or the centres or even the app. But what it did, it got the businesses working together. And all the businesses who have the app, they're really there in a really good position to try and promote the app. So, they're not promoting themselves, but they're promoting reksum as a place. You know, one person in the council, you know, I can't guarantee you 50,000 downloads. But when you've got 200 businesses doing the same thing, we're going to get there sooner rather than later. So, there's a lot of educating to do. There's a lot of engagement to continue. Obviously, the girls from the visitor app, the team, they come up here every fortnight and we'll continue to work with the businesses to gain that momentum. I just liked it. This is a little short video that Mentemon did on the warm-up to the smart town conference. But it does highlight some of the businesses and what the data was actually given those businesses. Of course, what you need is a smart officer that can make the sound work. So, if you just bear with me for a second, I'm just going to come out of this one and play it through my web browser because that might be the better way of doing it. Apologies. [ Pause ] [ Pause ] We even did a dress rehearsal earlier on our computers in the office to make sure this worked. I'll let Dave finish the presentation and we'll come back if that's okay to her, sorry. [ Pause ] Raxson's leading the charge with smart town at the North Wales. So, we're here on Dib Go Bawi to speak to some businesses and people in Raxson to see Raxson's leading the charge with smart town at the North Wales. So, we're here on Dib Go Bawi to speak to some businesses and people in Raxson to see how they're benefiting from the technology. [ Pause ] We have the two sensors actually. We've got the one sensor from the air, another sensor. We've got to be caught in the door. [ Pause ] [ Pause ] We had a football counter-installed kind of just a 10, but kind of last year. And what that kind of data allows us to do is kind of map our quiet periods. Lots of organizations use tests who maybe citizens have kind of additional learning needs or maybe complex health issues as being kind of instrumental really to their kind of delivery of the services that they provide. We've purchased some football counters which will enable us to better monitor the football that comes into centre and around and to figure out exactly what they're doing across the here. Screening South went up in August last year. A bit of a success story. We had a poster in the window and we put that same poster on the screen. Two weeks later, the library ran me up and said, Can you take our advert down? And I said, Well, why would you do that for us? Because we're at capacity. We haven't been with capacity for seven years. We haven't got the poster going around. So that kind of shows you that that bright screen can gather people's attraction and make a difference. [Music] Thank you. The next few slides is just what's come of the event really. So business use whales, going touch, and they want to do a podcast around smart towns. So there's just a slide from the podcast. Next slide, Angie. I think one of these actually made the news in Hong Kong. So the BNN, which is the Hong Kong news outlet, posted a news article about Rex and being the first smart towns in Wales. So it shows you how far we've reached really. Some of these are just the social media that went out on about the smart towns conference. Next slide, Angie. Again, there I am, my ugly mug down the bottom. I have full data shapes, smart towns. Next slide, Angie. Again, just some smart, some more social media articles around Rex. So it's gathered quite a bit of attention really. Next slide, Angie. Next slide. Fit the feedback from the conference was really positive. So you can see on there we are there from the feedback that they gathered. The welcome to smart Rexum was gathered the most positive feedback. So you know there's a lot of ideas sharing, a lot of councils from Wales came up looking at what we've done around car parking, the flower beds, the four senses, the penny dropped. This is a really good idea. I did do it a tour of the city afterwards, after the conference, just to highlight where the senses were, any technical questions that the councils wanted to ask me. Next slide, Angie. Yeah, so there's some comments. So that Dave is great, which is a nice comment to have. Next slide. So what's next? So again I explained talking to some of the landlords and the businesses on the night time economy around the mobile phones. A solar powered bench which you can sit on and you can charge your mobile, it'll give you a 10 minute charge for emergencies and that the funding was got from the Safer Streets project to fund this. I kind of handed it over to another regeneration officers in charge of the high street development. I think the plan is that they're going to be installed in high street when it's been redeveloped. And again it's something that Chester hasn't got or Austria hasn't got and will be kind of unique really, but supporting safety in the night time economy. Digital signage. So there's two on the way, one in high street, one in large street by the bus station. This signage will be touchscreen and it will have the visitor app running on it. So again, businesses who haven't got a mobile phone, they can come walking down the street to screen it and have a look at all the businesses that are on the app, looking at promotions, menus, that kind of stuff. So again you know it's supporting them local businesses digitally. So from the conference, Welsh Government, the Chief Digital Officer from Welsh Government was there, very complimentary. And I knew from the start that this floor of one technology has more uses rather than just city centres. And with the council, you know we have got changes to meet budgets and to ensure our residents don't have extra increases in council tax. So where technology can play a part of making efficiencies or cost savings, Welsh Government have kindly donated some funding for us to run some pilots. So the education, we've chosen a primary school, we're looking at air quality and energy usage. And really the cool thing about this, the headmaster of the primary school has formed a small eco group of primary school children who are actually going to drive the project forward. So that will be absolutely fantastic. You know it'll help teach the children about energy usage in the future and it'll promote, they'll be more assertive and they'll learn better with better air quality around them. The housing team, again we've chosen a council office looking at energy, you know electricity, it's a massive cost this day and age. And you know we anticipate we could save quite a considerable amount of money. From different authorities using this kind of technology, it's anywhere between 20 and 40 percent. But I'm not going to put that on the record, we're just going to try and do our best to save some money here. And the environment team, again using some sensors, looking at pollutants from bin lorries, flood monitoring around Rexham, especially down in the back of St Giles's church there. And again, we've got the infrastructure in place, the sensors are relatively cheap and we've got the funding for these. So they're the kind of the next three projects in the council that we're working on really to make some efficiencies. Next slide. And that's it. Thank you very much for the presentation. Thank you David for your wonderful presentation there and I'd like to congratulate you on the work that you're doing before I open the floor to the committee. So we have several members that want to speak. Well Michael, Councillor DAVIS first and then Councillor GLANDERS and then Councillor DAVIS. Thank you Chair. Thank you for that report, very interesting. Just got a couple points for the questions, observations, whatever. First in the garden, film masters, I mean we've discussed in the past that the reception was very poor, especially around about the football ground and it's nice to hear the extra master going up. But I'm aware that within the stadium itself it's a very poor film signal and you're looking potentially in the future 15,000 people that match could well be a family emergency, somebody cannot be contacted. And we thought we may be approaching the football club to allow them to perhaps put some repeats or maths on the new stand. I mean it would also help with their comfort facilities and just another one, so we'll give you both together. We got in car packs, being monitored, et cetera, with counters. Some while ago we had signs brought by the car packs showing where the vacancies were. I don't know if I missed any announcements as to what was happening but they've not been working for quite a long time. Is that something that could be linked in? I'm just wondering about the reason why they don't work. Thank you. Yeah so the first question, I believe, EE and O2 have approached the football stadium. So they have a different stadium set up. They're specifically designed for football stadiums, much as united liberal charities have all got them to improve mobile signal and Wi-Fi. I think they're in discussions with the football club now to improve that. So I'll keep you updated about hear anything. The car park senses, again when I was looked at the car park since I wanted to kind of future-proof. So the senses that are in the ground now, if we were to proceed on a larger scale and have sensors in every car park in space, that could be linked up to a car parking app. So if you're a visitor coming to Rexham you can see how many spaces there are in each car park and I believe that could also link to the car parking boards to highlight how many spaces are in each car park. So that is possible but it's something that we need to discuss probably with the environment team and the manager of the car parks really, how they want to progress with that. Okay yeah he wants to come back Mike. Thanks for that. Do we actually know why the car park signs aren't working at the moment? They haven't been for quite some years and it's wondering you know they're obviously there, they're useful and I've not seen them working for quite a long time. Yeah apologies I think before my time I'm 18 months in the counter. I don't think I've never seen them working so I don't have that answer for you sorry. Thanks. Can I just remind members please that we give one question and a answer and then one question and answer just to be fair to the officers to give them time to answer. Thank you Councillor Bambas. Thank you Chair and more than happy to proceed like that. I'm sure the officer was just nervous but I do need to just make one comment regarding the small benches. As a licensee and a member of the licensing committee all license premises have a duty of care over anyone needing to on their own use their electric to charge their phones. I'm sure it was just a floating slip but safety of our residents is priority regardless of if there's a bench there or not and licensees should be welcoming and making sure that young women especially have the ability to charge their phone or directed to a taxi rank within the local area so that I just wanted to put that on record chair because obviously if that got picked up I think that's a little bit of an issue for us. Another declaration I am a board member of the Rexha Musical Theatre Society a member reached out to the smart officer to ask if our events could be included on the large screen outside the library. Chair a fantastic response from the officer and it was up within I'm going to say the same day if not within hours and just for feedback for the committee that helped boost attendance to our first event and our second event has seen a boost in ticket sales so the screen absolutely does work and I think it's a great addition to that area. Question the Loruan census I've been told they don't pick up Apple devices is that correct? Yeah the Loruan is yeah it doesn't pick up mobile phones at all I think. Are you referring to the Muraki systems? Yeah would you like me to elaborate on that? So yeah so we had given us eight units the Cisco Muraki MR83s and the purpose was to have some thoughtful analytics because they could detect mobile phones. We installed them as of most councils in Wales but on our journey we've kind of highlighted to Apple I've updated their privacy settings as of Android and I think they do tend to clash so we are looking at more accurate data then the census ready to give us that to more accurate data to be shared with you. Thank you the question following that would have been how can we rely on the data if we're not picking up but I'm pleased to hear that work is ongoing to rectify that issue. Interesting to hear that t-parab still has wi-fi issues especially over card payments surely the wi-fi and t-parab should be state-of-the-art but that's more a comment about the facilities there than the work you're doing. Vista obviously I am a town center business I am on the app I love how the report calls it the rexamap which I think is a far better name than vista because quite frankly he knows what vista is. On on 4.12 it's been downloaded 3 354 times now that appears to be quite a good number but it's only had 6 000 hits so meaning each person has only really looked at it twice. Have we had any feedback as to how many hits the app should be getting off that many downloads? That's first one but just a second one relating to that. Do we know how many of those are domestic and how many are tourists because obviously a large element of the app is tourism and large element is domestic for shoppers so be interested to know what percentage domestic versus tourist is and we had any feedback from many customers actually using the app themselves. Obviously I've given feedback to the app developers on it's a bit laggy it's a bit slow some things don't link up right but they're working on those. I was just wondering if there was any actual customer feedback that we could get thank you. Yeah on your first point I don't know the answer to if they've got the data from tourism to to you know shoppers or anything. I will ask the question if you can select and come back to you on that one. I have had some customer feedback around the app and again I explained it's you know it's an ongoing development so one customer came and said well if I go to a restaurant I like to see menus on there that's that's what I go on Google to see if I like the food and so I've shared that with them and they said within three months they'll publish all the menus on the site so it's we kind of welcome feedback from businesses and customers and I think the app developers want to work with us to get what we actually want so yeah you know it's it's working progress I'd say. Andrew just to come in on a few of those those points just to hopefully add add something and again I think the whole spirit of this is one of trying different things and trying to find the optimum and we're not necessarily going to find the optimum straight away in a month certainly in terms of the lifetime of the app so all of the feedback whether it be positive whether it be slightly challenging is really welcomed and I think that's your point or your final point around that feedback that conversation as Dave said none of this although some of this technology is really groundbreaking is really exciting fundamentally it comes down to behaviors it comes down to communication it comes down to a culture of looking to try and do things differently so so some of these these technology systems that we've we've been offered we've we've picked up we've we've been able to use at no cost to the council like like the moraki system it has served the purpose it's moved us forward it's given us data it's about then it's not necessarily the panacea of data but it's another layer of data particularly what what the moraki system is good at it's just trends I think we've always spoken when it comes to footfall about the difference between knowing exactly how many people are in the city center at any one time versus the seasonal or daily trends that that actually impact your decision making as a business or as a as a service provider what we are now able to do with the different systems and the dashboard bringing those all together is to start to see how that data plays against each other one of the significant developments that Dave hasn't mentioned that came out of the the conference the the event on earlier in March was the fact that we've now got a trial access to the BT analytic system which they they gave a demonstration of in the in the event we haven't had it long enough to be able to show it to you today it literally we are just in terms of the permissions and the log on and the access but what we are also doing at the moment is just benchmarking that data which is based on mobile phones against the springboard data that you've been used to getting and we just literally did a graph this morning just to be able to go it's not far off at all in terms of understanding that both the track the patterns of of seasonal temporal you know day-to-day week-to-week patterns of people versus then the the data that we've been having for for for years and years and years through that system so we're still having to I'm going to say play that makes it sound cheap but we're still playing with this data to understand what what the message is that we can give out what what adds value to another there's no single data point there's of any use to anybody it's about having a couple of different points to work against so so even some of these these evolution and some of this this technology will evolve really quickly we have to move on you know to catch up with that but I think everything has genuinely served a purpose in terms of cementing what it is we want what are the questions that we need to answer and you know if it doesn't try it we're not going to throw money at something it doesn't work we move on and as I say a lot of this is being done you know at no council money that this is all grant or or donation or just that relationship with the mobile phone operators you know to pay for those upgrades that's because of data not because of council spending any money on on the situation so so I think I just wanted to get across it's this cultural shift around how we work together how we talk to each other how we listen to everybody and then use the technology to try and piece that together and to provide some some real clarity and some real impact going forward one of the things and I won't go on much longer one of the things around this BT data and again with it's proof of concept but you know this is really high level stuff it does start to split between it as you turn it domestic and tourism you know it gives us destinations because every mobile phone is different in terms of where it's come from and obviously you know it's all assured in terms of data protection and and you know GDPR but but we discussed in previous meetings that your phone is always pinging your phone is always looking for for something and that can then give us a lot of insight and a lot of depth in understanding so and one of the things we're going to try and do and I'm going to set myself up here when we come back with the destination management report one of the things that steam doesn't tell us is where people international visitors are coming from but some of this data might be able to infill that albeit only for a city centre being a perspective at the moment so it's how we use it all together as well as trying to come back council commanders yeah thank you for that and that'll probably come into a recommendation just go and quickly back to the vista wrap obviously we've had a flurry with the first month of activity with promotion and all the advertising boards that were out around the city centre obviously they've now come down because obviously they've just come down so can you just let us know how we're planning on to promote the app in the next few months ahead of the touch screens coming live because obviously the touch screens will give us the next boost so in the next two three months how are we going to promote as a council that we've got a vista wrap thanks yeah yeah for me so there's two elements there really um we're asking the businesses to to promote it because they're in the best place to do it and also social media and you know um discussions with the the team that's uh the visitor um around social media advertising and marketing uh to promote that so uh they're the two channels that we're really kind of working on okay Nigel did you want to come in on that one dear thank you Jen it's the first point that um counter glenders mentioned really about the the smart benches just like to just you know pick a few things up really um obviously night safe which is you know the uh uh we're all the nighttime economy you know managers and you know they'll sit on much if you remember yourself but um let me regularly I try to go to them when I can and I yes I do know that they would be very willing to assist in vulnerable people um but we're trying to promote us a safe uh a night to McCombs as you can um we all know there's a shortage of taxis so if some of the you know male or female um uh had left a bar and then they made it one to go back in we found out the phone near the gun tour the nearest taxi rank is two hours for his taxi they made it one to go back into it into a bar and then have to bother them so it's just making things as easy as it can ready for people to be able to um charge the phones up just for five minutes to phone home to your mum or dad keep on picking up please because it's two hours for taxi so I've fully taken board with you saying about the nighttime economy businesses yes and I do agree that they're just trying to make it easier for everybody to build to access this sort of fmd needs to charge the phone five minutes it makes it as easy as possible to be honest and they're all going to be in one area where it's it's going to be well lit it's going to be by the plans of them on there's three benches coming where the old buttons show me age now it is now that's the area where it's going to be so it's going to be well lit and CCTV coverage on the areas so that's the plan Dave did you want to come back in yeah apologies if you've misunderstood me before you know the feedback from the the landlords and the homeowners you know I don't say that shadow of doubt they've got a duty of care but my thoughts with what can the local authority do to support public safety and that you know my mobile phone is at a lifeline to someone would they want to be walking into a crowded bar to charge my mobile up probably not you know if I could just sit outside in a quiet space and do it there but I'd prefer personally I prefer to do that so I'm positive if you misunderstood me and okay Andy if it's not on that do you mind if I move on to another councilor and come back no I was just going to absolutely thank the the comments there and absolutely we are we are a safe city so that does make sense but I just wanted to make sure that if I ever got picked up by press that we were absolutely stamping on that maximum nighttime economy is as safe as it can be thank you I think my favorite saying is together we're stronger thanks for dana Davis and I'll come back to you again Andy if you've got more questions thank you chair and I've got six questions but they power from the first one I think they're pretty brief to be honest and so we're 18 months down the road now aren't we so I'm just going to the dashboard data and at what point do officers think that we're going to be in a position whereby we're going to be able to do year on year comparison and around you know the air quality seal too and because I'm looking at this from the point of view of and you know there's an opportunity here for proactive actions to offset all and to capture carbon and we're looking you know there's been various reports going to executive board about e-bikes tree planting and the data from these sensors and everything and I have a real positive impact on where we locate those you know the tree planting or where we locate and encourage the use of e-bikes and because if because the offset has to be in the vicinity of the pollution source or it does nothing does it to mitigate that pollution so at what points are we going to be able to look at these dashboards from the point of view of identifying events that have happened in the town center where there's an influx of people and I'll use you know the the bus tour from the promotion last year a lot of people in the town center a lot of people traveling into the town center and as well as school holidays as well as and you know your seasonal shopping and everything else so that's my first question chair and then after that they do they have a lot for you for sorry so we're probably a couple of months away from being able to start a genuine year on year just because there's been a a staggered implementation of some of the the devices and some of the units so some have been up now for about a year others are lagging a little bit behind just because we've we've bought them more recently or we've installed another Laura 1 network I think irrespective of having sort of high quality year on year data I think what we're trying to do now and I think Dave's you know again another key piece of work now is is the support from the Welsh government to actually take this into the wider council you know I've we discussed this all the time in in the office around and and you know Dave's the start of the presentation is this came into place really to support placemaking as a regeneration activity it was about visitor experience in the city center of the town center as it was at the time and how we could widen that to some of our sites and the wider county borough you know as an aspiration in time the opportunities because I remember that first meeting in this chamber where as soon as we started talking about it we immediately started jumping towards what we could have a car parking app and we could we could do this in this department and we're not responsible for for other departments but what Dave is doing now is is influencing those other departments and and what he hasn't really mentioned in detail is that that 70,000 pounds from from Welsh government is now being split up so each chief officer within the council will have an allocation of that money to to trial something that's important to them in their area of work so again it's that cultural shift it's that opportunity to do things and look at things in a different way and it might be then that we start creating new data again which will take another 12 months before we can get that data set but it's that shift of doing something differently and using the evidence to inform that I completely agree about those offsetting decisions you know we do and we are encouraging you know for example of our SPF projects where where one of the key outputs is is football you know we're encouraging different projects different partners different applicants to to invest in football equipment themselves because it might be that you know we've got this strange dynamic in the city centre where as if you have an event in the early evening a lot of people have gone home and a lot of people then come back in is it is it a net gain or is it a different group of people so actually measuring things on a very local level you know as in through and it's our green can we use these systems and deploy these these devices specifically for an event so we can be really clear on the impact that's being had in an area so so I think it's all up to that evolution but I think for me that the data is now starting to flow we do provide that to to the businesses that are part of the pilot both either through the the portal and the dashboard or through a targeted newsletter with their own data it's now replicating that through the council and now we've got that buy-in of SLT to to work with Dave on a departmental on a service level basis then this is where it really starts to to bed in as a as a wider transformative program thank you um yes um I think that might be a recommendation as well for our next report might not so that we can see that um and see this evolving but also as well use it to make informed decisions going forward and my second question is about the mobile charging benches and obviously I'm really interested in the response with regards to vulnerable users that can be used in these and and the lead member gave a assurance that they'd be um you know fully let and also within location of current CCTV coverage and I'm looking for a commitment here because obviously if we as a scrutiny of recommending um or supporting for want of a better word those mobile charging benches would also support in that there will be a mitigation of risk around our vulnerable residents and CCTV at the moment is under a massive discussion with community councils because they are responsible for the payments of all CCTV cameras in the town center on my rexam county so if lead member and officers are um are telling us that the risk will be minimized because they'll be under CCTV coverage um how can we as a scrutiny committee gain that commitment from rexam council uh when my understanding is that the cost of the future running of CCTV cameras are the responsibility of community councils so will we be looking at community councils and do not have the budget to continue paying for those CCTV cameras our rexam council then looking to pay for those and keep them in that location to keep our residents safe thank you chair that's my second question thank you for your question um obviously I don't want you to leave and see with this um CCTV cameras aren't under my remit or under the um believe member uh Mark Pritchard um as we couldn't least stand where the benches are planned to go that is coverage of the moment that's only comment I can give you the moment um it's saying the same as we could give the commitment of you be safe in particular area and then the camera wasn't working with some period of time we can never give that commitment um fully but as a stand to the moment where the plans are where they are due to go but the area is lit and there's coverage of the moment that's when we come in and I can give you the moment to show you down right thank you for that I think we need to possibly consider then on the back of that and so recommendation back to executive board because I think our priority as councilors number one is is obviously that our decisions um support the safety of our residents especially are most vulnerable um my third question is regarding the um the app the visitor app councilor dana Davis just a second councilor niger Williams would like to come back on that one minute yeah thank you dana um when I said the comments of been well attended your CCTV camera that's nothing to do with smart times as a way really plus you're saying at the current plan at the moment we're putting something in which isn't there at the moment so we're making a commitment to try and make things safer for people um for for residents um we can give the commitment that you know a light wouldn't go out this over it or a CCTV camera wouldn't be working at a particular time what I'm saying is the areas of the currently stand at the moment where they're going to go there is coverage in that area and it's well littered that's only commitment I can give them sorry um I think we're already making strides where most times and cities across the country don't have these type of benches so we are trying to promote a safe and light time economy so I think we're leading the way across the country with that there's not many other places trying to overdo it um so I think we are leading with that so I just think it's a bit unfair to say that you know we have to make sure the cameras over there all the time otherwise we shouldn't put them in as well yeah if I can come back I never said that what I said was that obviously you know if we're looking at this provision to support our residents then we've highlighted here that potentially there could be a risk based on a future decision of executive board so there is a a consideration of the scrutiny committee to hold the executive to account and potentially make a recommendation they're right back to executive to help you with future decision making that's that's all I'm saying I'm not having a goal because I think the you know the provision the technology is really good but we do have to consider what the risks are with that and if we see that there's a potential risk to residents we can we can consider that as part of our recommendations and potentially make a recommendation um direct to to executive board that's that's all I'm saying and that is the role of the scrutiny committee isn't it in holding the executive to account so I hope that clarifies there um and I'm not I'm not saying that we shouldn't encourage that technology at all I'm saying we need to address the um to mitigate a potential risk um because that decision for CCTV coverage is a community council decision that's all I'm saying Nigel um so I'll just move on to my third question with regards to the visitor app um and the um download that we've had on it I think you know when the report it gives us to the the actual figure um but it's around 3 3 300 um I understand it's in its infancy and I'm just a bit concerned here that those that have downloaded it and experienced glitches um but those people have switched off and that's why they're not using it because in all fairness I've downloaded it and I don't even get pictures I just get three screens and it's not just um you know quite quite slow it's trying to get all the information that's in there so um where the um where the lead member and the officer said um it's a work in progress um that's great but I think going forward can I just ask if any upgrades to that app we need to keep residents and visitors informed so they continue to um look at it and and and use it um and it's just a commitment from that point of view I think we've got a responsibility here to communicate with the public and visitors on upgrades to that app and I think that when you go into the app it asks you about um receiving notifications so I think it could be done through a notification type of um and if you can speak to the app developers to see if that can be um if that can be part of the notifications to those 3 300 um users that have downloaded it is that a possibility chair and kit yeah it's a it's a valid comment um Council Davis um I will take it back to the app developers uh feed your comments back in and um yeah I'll give you an update and do a course. Brilliant. Sorry Chair. Yeah my next question. I think just to just to come back on on the point that I think as Dave mentioned in his presentation just not to lose sight of that the decision to go with the particular app was that we didn't end up with an app and no support um because as Dave said there are lots of people who will develop you an app pass it over to you and then it's kind of good luck with that um which then ties up officers and obviously we need the right expertise that the package that we we've supported again through grant funding um gives us the the immediate access to the VISTA team as as Dave said they come up on a regular basis and they're only too happy to listen to all of this so again I think it's it's that constant communication I think the the idea on the notifications is is really helpful um I think also just to give you some insight in terms of we need to take this now in terms of certainly in the area that I work in our destination management plan which will come to you you know one of the things that we talk about a lot there is tour operators we need to get ahead of those tour arrivals um so that this becomes part of the literature it becomes part of the booking processor becomes part of the information that's available to people who are booking their holidays from all sorts of destinations across the world when I went you know on my summer holiday a couple of years ago I was looking for an app to to tell me what to do this is this is the way of doing things but you do that before you arrive and and so it is it's about using the rest of the team it's about using the rest of the contacts and the specialist officers in terms of destination management um visit Wales you know making sure that this app as well as being marketed and having that continued support from the businesses that have have very willingly and helpfully bought into it without buying into it because you don't have to um but actually push that again into the channels where people will see it the most when we have the events the tour of Britain um you know the women's tour coming through we need to get ahead of it so that that app is part of your toolkit for coming and enjoying rexom um you know over that period of time so yeah there's still some more work to do there but again I think we could go a thousand miles an hour and miss some of this important feedback um I think to have the strongest launching Wales I think the other thing with this app as well is that you when you join the app you've got access to all the other towns that are part of that app family as well so for somebody touring around Wales it offers that little bit more and it also means that people who are in the other parts of Wales um can see what's going on in rexom it might just trigger or might might go and visit that at a later date so it does give us an awareness um those are just the figures for people in rexom downloading the rexom bit there's obviously that visibility through the other people that are signed up in triarchy and other places like that thank you um my other question is um about the law one and the link to mobile phones um is there something to do with privacy settings because my concern here is um you know people are switched on now about privacy settings um because obviously they carry their bank and everything on their mobile phone don't they their lives on their mobile phone and all miners um so from that point of view is is the um data clutch and being affected by um privacy settings with jobs and what your mitigation for that because obviously um you know the name of the game here is to collect the data so that you can use that to improve provision and decisions in rexom so um i'm just trying to get into the the technology here a bit to understand um you know what that link is with um with mobile phones thank you yeah so as i described before that the the moraki devices that we've got do pick up your Wi-Fi ping um it is enc scrambled 75 000 times in the moraki unit before the data goes over the air um to the servers um over the last two years apple and android have made significant upgrades to the privacy settings um so what what moraki is saying is they're not able to pick up all mobile phones because they kind of bouncing off each other but the data is absolutely safe it's scrambled 75 000 times so it knows it's a mobile phone so it will pick up your your Mac address but then it's scrambled 75 000 times so by the time it leaves that device we we don't know who or who it is we just know it's a mobile phone but because the two mobile servers android and apple have done them upgrades it's the kind of they're not detecting all mobiles only a percentage of them just on the supplementary for that then before i ask my final question please um ask more um providers mobile phone providers um or manufacturers um you know upgrade safety features on their phone and at what point then does this technology become potentially obsolete what what have we got our end where we can you know where we can expand and get ahead of that because obviously you know the the most valuable commodity in today's society is data isn't it and so you know from that point the the people that we're working with and what's there you know how have we talked sustainability here with them i think if if i may just going back the couple of years because again the the sisco moraki predates dave and the smart city offers a role and it was a project that that we received a box of devices for our use that had already been pre-screened from from dpi a we did our own work on that we understood those those issues and it was it was a freebie opportunity to try something in rectum i think the reality now is we've we've got the use of that information we've got different use because it does pick up hot spot i you know information does it tell us everybody that's in the city center at a given time no but none of the other systems do that exist either um because as you say you have to have a mobile phone in the first place whether or not it's set up in a certain way just as you have to pass a beam in a certain shop or in a certain street to register on another system so again it was trying to get as many different layers some of those layers will prove to be less helpful going forward than they were and and obviously the advances in privacy are really really important and and that that should carry on and that should be the the default position if those devices don't give us quite what they did give us we've now been able to have enough time to understand the value of that data and there are other ways of getting it and you know the the option now with this bt system and again i know you're supposed to say other other versions are available but there aren't at the moment this is quite set for leading stuff there is a significant cost to that which we need to then understand is that value for money so so the cisco has given us an insight into the type of data that can come in that way is it the end solution no it doesn't need to be again it was all within this pilot system it hasn't cost us anything to go through that learning process and now we can form our thoughts i think the deployments of sensors on a on a more local basis on a more meaningful targeted basis around particular events particular days particular seasons particular promotions to see that that when when a business or a council does something there is a response rather than just understanding how many people there were here today for for no real benefit other than just having that number i think that's the subtlety and i think the layers of different device and different communication will allow us to to get to the bottom of that and be more precise agree great thank you my final question is can you tell me more about the flood management mitigation through this technology place because i'm really interested in that yeah so a lot lower one what the beauty of it is is that the work of radio waves like your old tv signal so they just transmit very small parts of data over radio signals so from the gateway you've got basically about 10 kilometers it's a conference around the gateway you can place sensors and 95% of these sensors are battery operated a flood monitoring sensor it probably costs about 200 pound so that you know it's relatively cheap when you think about you know expensive bits a kit that probably the council have purchased before i'm quite conscious we need to pilot these sensors so you know if a council pay say 10 15 000 pound for a flood monitoring sensor and we purchase one for 200 pound we've got to make sure it does the right thing or it does the same thing so you know when we say pilots we're just introducing these sensors alongside other sensors to make sure they we get with they do the same thing and if they do the same thing then we can say you know we can do it a different way and a more cost effective route great thank you for that um yeah well that work in rural areas because you know with all due respect the issues where we get flooding is normally you know outside of the town center so i'm just wondering whether there's a network there that the sensors you know can talk to them and different things to feed the information back whether it's a county wide um pilot rather than a town center pilot and i know what we're talking about you know this is linked to placemaker um but there was there was some questions around placemaker wasn't it about expanding the good work out since the wider county borough yeah so some good news on that uh council davis so ambition north whales um they're looking to fund well on a regional basis the rollout of lower-end gateways and so that would mean rex and would have a hundred percent coverage and and that means the world's your oyster basically you can have a sensor in clean carrier you can grab on overton better field etc etc um i don't know when that i know that it's going through the channels in ambition north whales and but there's nothing stopping us doing a rural project um if the environment team wanted to pursue on that like andrew kind of mentioned before we've got some money it's going to be allocated to each chief officer it's down to them really and to see what pilots did they wanted to uh to run um but yeah you know it's it's possible at this moment as we speak great thank you can i put my names on flow up and i'll go down here please um there um i'll just go on to my observations now so just answer davis can i just ask if cancer gland is on any more questions before you do because i asked him to um cesis questions so that we could take yours counselor blanders did you have some questions left yeah thank you thank you for your time the beauty about being a smart town is twitter works um and i've just gone on to rex.com where they're politely following uh today's meeting um and there's an interesting comment from i'm guessing an american um who says was able to find out local news articles from about team of scoes which talks about downloading vista rap from google play and selecting rexum but it shows nowhere on play in the states i think rexum counselors would want international fans access it can we double check that all international platforms um do this out please and chair i have recommendations once once we're good to go thank you chair um yes absolutely i think that was my point around using the destination management function to to reach out and i think this is where you know so davis is bringing this technology forward and piloting and understanding it and working with providers it's other people's responsibility to then enact on that and and push that as far as we can go as well it's not singularly down to dave i think they just want to clarify uh you know davis point around the flood sensors we as regen wouldn't be managing the flood sensors that would be for the environment department to to work with us through the pilot on um yes we we're focusing we might we might deploy them in the city center from a place making point of view um but you know this is now about setting this project a little bit more loose throughout the other departments and then the environment your department or whoever it might be can can choose where to deploy them i think the important thing there is the infrastructure is there the laura one network as dave said each each network pub covers 10 kilometers you know so we've already got quite a decent coverage across which is still a very huge county borough and there's more to do we will from my point of view where we can and i think this this comes back to previous meetings that we've had around city center versus the urban villages and the rural areas a lot of this is still determined by the source of funding and where it allows us to spend that money not an intention or a lack of intent to support the whole county borough and the communities across that county borough so the the ability for emission northwells to support what what's going on here opens the door because the current funding that we can access doesn't necessarily allow us to do that but opening that up to the rest of the council might be able to open up to different funding streams that we wouldn't normally be able to access from a regeneration point of view because it's actually looking at safety or or some other service some of the function that that makes that that worthwhile and then my final point and this is with complete respect the nighttime economy and the the really important conversations that's been had about about safety these benches are also going to work during the day they are a utility um as much as they are a safety device and an enhancement to safety and i just didn't want people to lose sight of that we've been talking about using street columns to to host devices that improve mobile phone signals we've been talking about also the fact that you can now have integrated um mobile phone signal or Wi-Fi through your your street lights there's no real difference in my mind that in terms of equipping a bench to do a little bit more than just being something that you sit on and i think you're for visitors coming in during the day your mobile phones likely to run out during the day these days as well so i think there is just a utility value to looking at how we can use street furniture to to give people another angle another service another another sense of security whether that be a safety security or just a a confidence that you can get your phone out and it will work because if you traveled here you'd have been able to charge it on the train so why not be able to continue charging it during the day whilst you're here so again not not in any way to conflate that the safety angle and the importance of that but again these will these will work 24 hours a day and will help people throughout the day as well and it's it's more about that can we do more with that that street furniture can it be more useful can it be more functional and can it improve the experience and the enjoyment that people have of the place okay before we move on to observations and recommendations neither you want to come in yeah thank you just to sum up for myself really um and reiterate what Dan Drew and David have already said um obviously there's only one dave and all that was funny for you to agree to that as well um David was brought on board primarily to look at um the city center and place making um obviously since then it's um it's grown um and the sort of remit that he has um would be lucky enough to gain this is 70,000 pound from Welsh government and again I do thank them because they've been um very supportive of rexom um with uh out explorations of the smart towns and what it can lead to. Dave's been to um lead members on SLT um the presentations to look to them but at the end of the day I look at this as a as a pick and mix really all these different centers we had we're trialling them everywhere it's then down to the individual departments if they want to progress and take them forward it's not necessarily down to the economy department but that's nothing else stress really so then the centers if the environment wish to take them up for centers and bins or um social services education it's then down to then to that gray is the area but slightly for me but um there's only there's only one day of the audience but himself so thin that's a lot I'll just say really he does do a fantastic job. Do you want to come back Dave? Just some closing comments really um you know I thoroughly enjoy my work in rexom and council um I see myself very driven um and this this morning now we're for the local authority I can I can really see it being transformational um you know we know as an authority we've got some challenges financially uh it's not about the technology it's about the data that we receive and how you know my journey really now is is influencing and educating people um just not not just businesses but in the authority itself of of looking at use cases around the UK you know we see north county council have saved 50% on reduction of diesel costs because of the use sensors you know another council use sensors on light light one post and i'm saved two million pound a year on energy costs so we know it works but it's it's the people behind it that make it work that's the difference um so I just you know I just need a little bit more time and the support and you know I will keep banging that drum and hopefully this will grow not just from the city center but county borough as well thank you Dave and you've certainly got the committee's back in um councilor dana davis i'll bring you in and then i'll bring councilor glanders with his recommendation please thank you chair um yeah it's just to pick up on a couple of points and you know the driver is the economy isn't it because one of the reasons for the recommendations in the report on 3.1 is to improve visitor experience and improve services and there's obviously you know where it goes across um where the cross cuts across the departments is um the element of making efficiencies today to take operations and sharing the information with decision makers so um yeah it's just it's just to clarify that this this technology um whilst there is data collection to make better informed decisions there's obviously that visitor experience that's really really important so I want to come back to the point about the app store um and it's a free app to download but obviously raksam is a global um visitor destination at the moment so it's not just about usa and being able to download and and our Canadian friends that the common visitor is quite regular um on the way to the the caras um but it's also as well our Asian tourist industry and everything so it's just getting an understanding of is this just on the UK um app store at the moment and not accessible globally yet and if that's the case and I understand it's only being in operation since the first of marriage and we haven't understanding as to when that will be released globally um my next question is on the data set and the the dashboard data and the office have confirmed with a couple of months away from being able to to do the comparisons on that data and we agree totally on you know the events and and things like that um you know so that we can be proactive in advance of the events um when when are we looking to release this data publicly or are we limited with the um provider that we use in that it's there you know we're going to do to ownership here that way is their data and therefore you know we can access it but we can't share it type of thing and if you can give me some information around that and then my other um I I want to go back to 3.1 of the reporters because I think potentially we're missing the trick here because we've talked about um you know offsetting carbon and carbon and carbon um uh capture sorry I couldn't think of the word then in that recommendation 3.1 the reason for the recommendations it just says about improving visitor experience improving service making efficiencies to day-to-day operations and the sharing of information with decision-makers shouldn't we widen the scope to include um decarbonization and our net zero return and just so that we can widen the grant funding um opportunities to be honest um because um and also as well for consideration under our council plan priorities because decarbonization is in our council plan and I'm just trying to think ahead here that we've all we're all aware that our non statutory services are going to come under a huge amount of pressure with um the pressures that's on budgets over the next few years so if we can widen the scope to include that decab net zero agenda then you know there's potential sustainability in the work that we've heard today and taking it forward isn't it because this this is all being grant funded you know with public services being in the state that there are there's nothing to say that you know over the next few months that um current funding avenue might dry up um so that was um that was a another question um and just to let you know chair the video didn't play for us online um it kept we kept hearing a bit and then it kept disappearing um and and freezing for us so just to let the public know if they have that experience as well because I don't know how it links into our public area webcasting um that on page 30 of the report there's actually a link there under appendix one for the video so i've downloaded that and i'll have a look at it after thank you chair apologies down i didn't know about the difficulties with the um the video um i'm sorry um we should have picked that up sooner but um i will put that out for the rest of the members so thank you for that um Dave andrew who's going to take the video i mean the video was me so it's for me to apologize chair um but yeah i was going to pick that up before the end of the meeting so thank you to council davis for for doing so it's it's hosted on on the youtube channel it's it's easily accessible to somebody that knows what they're doing um just in terms of the points um that uh just came up there in terms of the app store i'm guessing that was going to be one of council sorry um i'm guessing it was going to be one of council of galanda's comments or recommendations we will come back to you um outside of the meeting with an update on the app store situation uh and get an understanding from where it is currently where it could be you know in the future and how quickly we can get there because again completely except it needs to be available to the range of different visitor sources um that that wrecks and benefits from and attracts in terms of the dashboard and the public sharing i think we are sharing the information with with stakeholders who are engaged in the project i.e they host sensors or they they provide data to us in other ways so it is starting to evolve into the public we were looking at whether we can host and start releasing some of that data through the app so you know certainly in terms of for how busy is it today you know things that would affect your decisions as to whether you're coming to visit or when you're coming to visit so we we do intend i think as as a principle to make this as publicly accessible as possible um but again in terms of hosting and maintaining the the data on a day-to-day basis there are obviously resource implications that we just need to look at so we're sort of partway through the the first stages of that journey and in terms of the the recommendation i think we're just trying to be really careful here that we don't set the agenda for the decision makers and other chief officers um we we know that this stuff has the potential Dave's really keen on that he's made that point a number of times i think from our point of view the recommendation is for this committee to make about where it goes next um but obviously with the change in efficiency board there is a real opportunity with the buy-in and again just to stress that you know the the real buy-in from SLT across the entire council to to look at how these these approaches can support the council as a whole yes a lot of this will come back to economy but that's not to say that we should be determining what the the director of social services does within a social services setting we can just provide the the evidence and the information and the the potential support to getting to that decision so i don't think it would be fair to us to have a report back on that per se um but yeah certainly within that recommendation that i think the benefits are there to be seen and and channeling that through and and taking us forward from here it probably is with that that corporate backing uh with the support that we've had from Welsh government and and private sources we're probably at that point where this could you know widen out quite quite comfortably Dave did you want to come back yeah and just want one note to come back to council Davis so that the projects two of the big projects now in the in the council are reducing energy i've notified the carbon reduction manager in the authority where i attended in the primary school and the council office so i anticipate we'll be working closely with her in the near future okay thank you Dave um councilor dan Davis did you want to wrap up your observations with recommendations before i bring in Andy's recommendations yeah of them it's a craig that's there with you all Dave um i've noted three um i i think but i'll rely on the scrutiny the help of the scrutiny coordinator as well and so the the first one was um a recommendation to executive board just to highlight um that um the the um mobile charging ventures if executive board would support future and uh future mitigation um with regards to the cctv if they take that into consideration with regards to future decisions um the next one was the dashboard data if on the next report that comes to committee we can have um a year on year so we we've been up and running now for about two years haven't we so if we can have more comparable data and if that's events against events or um you know school holidays against school holidays or whatever that may be just some some comparison that we can see how how we will see that and brought forward in future reports to support that informed decision making and then also as well um if executive board would consider um widening the the scope to include um this work being linked to the decarbonization agenda and because obviously that needs to be a um consideration as part of the change management work with this being a non statutory function um those were the three I had remind me if I've missed anything because um my notes are all scribbled on and I've circled things and I've got too many circles now on my piece of paper sorry okay no I don't think so Donna I'll just fetching Councillor Glanders thank you Chair I would support those recommendations so happy to do that um my recommendations for consideration are that the committee thanks the smart officer for his dedication and involving passion for technology that the committee supports driven data activities to improve rexom and that this data is shared with all SLTs a review of the vista app is conducted and brought back to the committee as part of October's meeting the review to look at the effectiveness of the vista app promotional activities customer usage app stores internationally and the domestic versus tourist data information on that thank you Chair okay I think that's a thorough debate that we've had today and um I just want to see if Craig wants to run through those to make sure we've got what you wanted in capturing apologies John I missed you on screen I'm so sorry John sorry that was an error on my part sorry I wasn't going to put you down to name that's the wrong button sorry so you're okay John yeah Chair just a couple of points with regards to the recommendations uh can't please see me online thank you just briefly uh just just going through the proposed recommendations I've ever built this aspect of clarification off comes to Galander's first the October report that you reference you want the effectiveness of the vista app app stores availability customer users and customer usage to be part of the destination matter from planned report just double check in that okay that would be included the recommendation of Councillor DAVIS with regards to the executive board uh regard to CCTV I think it's a bit difficult because I think as far as I'm aware there's nothing a regressive board at the moment with regards to CCTV coverage so we make the recommendation then unless you you think like me so so that recommendation possibly would be along the lines of recommend that any change to any change proposed to the provision of CCTV coverage consider mitigation safety mitigation saw that uh it includes coverage of you know the uh smart benches yes it's just a clarify and make executive board aware that if community councils refuse to fund it the town center CCTV then um it's the you know the mitigation that we've heard today executive board needed to consider that because my understanding is that once the CCTV information um around funding comes back into the council then it's important for the decision to make so it's it's considering this as part of that overall decision on who is going to fund town center CCTV going forward does that help Craig yes just bear with me a second please thank you uh but with regard to number three of councilor Davis except executive board why can work to to include the carbonation agenda and it was reference would be part of the change board I think again I'm not aware of any issues going to the board at the present time but I think you can't make a recommendation directly into the change board so you could recommend that the change board consider the work in this area that might benefit decarbonisation I wanted to let you back to the council plan because in the council plan one of our priorities is decarbonisation but because we're not mentioning decarbonisation as part of the um consideration of this report then we're not opening it up to um priority um as a non statutory um provision but also as well we potentially restrict in the grant funding opportunity so it's the link back to the council plan I was looking for so that we could prioritise um and consider and the change management board then and consider this work as part of that council plan priority does that help yes see what I would possibly suggest there then is that recommendation go to change management from board and the decarbonisation board because obviously decarbonisation uh and then that report will go from the decarbonisation working group into executive board at the next report warns that fabulous thank you great so so there's all reference in chief nothing sorry about this it's my fault Craig not yours I'll try and run through yeah okay so recommendation warm we recommend that if there's any change in CCT beat provision in the city centre coverage at the smart bench is by the service be considered number two dashboard on year on year date to be presented in the next update report sorry is it just possible from a um practical perspective I wouldn't want to have a recommendation that's explicitly year for year and then not be able to bring you year for year because I said there's a range of some data that will and won't be is okay to sort of just make it an appropriate comparator or or something of that line just so I singularly said that she said yeah school holidays or should pick a certain yeah just if it's explicit it'll be a yes no answer if it's gives me a little bit of flexibility to introduce something appropriate even if it's two months ago that might be the only data point we've got for a particular part of it okay dashboard year on year date to be presented available with appropriate comparators okay that's number two number three is the one that I've just gone through recommendation to change board and decarbonisation board consider benefits of this work in respect of decarbonisation as a means of generating additional resources Rick can I just ask on recommendation one that there's a reference to executive board there Rick sorry can I repeat that yeah just on recommendation one that there's a reference to the executive board with regard to future decision of CCTV I think that was the only thing that was messed out other than that I'm happy with all three words and thank you thank you I'll then go on to the points made by comes to the Galanders you know thank the smart officer for his work in this area and uh is can't refuse to add any zeal I can't remember what medication okay thank you and the other part was the point I think we've already put the effectiveness of the vista app app stores availability app availability customer users and customer usage together be included in the destination management plan report in October great sorry if you just got the um the one about um that the committee supports data-driven activities to improve RACCEM and the data is shared with SLT okay so the committee supports data-driven activities in RACCEM and the support presentation of this data to RACCEM okay uh all members happy with the recommendation this is not clarity wasn't the app store sorry about the global app store it's the we wanted information about the global app store wasn't it yeah I I I referenced app store availability so I take it that'll be that will cover where on you know whatever version of Google or Apple no that's great thank you it just saved depicting one doesn't it covers all there's everybody happy with that show hands wonderful thank you everybody for today I'd like to close the meeting now thank the officers for the time thank you Andy just before you close this meeting can we just all thank you for your dedication over the last few years on this committee and wish you well with your duties of deputy maris and for me personally it's been a wonderful first two years on this committee so thank you thank you thanks thank you everybody can we close the meeting [BLANK_AUDIO]