Transcript

This meeting has been live streamed and recorded for subsequent broadcast on the Council's website in accordance with the webcast and protocol detailed in the Council's constitution. Please start the webcast. Kreussaar, welcome all to this multi-location meeting of the Environmental Scrutiny Committee. Please can everyone ensure that their mobile phones are switched off or set to silent for the duration of the meeting. For those attending remotely, please only use your press the talk button when you wish to contribute to the meeting, but please wait until I call on you to speak. When the press the talk button is read, your microphone is live. Once you've finished speaking, push the press the talk button to deactivate your microphone. Please do not use the chat facility. The hands up button is only to be used for a point of order or a point of personal explanation. Can I also remind all attendees, please do not start speaking until your microphone or press the talk button is showing a consistent red light. Members are also reminded that since the 3rd of June 2024, we are in a pre-election period. Although ordinary Council business is continuing, it is possible that even business as usual may become increasingly politicized. Scrutiny by its nature is apolitical and it is essential that this continues during the pre-election period. Guidance has been circulated to all members and officers and this must be applied during this meeting to ensure that questions are factual and that any opinions or discussions are not used to influence public support for a candidate or political party. Agenda item 1, appointment of chair and committee memberships. I'm really pleased to advise that Council at its meeting on 25th May 2024 appointed me as chair of this committee. I'm also pleased that Council at the same meeting appointed you as members of this committee. I'd like to welcome Councillors Carr and Waldron to the committee and thank Councillors Jones and Wood for their contributions and participation to this committee. I'd like to put on record a particular thanks to Councillor Jones for his commitment to this committee for seven years and two of those as chair. Councillor Jones managed and guided the committee through some really important work and I wish him all the best in his future endeavours. Onto agenda item 2, terms of reference. This committee's terms of reference can be found on page 1 of the committee papers and I ask that members familiarise themselves with these to ensure that our scrutiny stays within these terms. Apologies. Apologies have been received today from Councillor Derbyshire and also from Gareth Stevens from Cardiff Best who has sent us written evidence. Councillors Carr, Green, Gibson and Parry are joining us remotely. Item 4 on the agenda is declarations of interest of members. I advise members that they have a responsibility in accordance with part 3 of the members code of conduct within the Council's constitution to notify at the start of the meeting in general terms whether they have an interest in any of the items on today's agenda. A declaration form must be completed for all declared interests. Do we have any declarations of interest? Any in the room? Any online? Okay, thank you. Agenda item 5, minutes. I seek agreement that the minutes of 9th of May are approved as a correct record. Yeah, thank you. Okay and on to the substantive business of the day. So agenda item 6, event today, traffic management. I now welcome to the meeting Alex Corsi, Adventure Travel, Georgina Wills, Transport for Wales. Oh, I'm so sorry, Marie Daly from Transport for Wales and Amy Georgina Wills and Marie Daly from Transport for Wales, Alex Corsi, Adventure Travel. This item is to hear from transport providers about their experience of the processes involved in event day traffic management, both positives and negatives in their experiences. This item feels particularly pertinent given that this week and next week we've got some of the biggest artists around the world coming to Cardiff and we've got a full summer of events. So really looking forward to hear about your experiences. Brilliant, so should we start with Transport for Wales, Marie and Georgina? So I think we've been asked just to provide an update today on what's gone well and what could be, what we could do better in terms of our role in events. So firstly, thank you for giving TFW and myself the opportunity to come and talk to you around the work that we've done and then the work that we're focusing on over the next couple of months. So we are really proud to be part of the transport network that delivers events in the Cardiff City region. We know how important it is for Cardiff and for our customers, connecting people to fun is just as important as connecting them to work. So we really take that role on and we understand our role that we play in it. So there's probably five points that I wanted to call out in terms of the work that we've done to date. So you will be well aware that we are starting to see our new fleet come onto the network. So we've invested £800 million in our new fleet and 50% is now being delivered across our network. Now, that's vital for us to be able to deliver events to offer more capacity. And actually, as more of that fleet come online, we will see that increased capacity, particularly in the South Wales metro area, which is really important for us to be able to deliver for events and have that extra capacity. In terms of our partnership working, we're really, really lucky to work with all the venues and in particular, Principality and Cardiff City Stadium and have really good relationships around understanding their needs and how we work with them. Our relationship with Cardiff Council, as noted last year's committee, is really goes from strength to strength. And we're really lucky that we have got that relationship because working collaboratively, we've got that collective knowledge and that's allowed us not only to deliver the events that are coming up, but look at us continually improving what we do and best practice and learn from each other. So we work within all of the different meetings referred to last time and that is working really well. So we hope that long continues. In terms of TFW, we're in a quite unique position. So we have our own events team that's been in place over the last two years, and that's quite unusual for a transport operator. But because of the size of the events, the amount of events that we do, that's really made a big difference for our ability to provide the focus that's been needed for our customers. So we've got a lot of capability in that team. They work across our partnerships to make sure that the events that are being run, we can make sure we're offering the right plan for and those plans adapted depending on all different variants for those events. We've done lots of external benchmarking. So the team have worked with different transport operators and crowd management companies to come and look at what we do. And they've given us really good suggestions, but also as a real positive for Cardiff, they've taken things away that they would want to implement across their networks as well. We have a quite unique situation in terms of how we manage events. So we do it through volunteers and a crowd management support. But our volunteers are people who work in different roles across our organisation. And why that's really important is it enables us to offer customer service from people who really understand the network, understand our customers, and are able to offer that advice to customers on the day. So in terms of our day to day operation, how that works, as I said, we work really well with our partners. We have our own commencement centre, but we also have a big event at the Principality. We'll have a member of our team sat in the commencement centre at the Principality stadium. And that enables us to be really agile on the day to the different needs that are there. We've done a lot of work around our customer information. So hopefully those of you who have travelled events will have seen the big screens. A lot of investment in wayfinding, making sure that we've got those passenger flows right. And we've also, and I know this came up as a topic last time, but we put toilets in Cardiff Central in the square too, and just really encourage people to use those toilets before they join the queues. And that's just based on feed that we've had from colleagues and customers. We've done a lot of work with our queues as well in terms of how they're managed and getting people through. So as I know it's been talked about at this committee previously, it's really important that we are able to get passengers onto platforms really safely. So that queuing is a big part of that, but we're constantly monitoring that and looking at it. That's something we have a debrief after every event and we'll look at what's working. We do trial different things. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. But that's something as part of our continuous improvement. And then in terms of increasing capacity, there's quite a few partners that we need to work to to make sure we can offer the most amount of capacity that we can. And that will be working with Network Rail, who aim at Infrastructure Wales to make sure that the infrastructure that we've got available to us at events is maximised. And we have also, I think we talked about the last committee was around being able to offer later services and strengthening services. And that's had a lot to do with the resources that we've got available to us in terms of our people. We're really delighted to say that through our collaborative working with our trade union partners that we have been able to bring Sundays in the working week. Also through working arrangements, we can now operate later, particularly on Sundays and have that flexibility. We work really hard with all parts of the TFWR fleet team to make sure that when the demand is needed that we can strengthen services, we can run services later and we can increase services as well. So they're really the key five things that we are working on to improve what we're doing. I do have some bits around what we need to continue to focus on if you want me to go to those as well. Yeah, absolutely. So the transformation plan that we've been on for the last five years is something we're all really proud of. And taking the investment that we've got to transport across Wales is really, really important to us. But that journey hasn't been without its pain point for our customers. And I get that and I would apologize to any customer who's not had the experience that they would expect to have. But what I wanted to do is provide assurance that actually the voice of the customer is really important to us. We have regular meetings that takes customer feedback in. And actually that customer voice has been a big part of some of the changes we've made that I've just talked around. So that's something we're continuously viewing and we really value getting that customer feedback. One thing to call out is the infrastructure at Cardiff. So in Cardiff Central, we have eight platforms. And what we will do is we align each of one of our queues to one of the platforms. And all it takes is a little bit of disruption and we can't move one queue. And that's when the biggest pain point comes for our customers, because in terms of being able to move passenger flows through our subways, it's one way. So actually, if one platform goes out of use for, say, we've got a broken down freight train or somebody's on the track, that can actually cause quite a big delay in the day of an event. That's where our volunteers come into their own, because we can make sure they give out ponchos, give out some sweets, keep people informed. And it's a big part of just that engagement around those situations. But that's the infrastructure of Cardiff. And I think Andrew Gregory spoke last time around Cardiff Central Enhancement Program and the work that's happening there. You know, we need to lengthen our platforms. We need to look at the subways. And working with Cardiff Central, we are putting in those requirements for events to make sure that infrastructure can offer us even more capacity. We do run events across the whole network. So sometimes there is demand for fleet to other parts of the network, and we've got to make choices in terms of where that is. So we can't always offer that capacity. So it's really hard to be able to message that sometimes to customers that we're not able to run that. And also in terms of our fleet, there will be restrictions on whether that fleet needs to go at the end of the day to make sure it can deliver the next service. But as I said, in the work that we've done, we've cross-functional task and finish group that's focused over the last two years on really delivering the maximum fleet we can at an event and offering as much capacity as we can. And we'll continue to do that. Probably just to share with you that things people don't always see. So from Cardiff Central's perspective, normally on a normal day, we would have 7,000 people going through the station at one time. If we use Pink, because that was just the other night and I was a customer to our services, we had 32,000 passengers journeys through the station before the event. We had 15,000 passenger journeys after the event, and within 90 minutes we cleared that queue, but most people were through the queue in about 45 minutes. So but having that 15,000 people come at once, it's 2024, we've delivered five major events and we've still got more to come. But of the five major events, we have seen 145,000 passengers through Cardiff Central, with the highest number being on the 16th of March for the Six Nations, where we had 38,000, our highest number of passengers after the game coming through our queuing system. It worked well, it managed well, you know, we will always have things we could do better. But it sort of gives the context of what we're sort of used to while that station is sort of used to being able to manage in terms of passengers and why the queuing is so important for us to make sure we can deliver a safe operation. So, yeah, thank you. Thank you for listening to me. Thank you so much, Marie, and thank you for picking up on a lot of the points that we actually spoke about in the first part of the session, that was really useful. Brilliant. I'll come to Alex Coursey, adventure travel. Hi. So our main interest in the city centre is obviously buses, because we operate the C1 service. That's across city service. So one of the biggest challenges to us is access points, points of access on major event days. So, for example, on the Pink concert, we only had two points of access, which was Churchill Way and Buteris. And with it being a commercial service, obviously we, to keep the service running, we're dependent on revenue. And I wish I had your kind of passenger numbers. But obviously, closing off the city centre as a whole presents great challenges to us on a commercial level. So yesterday, to take an example, the city centre, Custom House Street was closed off, which is not something which happens on every occasion. So I'm just hoping that perhaps more of a regular standard framework could be adopted so that we know in advance that when that closure comes into place, that we can plan for that accordingly. And also, it's really important for us to have as much advanced notice as possible. Obviously, we're constrained by timetables, and so we have to operate set times. So notice is a really valuable thing to us to be able to plan accordingly. Okay, thank you so much. We'll go to questions then. I will go online first, Councillor Green. Hello, lovely to see you in the chair. Congratulations on being elected. Yeah, I'm really interested about, from TFW, those passenger numbers, you know, moving quadruples, and proceed, you know, to get those people on and through and everything else, your costs must go up quite a lot. As you say, putting up barriers, putting up big screens, giving suites out to disgruntled people in queues. So, I mean, in terms of income and outgoings, what's the balance? Does it break even? Is it a loss-maker? Is it profitable? How does that work for you on these big event days? Yeah, great question. Thank you. And I'm not going to be able to give you all the numbers, but I think I can definitely give a flavour of what that looks like. So, in terms of the volunteer programme I talked about, so that we have our own people doing that, and they would do that, so that actually really helps us, but we also have crowd management support, and we need to have security, and as you say, get in all of the events set up. So, in terms of passenger numbers, in terms of revenue associated, it definitely brings us in more revenue, and we're actually doing quite a lot of work at the minute to look at how we can increase that revenue even more at events. And Georgie and the team have done a great job around doing that, because ultimately, as a not-for-profit, we are reinvesting whatever we make from the events back into the business and back into transport and the people of Wales. So, I would say that, yes, it definitely is a good revenue stream for us and more passengers we could get, but in terms of the support we need to put around that, then it doesn't make huge amounts, but it is something that we're focused on to see how we can maximise that revenue as part of our wider financial position. Have you got a supplementary, Councillor Green? Yeah, also to the TFW again, I know you talked about extra capacity, and I grew up in Port Talbot, and coming back from when the WRU started doing Friday night games for the Six Nations, and people would be up in arms, the last train was half past ten and stuff, so it's good to hear there is extra capacity. Of course, you don't run all those services, the other one is run by Great Western, but in general, what are some of the things that you hear most from customers that they'd like, but are actually quite hard to deliver? So obviously, extra service is difficult because you need the trains, you need the personnel, but what are some of the other things that customers generally ask you for, and you'd love to do, but they're quite difficult to do? Yeah, great question. I think the main thing from our customers, to be honest, when they're using our services, is that we get them home as quickly as possible, and that we're focused on getting them through the queues and to their train. But in terms of, and absolutely, around having services that are later, depending on the time of the event, so people can stay out, some people want to come straight home, some people want to stay in the city, and making sure that we've got later services is really important to them. It sounds quite small, but some of the smaller things in terms of customer feedback are, you know, like listening to the toilets in the central square, in terms of just making the queues a bit more fun, having some entertainment, that's something that we're definitely looking at. Because actually, if we can have a bit of fun afterwards, access to retail in the queues as well, so the opportunity of the bus interchange gives us some of the retail units that are there, potentially to have them open during events. So I think people just rush out of the stadium, which we're really lucky to have it on our doorstep, but then sometimes maybe just want to get a coffee for the queue and don't want to get held up. So there, they seem quite small, but actually in that queue, then that's really important to the customer. Okay, thank you. I'll go to Councillor Carr. Thank you, Chair, and congratulations again on being appointed to role. Being new to the committee, I just want to check the format. I've got two questions for TFW and one for events travel. Would you like me to start with the two for TFW? Because of time, we'll do one each, and then I'll come back to you once questions from members are over, if that's okay. Okay, I'll select the one for TFW then, which is around. Could you talk a little bit about how you protect services across the city while still trying to move large volumes of people that have come from outside Wales? What are the challenges around protecting and delivering services, for example, to places like Carleton, which is in my ward? I think I got all of that, Councillor. So it was around those individuals who are not travelling to the event. Yes, and then what do we do? So a couple of weeks before we normally get the postcode data for the event, and we've got a good sense anyway, because having run events over the time that we've run that, we are sort of aware where the demographic is for a certain event and where we're likely to see people are going to use trains. So we, and then we'll use our own passenger data to know people are likely to still travel. So we've, you know, it's not a pure science, but we absolutely still got an idea of people who will choose not to travel, and we'll see demand reduce on a big event. So we're able to look at that data and then look at where we're expecting probably normal customers. We shouldn't call them normal customers, but customers are commuters who would usually use the service. And yes, we'll add that into the overall plan to make sure we are strengthening lots of communication. So we use the press, we'll target those stations in terms of posters to say it's going to be busy. These are probably the better services. So trying to move that capacity and support people who normally need to travel to avoid the trains that are going to be really busy. So it is a lot through comms. It's a lot through understanding. We do have an accessible queue. So we're very aware of passengers who've got younger children or potentially have got accessibility needs, and that's why we have a separate queue and that's often used to support customers who would normally travel and are not part of the event as well. Okay, thanks, Councillor Carr. We'll go to Councillor Parry, if she's online. Okay, we'll leave that. Councillor Lancaster. Sorry, I put several questions peppered through the reports. I'm just trying to pick out some that have followed on from what has already been asked, but no. I'll just give a general one then, seeing as we're in a kind of Council, what specifically do you think that the Council could do better on event days? What would you like to see from us as a Councillor to help manage numbers, to improve revenue, to improve service use, that sort of thing, to improve ease of access for passengers, all these sort of things that you need to consider. What do you think specifically the Council could do better? Okay, well, we might both answer this one. So I think it was mentioned at the last Scrutiny Committee that actually our relationship with Cardiff Council over the last couple of years has been a really good relationship. It's honest. It's like any good relationship. There's negotiation to it. Where would you have a road closure? What would be better for us? What time could that road open? But I think for me, we could go into the detail of actually some of the specifics, but I think more importantly, we can have those conversations and we get to a joint and collaborative approach to do that. I suppose just picking up on one thing that came out of the committee last time was around Cardiff Queen Street. So I know we will continue to work with Cardiff Council on what that could look like in terms of that being open. For us today, we did a trial and as part of our safety management system, it didn't feel that trial could be implemented, mainly due to the ability to queue and the highways. So in terms of what roads are closed along Queen Street. But we are continuing to look at that with Cardiff Council and to understand if that's an option for us in terms of being able to meet the needs of customers, but to safely operate out of Queen Street. But actually, it's not a new ask. The council is something that they're pursuing with us and those conversations are ongoing. In terms of the ability to do that, probably when Metro comes along, we double the services through Queen Street. That's probably the best time for us to do that. But yeah, I think that would be the only ask that we would have. So I think, leading on from what my colleague has just mentioned, so we, from my perspective, and I think from our team's perspective, we have really good working relationships with Cardiff Council and the teams that operate on the day on the ground. So I think without that collaboration, the events wouldn't be as successful as they are. So linked to obviously the Cardiff Bus Interchange opening on the 30th of June, I think it's even more important that those relationships continue to develop and we keep working through any pain points we have, any risks or issues that emerge as well. So we're not naive to know that there are issues from our own size as well with passenger flows. So what we can do to support each other is really, really important. So yeah, I think we're doing our best to work through that and the collaboration is brilliant from my perspective. Have you got a supplementary question? Oh, Alex, sorry, Alex. From our point of view, it would be nice if you could keep Custom House Street open. That's one of our main points of contact with our customers. And it seems that sometimes it's open. Custom House Street, sometimes it's open and sometimes it's not open. It doesn't really seem to be any reason why it might be open on one occasion and not open on another. Because we're actually across city service, the current setup with satellites doesn't really work for us, because it results in too many delays for us to actually continue the service across the city. So I was wondering whether a hub could be set up or a satellite for cross city services. And my suggestion would be around Callahan Square, because obviously, with the Crossway Rail proposal, I mean, we diverted through Callahan Square with the pink concert. And at present, if you go to Callahan Square, there's not really a great deal of bus infrastructure in place. If you look at the stops that are there, they're pretty sort of out of date, pretty shoddy. And if you look at actually the way Callahan Square is laid out, it's actually all car dominated. There's a lot of parking there, a lot of metered parking. And I think with Crossrail, there's an opportunity to build in to that a lot of bus focused infrastructure, bus priority measures and bus stops, good quality bus stops. So that in the future, as the city develops its transport links and looks at more cross city services, you will then have the opportunity to interchange at that point. So especially on event days when everything's closed off. Councillor Lancaster. Yeah, thanks. Completely separate question. Really aimed at bus providers. Unfortunately, we don't have Cardiff bus here, but more of a specific one related to Cardiff City football round. I was in Los Angeles a couple of weeks ago, shameless holiday brag there. But I actually attended a baseball match in the Dodger Stadium. I was wondering how to get there. But fortunately, they provide essentially a free bus service for fans from the main central station out to the stadium. It's about 20 minute journey or so. I was sitting on that thinking this is wonderful, you know, no cost to us. Obviously, it's a collaboration between the city. It was using the city's own buses, I think, and the club itself. So I wondered whether anything like that has been explored for Cardiff City football ground for match days, whether a free or subsidised bus could be set up from specific areas to take fans in. Because again, I go occasionally to Cardiff City football games and it's, you know, it's probably the hardest part of the day apart from watching the team itself, is working out how to get to and from the match. So I wonder if any sort of conversations or dialogue that have been looked at there may be subsidised by service. I know that obviously, with the event days in the city centre, there have been the park and ride scheme, which the council has operated. And obviously, those go out to tender and we've been involved in that process. But in terms of Cardiff City football stadium, we've not had any involvement in that. I'm not personally aware of anything around that. But obviously, that's something that could take place. There's no reason why it couldn't. Need to be, I guess, something that you would arrange yourselves with the club itself, or maybe in collaboration with the city, I don't know. But it seems as though it could be something that could be looked at. Yeah, definitely. Okay, Councillor Lloyd-Jones. Thank you, Chair. Starting off with you, Alex of the Adventure Travel. Alex, you've obviously identified Customer House Street as an area that you'd like to have some more stability with. Have you got any other points that you've identified that would be really helpful to enable you to, for the flow of your service to work smoothly when there are events taking place? I think information is a key thing as well. Obviously, in this day and age, we do our best to keep our customers updated through social media. We do a diversion plan, which goes on to our social media. And then also, I know Transport for Wales, they've been in contact with us in relation to the RTI. And then that gets updated, which is really good. It would be nice if we could pass our information on to the Marshals. We're actually out and about directing people on an event day. That would be good. And in general terms, we're currently working with Cardiff Council with a view to get in the bus shelters upgraded so that they can have longer poles so that we can put our flag up. Because at the moment, there's quite a sort of monopoly of Cardiff bus flags around. And so we're kind of like lost in the crowd, if you like. So we're working with them on that as well, at the moment. But yeah, those would be information and keeping customers open would be nice, as I said. But yeah, I think something for cross city services, because the way the satellites are currently set up, they're set up for services that come in and out, terminate at the city centre and then go out. So there's not so much consideration to services that just pass through. And that does present certain operational challenges. Thank you. And I can't resist it, chair. Are all the volunteers going to have swifty headgear? I can't share that information with you ahead of time. I hope we do genuinely have some fun. Coming to the issue of rolling stock, I mean, it's really lovely to hear that 50% has been delivered. How much is that actually in terms of what difference is it going to make in terms of the volume that you can move through now compared with, say, three months ago? In terms of when we deliver our whole fleet, and there will still be some legacy fleet there, but in terms of our whole new fleet, we'll see about 65% increased capacity from where we were before we've brought the new fleet in. What it really means on an event day, particularly when we bring in the new fleet for South Wales Metro, is just the ability to run longer trains. So to move more people, the most important thing for us is to move those queues as safely as possible. And longer trains, more capacity on that train means we can get as many people up onto the platform and move them in one go. And that's probably going to be the biggest impact that we'll see to be able to do that as safely as possible. So that's the capacity it gives us. It also gives us more resilience across our own network. So where we're using all the capacity for an event today, sometimes there is trade-offs we need to do across the network, as I said before, where trains are needed for the next day. It just gives us more resilience to be able to put more trains on for events. Anything to add? Thank you. Being an engineer, I was hoping to have some numbers. Okay, well I'm happy to follow up with in terms of, I've got the percentage numbers in terms of what it would be able to do, but we definitely have got those numbers. They're not a pure science, but we can definitely share those after the committee. And just very finally, it was my fault, I didn't pick up what you said you'd like to happen with the subways. So in terms of the Cardiff Central Enhancement Programme, we're building in all of the requirements that we would like to see for Cardiff to enable us to run events more effectively. So the way we run the subways today is, well we tried many different methods of running, but normally we have to run them one way in terms of passengers coming in. So the ability to just have more capacity and space within the subways or within the actual whole station, it doesn't necessarily mean if we're in the subway that we're able to get passengers through quicker or when there's disruption. There's more capacity for us to move people safely onto platforms. So we've got some time to come back around. Councillor Carr, did you have another question? I'll take that as a no. Councillor Green? Yeah, just really quickly on the buses. In the statement we had from Cardiff Bus, it sort of sounded like because the patronage changes is a bit of a loss-maker, it's like a loss-maker. Is that the same for adventure travel or do you generally struggle with income on those days because of the change in nature of things? Yeah, absolutely it is the same. And for us, because of the circuitous nature of the route that we have to make, obviously because we're a cross-city service, we have to go literally all the way around into Grangetown to circumnavigate the city centre. So a lot of people who might be in the city centre then, they're not going to walk that extra distance. So yeah, definitely. Okay, Councillor Lancaster, do you have any more questions? Just based on the Cardiff city, sorry, the Cardiff Bus representation, which obviously I don't know whether you've seen or not, but they do mention a park and ride, you know, they wish to see a considered development of a consistent park and ride site. I just wonder from an adventure traveller's point of view, where would you like to see that? Where is the most likely location for this or where would be the most ideal location for this? Maybe out to the west of the city, I don't think there's currently anything there, out towards Ely, Kyra, that sort of area. Thank you, Councillor Lloyd-Jones. Yeah, thank you, Chair. It was just something I wasn't quite sure I'd heard right. Did I hear that you use all the volunteers all come from your workforce? Yeah, so we have a mixture of teams that support on an event day. So about 35 to 40% of our resource is our own internal colleagues. So yeah, it's volunteer resource, so colleagues who work within the business in various roles. And then the remainder is our crowd management contractors who we obviously have to bring in for safety reasons. So they are essentially the specialists in the area and from a legislation perspective, we have to have them in because they've got the suitable qualifications for it. We do also have a security team that also come in who have different roles and responsibilities on the day. But I think in terms of our own volunteers, it's something we're really proud of. And I myself have started out as a volunteer in one of an assist role. So I think my passion from delivering from events has definitely started from doing that and we're keen to continue building the team as well. That's really great. Thank you. Just a quick question for me, if that's okay. So trains post Cardiff City matches or Wales football matches at Cardiff City Stadium, I know you spoke about more trains being put on. Is that, are they going to be from the Grangetown and Ninian Park station, not just from Cardiff City Centre, not from Central Station? Yeah, so at present, we do it from all three stations. So we do try to increase capacity from all three locations where possible. Obviously, linked to other services which are already in the normal train plan, there are some restrictions with that because if we retime a service, it could then have a knock on impact for that particular line of route. But what we do do is we do try and operate shuttles to certain key areas and key pinch points to make sure that we've captured it. But for most football fixtures, if we take the Wales International Football Fixtures in March, we did put additional services on all lines of route, which is, again, to have a service back up to North Wales, I think after that football game was a real big success for us and something we are proud of. Okay, thank you so much. That's come to the end of our questions and I want to say a big thank you to Alex, Georgina and Marie. We'll discuss the way forward at the end of the meeting and I'll write to you to inform you of the committee's observations, comments and any recommendations in due course. We're going to have just a few minutes break while we change over. I now welcome to the meeting Councillor de Ziaf, cabinet member for climate change, strategic planning and transport, Andrew Gregory, director of planning, transport and environment and Claire Moggridge, head of transport. This item is to consider the directorate delivery plan for planning, transport and environment that outlines the steps, milestones and key performance indicators for activity that will be delivered during the 2024-25 financial year. Councillor de Ziaf, would you like to make a statement? Thank you very much. Hello friends, it's great to be here. Welcome to Councillor Carr, I'm not sure she's online who's new to the committee and our warmest congratulations to you, Councillor Proctor, having risen like Boudica to take the reins of this august committee. I know you'll be absolutely fantastic and we all look forward to working with you going forward. I think we have a really exciting and transformational prospectus set out in our corporate plan, in our directorate delivery plan. I think the papers explain really well how thinking aligns with the Future Generations Act. I think we answer the question posed by audit around how we're quantifying the cost of moving towards net zero. It's really interesting we're taking our local energy action plan through cabinet, I think that's going in a couple of weeks time. That's a really interesting piece of research which will help us determine the cost and what we need to do with regards to decarbonising our energy networks. I think maybe the committee would like to look at at some point. We've got some really exciting projects in train ranging from the second phase of the Dr Freda canal work to our cycleway programme to the LDP to Crossrail which is really going like gangbusters. But of course with all of this there are challenges. I'm sure committee won't be surprised to learn that the main one I think is financial operating in very very constrained times in terms of finances. We're also concerned about the welfare of our staff. After ten years of austerity we're quite a lean operation. We're very reliant on people like Claire who has an encyclopedic knowledge of our networks, a huge corporate memory. I know Claire is very mindful to look out for staff below her, some of whom have very large workloads but I'm confident we can deliver the projects we've committed to. The projects have resources attached for staffing so I'm convinced we can rise to the challenge and I hope committee agrees. Thank you. Thank you Councillor de Arth. I understand officers have a presentation, is that right? I'll pass over to Andrew. I'll quickly go through some headlines on the directory delivery plan. So this just gives you the contents, looking at introduction, assessment, priorities, some of the main successes which give you an indication of where we're going forward and also the challenges. Obviously the directory delivery plan lays out the programme of work for the directorate and we want a clear golden thread that links between the corporate delivery plan, wider policies and what the individual teams are doing. We've involved in the consideration of the actions that we're presenting, obviously there's wider analysis that's taken place so there's a kind of pestle analysis looking at the wider context of political, social and environmental issues. And then we've got the future generations analysis, the key principles of the long term resilience and sustainability of the council, of the city and how the projects will play into that. So just covering the service areas, we've got investing in communities which is led by Martin Birch who's in the bereavement team. Responding to climate emergency led by Gareth who's the OM1 for the climate emergency team, transforming Cardiff's public transport and active travel, obviously Claire to my side. Putting sustainability and wellbeing at the heart of the city's growth led by Simon from the planning side. Flood defences, Gary Brown and building resilience in our highways again, Gary, so those are the two aspects in highways. The plan obviously gives us no view of the priorities aligned with stronger, fairer, greener and I think you can see when you put the two, the corporate plan and the delivery plan together, you can see how fundamentally they overlap in all their key, in the fundamentals of both what's being asked for corporately and what we're delivering in terms of the directorate. And we're very pleased that some of the most important things taking place in the city are actually things that are being delivered by the transport team, planning team and within highways. So this just gives a run through and a flavour of some of the big projects that the teams have been working on which exemplifies what I've just said. So there's the delivering the one planet strategy and what's interesting here is you've got the strategy which is the assessment of the position in terms of carbon and laying out the roadmap to reduction in carbon over the 10 year period. Which are big projects in its own right but also there's some really big hitting energy projects moving forward. So we've had in the past Radawea, we've got the roll outs, roads to outside County Hall in terms of the heat network, we've got solar farm phase one and now we're kind of moving forward with solar farm phase two. And we've got reports coming forward which are laying out the potential for a whole basket of other really impactful energy generation measures. So what I'm particularly proud about in this team is it's not just a strategy team, it's not just getting the roadmap to low carbon laid out, it's actually delivering it. It's delivering it with major projects which are comparable to any other UK city. Then we've got transport, the roll out of Crossrail phase one, soon they'll be, Callahan Square will be transformed with a tram. This is the phase one of the tram network for the city and we're working very hard to get this as a city wide piece of network. So we've successfully had a commitment to 100 million pounds for phase one. People say why 100 million pounds getting down to the bay because basically it's the foundation on which the whole network will be structured. And it's not just for trams, it will be then linked in with buses and cycling. This is really the key step in terms of the delivery of the 10 year transport strategy. We've got very exciting proposals coming forward around the station. Obviously we've got the bus station, that's open, which is a major, major landmark. People may have comments about delays in timing, just go into the bus station, it's fabulous. It's very closely based on the designs that Norman Foster, world class architects, commissioned and produced eight years ago now. And actually when you go into it, it's very close to those designs. And Claire's been working very closely with the team to make sure that the operational launch of the bus station works well. And very soon, I think there's going to be exciting proposals coming forward for the south of the station, effectively a new station, a new entrance to the station. More than that, it will be a two sided station. You have the car park, you'll have proposals on Calhan Square. So it's really the city centre moving south. We've got the 10 year, as I mentioned, reference the 10 year transport strategy, that's moving forward. Not just in terms of the tram, but also the bus proposals, Claire's team's working up and major cycle route network being delivered. Clean air, we're compliant. And we're hoping to get some good news very soon in terms of Castle Street, in terms of the funding to move forward with a permanent project there. The local development plan review, that's moving forward and there's going to be some very exciting proposals in terms of the greening and growth and the kind of priorities to protect local communities and neighbourhoods in the new plan. And more generally across the city centre, you can see the city centre's being transformed. Many citizens around the UK have struggled, but actually the plan that's being implemented is really maintaining Cardiff as an exciting place for people to visit. Not just for the events, but kind of as a destination. As Dan mentioned, Canal Phase One has been launched. We're going to award ceremonies where people, we're hoping it's going to be recognised as one of the best, a very unusual scheme of daylighting a river running through the city. And we're now moving forward with Phase Two. So, sorry, a bit of a list, but also if you look at the greenfield schemes coming forward, they're starting to emerge now, it's very exciting new sustainable communities on the edge of the city. So you can go to St Ed's, but also Plasdure is now starting to emerge, it's got the schools, it's going to have the local centre being delivered, got amazing sub-schemes out there. We're starting at a point where you can see that all the housing aren't just numbers, it's actually really sustainable communities emerging. People are emailing in, when are we going to get some shops and cafes up in Plasdure? Well, the plans, the local centre is planned and it's about to start being delivered by Red Row and the landowner. We're moving forward with the SUDs and sustainable water strategy for the city. We've got the coastal defence plans on site now. And within our financial constraints, which are between us, this is the major problem exactly as Dan suggested. We are doing our very best to tackle potholes and other improvements across the network. And likewise in bereavement, we're looking at delivering new facilities and underpinning some of the work in terms of the road network is the assessment taking place for road user charging. Which obviously is in the early business case phase. Just to flag up the problem exactly as Dan mentioned, is first of all budgets and we've had a number of years of cuts. And I would say we've managed successfully to protect the key services we've got within a 10 year set of cuts that have been delivered each year. But it has put strains on staff, so we need to work very closely in terms of the wellbeing of the workforce, it's a really critical issue. And just as Dan mentioned about Claire's work with her teams, it's an issue across the service. But there are very great pressures and we'd love to move forward with more apprenticeships and diversification of the workforce to represent the community in Wales and Cardiff. That's something we're kind of looking at really proactively leading on. We've got the delivery of a huge programme of capital works around the city and we need to make sure that happens without stopping the city. The city is a very finely balanced road network and we want to deliver the big things while actually keeping the city vibrant and moving forward. So those are the challenges, thank you Chair. Thank you. Claire, do you have anything to say? Good questions. Thank you all. We'll go and reverse order then. Councillor Lloyd-Jones. Thank you Chair. I'm just having a senior moment. Where are we exactly with the solar farm please? The solar farm phase one has been delivered and there's actually, we took a lot of criticism for the solar farm because it's a pioneer project for local authorities who didn't just let somebody else deliver it for us, a private company who then got a contractor in. Managed the project, got the contractor in, huge risk but actually it paid off and it's probably the one good thing I can say about the energy hike that took place last year. It's helped us hugely in budgetary terms because we had our own solar farm coming on stream giving a lot of very expensive energy which we could use. But the very good news is that it's very early doors but we're looking potentially at solar farm phase two on the same site, adjoining site. So we're testing out at the moment, it's not confirmed fully but it's been a very successful project and we're looking to expand it. And just to flag up in terms of the reports going to be coming forward, in terms of the local energy plans, Cardiff and other local authorities, it's actually a key step to get more energy generation so we believe we're in the forefront of UK authorities in that work. You've got supplementary? I'll let everybody else go round first. Thank you. Councillor Lancaster. Thank you chair. Just wanted to focus a little bit on the directorate management team structure that is part of the report which is on page four of the report and it shows the structure of it all. And amongst it all we have the new head of climate emergency response Gareth Alcombe and a team of 10. I think that is a new role isn't it? That's certainly been put into place since we met, since we discussed this last. I just wanted to ask a few more general questions about that. So what impact is that having now? To what extent of that section's decision making powers? We know that one planet climate stuff is overarching an awful lot of council business. Will they have oversight of every single decision? That sort of thing. Is that whole team adequately resourced? What weighting are you giving decisions coming from that team? That sort of thing. I don't know if you'd explain a little bit more about that. So this administration has made a commitment to the whole climate emergency agenda which is extremely positive and we've had the climate emergency 10 year strategy. The one planet strategy which has been drafted, adopted, updated and nothing happens just with a click of a finger. It takes time to embed the kind of new way of thinking about projects that come out of that strategy. I feel there's been a lot of traction corporately so all the major projects now taking place have close involvement from the team in terms of assessing the importance and impact of the projects on the overall carbon position of the council. Just to be clear, it's not just about zero carbon council or zero carbon city. It's also about more efficient buildings, saving energy, exactly as I said in terms of the solar farm. It's actually about putting infrastructure in place which will generate income, which will generate jobs, which will generate more efficient, warmer buildings. Also, I only just had a meeting today, for example, on the retrofit of a plan in terms of the retrofit of housing, which we haven't had a chance to brief you on fully. Fundamentally, there are social equity issues. There are something like 50,000 homes potentially in Cardiff which are poorly insulated where individuals in their homes are suffering throughout the winter, which is a huge number. We've only just started to get that information. If we can tackle in a practical way the insulation on those homes, you won't just get a carbon benefit but you get a real social and financial benefit out of it. The city, the team is, I would say, adequately resourced now. There's still a little bit more to put into that. It's been important getting Gareth in place, who as I say, has planned a blinder in terms of both a strategy lead but also delivering schemes. It would be a job in its own right to deliver the heat network but actually he's done the heat network. Solar farm, Radawea, and now there's other projects as well. And I think the team is about ilk. It's very much about implementing improvements, real improvements around the city. Also, what's really positive is there's been a new post corporately, which is about kind of corporately embedding the agenda of this team in terms of decision making more broadly. Rasheen's come in and she's playing a really important role in that. But if you look at the governance that sits around the team corporately in terms of officer arrangements and member arrangements, it's really fully supported. So that's been an innovation over the last two years. So I think there's a long way to go and we've got a report coming forward in terms of a green deal, which we're seeking. Because the team is really at the forefront of UK climate emergency assessment in terms of understanding the scale of the problem. But the trouble is once you've done all the metrics and you understand actually how big the gap is to achieve a zero carbon council and city wide economy, you realise actually the levels of funding at the moment are not adequate. What we're trying to do is get ahead of the game, get into the conversation with the new UK wide administration of whatever ilk and with Welsh government to actually put some green proposals, bigger ticket proposals together about what Cardiff and what the region could offer. Could you give us a bit of a heads up as to what sort of thing you're interested in, what you're applying for? Well, I think if you look in terms of just the work that's in the directory delivery plan, you can see the big ticket items are around retrofit on homes and energy generation. But there may be more in the administration, we'll have to make some choices about what we wish to see in terms of the big ask, as it were. That was a spur of the moment. On page 47 of the report they do outline some of the risks actually to some of the work they're doing in that there isn't a firm costing for a lot of this. What do you anticipate to be costs and when do you think you'll have a greater idea as to what these things cost because otherwise there is a massive financial risk to the council if you're trying to embark on all these projects and you don't yet know how much they're costing. Five years down the line we could put us in trouble. Yeah, so I think that audit judgement is not entirely, a lot of work's been done on precisely that issue because once you understand the scale of the gap as it were, so there's one side in terms of understanding the detailed figures in terms of what the carbon gap is and then you need to understand the scale of the measures needed to fill the gap. And actually we've done a huge amount of work on that so we've got what's called the pathway which understands on transport, on retrofit, on council buildings, on schools, housing, we've mapped that out over the last two years in terms of the extent of the gap. And there was some work last year which identified the scale of 500 million pounds if you were just to go ahead on retrofit school buildings and so on. Or corporate buildings so there's been significant work on that but what's exciting about the report that we're going to be bringing to you very soon, I think in the next month actually, it will start mapping out in more detail the specific numbers of solar farms or other bits of kit that would be needed. Now there's no commitment from the council to deliver those, it's identifying the gap and obviously there'll be individual business cases around that so there's no commitment at this point saying that the council would, because it's all subject to the funding that would come forward. But only today I've heard that it's going to cost 485 million pounds to retrofit with simple insulation the most deprived homes in the city. Those are the homes where there's a kind of insulation gap and the most deprived people are suffering throughout the year. So we've got actually a very precise figure that's come up today and we've got a whole range of other data which is now coming forward. So I would say we're ahead of the game on that and I think probably very few councils actually have that detailed financial information. Councillor Parry, do we have you online? Hello, can you hear me? Hi, we can hear you. Right, thank you. Congratulations on your appointment as well. Where are we regarding the coastal flooding plan, please? Have we got any further ahead? Because it is a very real danger, isn't it, regarding how flat Cardiff is and the high tidal levels that we do have. So where are we regarding the coastal flooding plan, please? I think we're on site actually implementing the coastal defence scheme, you know, as we speak and from what I understand in terms of the directorate delivery plan, it's identifying, you know, it's going to be implemented over the next, you know, year and beyond. So it's on site at the moment, Councillor, I believe. Do you have a supplementary, Councillor Parry? No, that's what I wanted to know. Thank you. They are looking at it at the moment. Thank you. Okay, Councillor Carr. You're on mute, Councillor Carr. Apologies, I'm having trouble with the signal. No questions from you at the moment, thank you. Okay, and Councillor Green. Yeah, one thing that jumped up to me was the canal quarter and obviously there's been some investment there. I must say, whenever I'm in the town centre doing some shopping, I usually like release my 18 month old just to run around there, get some energy out. I personally like it for that reasons, but can you just tell us a bit more about what the benefits have been so far? I know it's a fairly new project, it's not been open at all, but what the benefits are. Can you just tell us a bit more about what phase two is going to look like, please? Yes, I'm very pleased your daughter likes running around. That was actually how it was designed to be a space that children would enjoy in the city centre. So, in terms of benefits, perhaps we should do a bit more formal survey in terms of the benefits as the year progresses. One benefit has definitely been the local economy. We've had very positive conversations with the local, not just with the capital centre, which is now bringing forward an application for a major scheme internally within the centre, but also with the commercial owners in the area. So they have actually, as a result of the canal, brought forward other proposals for new cafes and restaurants and so on, which are now being built. It's difficult to tell at this point because, although I know it's used substantially, it's been used for events in the city centre, the main effect will come throughout the summer when it starts to be somewhere where people can sit and use the amenity. I think it's going to take a little bit of time, as with many of the SUD schemes, for the plants to grow and for it to turn into a more mature, green environment. It's still very early days for the canal, but it's possibly a good idea, Councillor, for us to do a review, perhaps with the Business Improvement District or otherwise, to test out at the end of the year how the benefits have been perceived. I think you're being a little bit modest, Andrea. I think it's been a real catalyst for that part of the city. It's slightly unloved in some ways. There's new bars, there's a bar called the Dock Feeder opened a few months ago. There are plans for a London-style pub on the site of the old Chinese restaurant to open, so I think it has an impact not just on that street, but that wider part of the city centre. I think, in addition, as Andrea mentioned, it's also a piece of sustainable urban drainage, so it's saving a huge, huge quantum of water from going through the sewerage system. I'm not sure if we've done any work to monetise how much money and energy that saves, but I'm sure it's quite significant, so I don't know whether we could do some estimates around that. But no, I think it's a great scheme and I think the next part, which hasn't been fully designed yet, will be even better when they're taken in their totality. Councillor Green, have you got a supplementary? Yes, sorry, just on that phase two and what it looks like. So, Councillor De Ata, it hasn't been designed yet, but could you just tell us what the principle is of it? The principle would be to, effectively the canal quarter is three phases. Phase two would be to open the water up down to Bridge Street. You've got the bus connections there and you've got a wider conversation about what's happening in front of Queen Street station and the wider environment. But, exactly as Councillor De Ata said, this is the opportunity, it is a real one-off unique opportunity to get this kind of water and green park in the centre of Cardiff. So, effectively what you're doing is creating a linear green and blue park with the opportunity for a transformation of the surrounding area. So, we've had progress in terms of the design, the concept design for phase two and it would be more of the same type of amenity in terms of seating areas. We're interested in perhaps more specific children's play area, more water features, more greening, more suds to create an area that people could use in its entirety. And then phase three would be the development which would proceed further to the south and again you've got the length down to Butte Terrace. So, we've got the outline designs, we're now in the process of mapping out the delivery of the scheme over the next years and obviously it's subject to funding. Thank you. That actually leads on a little bit to my next question. I know we have talked about funding but the whole plan, I think we had about 60 pages of the whole delivery plan, it all sounds so exciting and so ambitious but what just feels integral to the whole thing is finance. I know a costed plan is a bit of a buzzword at the minute but do we have a costed plan for everything that we want to achieve in that plan? We've got to, just as an example, Chair, the £100 million that's come in to support phase one of the tram. Before we put the bid in and got successful response, successful match funding from Welsh Government, we didn't have the funding but now we've got a substantial step forward in terms of that project. Claire's team are working up, I don't have words in your mouth but in terms of the bus strategy, there's proposals coming forward and then it will go into the funding regime with Welsh Government so we've got a whole new prospectus which is basically encompassing a lot of the projects in the transport side which is going into the regional transport plan and will be there for funding. Just as with the cycle network, we've got a five-year proposal and every year it gets enlarged, every year we get more funding for the design and work so in a sense we couldn't say yes, we've got it all in our pocket waiting to spend but we've got a process by which we're going to be bidding for it in a phased way. I think that exactly goes in the same way for the energy projects although they also have a very strong commercial viability and I would say the main concern at the moment just in terms of the funding of the projects relates specifically to the One Planet agenda because when you look at the scale of the issue, we're going to need help from Welsh Government and from the UK Government to really get this stuff. When I talk about the retrofit, when I talk about the new buildings and so on. Otherwise it's not black and white, we're in a positive grey I would say moving forward, we've got a lot that's already been committed to but yes, we still need to think very cleverly about how we lobby and engage but we've been very successful at that so far. Worth just adding though, we said this when we brought the bus priority plan, that having a plan, having a strategy makes it easier to get funding so you're showing Welsh Government or the UK Government or whoever it is, the particular project you want them to fund is part of a cohesive whole that has quite wide objectives so it makes it a more compelling case to get money from them. Thank you. I'll come back round for questions again because we've got a bit of time. Does anyone else have any questions? Councillor Lloyd-Jones? Thank you, Chair. There were three things in my head. One, I wonder what you're going to try and do to address staff training because it seems to me that there are certain topics that the staff are not particularly keen on, possibly following through with the trainings. Secondly, we're designing these big new complexes, developing these big new complexes, several of which are being served by quite rural country roads. Do we have something in place to start addressing the issue of making the roads a little bit safer, probably? And then the other thing that I was wondering about is do we do any monitoring of a SUDs when the SUD has been put in place and it's sat there for a year and you look at what's in the bottom of the pond effectively, do we ever check to see is this doing what we think it is and just taking surface water or is anything else nasty getting into the pond? Just in terms of the SUDs, yes. We've recently done a review because there's been three or four streets where there's been, you know, so Cote's Terrace, Wood Street, Tudor Street, Canal, there's a few other areas. In a concerted effort to get SUDs and drainage systems in around the city, we have recently done a review of them. So just to look at where it's worked, where it's not worked, where people are parking cars on them, you know, and what you do about that and so on. So I'm not sure when you talk about something nasty lurking in the sustainable drainage system. Well, I think I could take you for a walk and show you some SUDs. I don't think you'd want your dog to go and have a role in them. I understand. So we've done an initial review and we're using that to basically go back and mitigate and change and try and, you know, Greening Grangetown, there's a few others, where we're going back and trying to talk either about the engineering because it's surprisingly complex in engineering and some teams have got it right, some haven't. And then also planting and maintenance. So we've done a review and we're acting on that. I don't know, Claire, if you know the other points. Yeah, I think if I take the first point on staff training, I think what I would reassure members is that any member of staff that wishes to have training, you know, most of it's appropriate and if it is appropriate, it's unquestionable. I will support that. I think points we were raising was that often it's not necessarily so much the training and it's more the ability to match the private sector in terms of enumeration, in terms of salary. Once you get somebody with very, very good experience and knowledge, they're departing the local authority because the actual salaries available in the private industry are far away and the ability for us to fund our staff. So I think it's important to me as the head of department, you not only train your staff, you also ensure that your staff feel valued and wish to remain and feel that they get other value out of being a part of the local authority and working as a local government officer, as I have my whole career. There are many times where I could have exited the authority and gone to the private industry, but it's actually on us as managers to actually explain the benefits and the added value that staff are giving to the city, Cardiff and the wider areas. So I think that is pretty much in my mantra. I work closely with my team leaders. It's all about encouraging staff to engage, be part of the bigger picture. He meets with all members of the team, not just managers. Members are meeting and they have the interaction with staff further down the tree, which is all really positive and I think that's something that we need to continue. So there's training, but there's also reminding staff that they're valued. So that is most definitely within our culture and within the department. On the point about, does that answer the question around staffing and training? I just noticed that there's an 11% take-off on, I think it was training either on data protection or data. There was a data issue somewhere and I just wondered. Yeah, I think it's a legal requirement in terms of data protection, but of course it's wider than just data that we may see. Staff now are trained on use of CCTV and the data requirements around CCTV, so we're using staff and their skill set in other ways so they can, instead of always visiting site, they use CCTV. It allows that interaction, wider knowledge, but what comes with some of the use of this data and the use of systems such as CCTV and the like, you have to have that understanding of governance around what you're doing and how you use that information. Again, I think it's a really good thing for staff to understand the importance of what they're viewing and how they interpret it and use it. I think if there is that mention in there, I think it's something that again, I personally feel it protects the staff and it protects the council, so it is a two-way thread around that type of training. The other thing Claire was the question around narrow in the major new master plans. Yeah, I was just going to come on to that. I just want to make sure that Councillor Lloyd-Jones was happy around the training thing, but just to reassure you on that final point on staff training, most definitely staff are encouraged on their weekly meetings and through their PPDR, their personal performance review process to ask us for training, but I'm always continually reminding staff to keep up to date with their ongoing professional training, so yes, I think that's really important. On the actual interaction of rural areas on the outskirts of the city in terms of the developments that are coming forward, again, that features as part of the development and the master plans associated with that, there is safety most definitely, that's again embedded in our decisions, but I think it's also about looking at those roads without too fully, it's a fine balance, isn't it? If you live on the outskirts of the city, you like the rural environment, but also you don't want to fully urbanise it, but you've also got to understand the additional footfall, the additional use of cycling and other forms of transport also need to be modelled into that highway network. You are seeing changes in your ward in the area around there and where I live adjacent to you, it is that fine balance, but we do most definitely focus on walking routes, cycling routes and then we look at our best priority measures and then we fall from that then, the need for the private car and making sure that it's safe, but safety is paramount, yes. Just a really quick point if I may, Chair, on SUDS, I think Andrew's absolutely right, we've initiated a review of our SUDS, about 5% of them, there are some issues, I'm sure you've seen the pictures of Tudor Street, that hasn't taken, I hold my hands up, that doesn't look very nice. Am I on? It doesn't look very nice, but we're taking action to remedy that, but in addition we've also taken on two corporate trainees and part of their role, we're going around the city, so essentially an annual service, they trim back the various channels in them, a cleanse, they make sure they're okay, so those guys will be doing part of that annual work and in addition in Grangetown, we're working with community members, people really like what we've done, but some of the plants are looking a bit wild, so local people, we're taking ownership of the SUDS on their streets and being trained up and being given tools by the council so they can do their own work on those, so that's a really exciting development and hopefully we can roll out of the parts of the city. Okay, any other questions from members? Thanks, on page 44 of the report you have a brief outline of assessment of the KPIs of road conditions, of course you said there were various reasons why you couldn't assess the conditions of the roads in 2023/24, I suspect if you asked road users the answer would be generally worse, lots of people would read this report and see the ambitions that you've got there, which are great, but they'll say it's all well and good, but the roads around us are shocking, what criteria are you using to assess conditions of roads as being only around 4% of being poor condition, and what is the plan to improve them as that sits alongside your ambitions for other areas? Yes, so just to say, the KPIs for roads aren't entirely accurate, they have some use, but actually most roads in Cardiff don't fit into that categorisation, they're too small, but I think the question is a really pertinent one. Sorry, so it's a very good question, and the team has basically got the asset management plan, which is a process of assessing the huge asset, the 2 billion pound, probably 3 billion pound asset, which is our road network, and they've got a structured approach to the maintenance and replacement and renewal of the roads, and within that there's an annual process, obviously, where they look at the safety issues or the condition of the road, and they've got inspectors who are looking at it, and they take on comments from residents and so on. So there's a very tightly controlled approach plan in terms of how they allocate the resources to maintaining the road. The issue is, notwithstanding the commitment that the administration has made to remove the potholes and maintenance, there isn't enough funding in the system that comes down from the Welsh government, so it's working within a very tightly constrained budget. The system that's in place, I believe, is extremely efficient, but it's just a recognition, and this is not just a Cardiff problem, it's a problem across all local authorities in Wales, and in the UK, there isn't the funding in the system to bring the roads up to a standard that we would all think would be acceptable. Councillor Carr, did you want to come in? Yes, I just wanted to briefly ask about the assessment against the Wellbeing of Future Generations Act, and I'll limit it to talking about involvement, and just wanted you to say a little bit more around involvement through the lens of intersectionality, particularly thinking about how you get some of those different community interest groups to intersect, and come around some of these projects. So, I can just give you one example. For example, we've got, moving forward, the £100 million tram project, and the social value component of that project is really important, and there have been a range of conversations taking place to make sure that the contracts, the procurement of the developer as they move forward, a whole range of consultants and developers, they will have to demonstrate the social value component of their work. From the other end, also, we're talking to local communities in Grangetown, Bute Town, to understand what kind of opportunities and need there is in the local community to connect into those projects. So, that's just one example, but we're seeking to do that on all of our major capital projects, that is to understand effectively the social value component and bring people in. The other element is that we work with the corporate kind of commitment team to basically align the work taking place with educational and training opportunities. Brilliant, thank you. Just to end, then, with a question on what this committee can do to support you with the huge agenda that you have. Is there anything that we can do to support, particularly things around, before they get to pre-decision stage? It might be one that you want to think about and come back later, but just to kind of give that as food for thought. Okay, fantastic. Thank you so much, Councillor, Daeth, Claire and Andrew, for coming to speak to us. We'll discuss the way forward at the end of the meeting and then I'll send you a letter capturing our views. Okay, thank you. Okay, agenda item seven, urgent items. I can confirm there are no urgent items to discuss. Agenda item eight, way forward. Members, we now need to consider our comments, observations and any recommendations we want to capture and send to cabinet where appropriate. Eric, can you please sum up in relation to events day traffic management? Thank you, Chair. In terms of hearing from our service providers, we heard from Transport for Wales about their new fleet and their partnerships works well and how they use volunteers and how they've listened to the public and they put in portaloos and wayfinding and their queue management is really important for them. But they also talked about their infrastructure as well and how they're sort of limited by some of that. We also heard some of the stats around the numbers of people they've had coming through recently with large events and they're sort of quite significant. We also heard from Alex about the buses and how the difficulties they have as a cross city bus provision in getting around some of the central road closures and how important the sort of like notices in terms of planning some of the changes they need to introduce. We asked about the costs involved in some of the barriers and screens and whether they break even in terms of the additional costs Transport for Wales incur on those event days. They say they may make a little bit of profit, but that's sort of reinvested in services. We also asked about how do we protect some of the services for those not travelling to events that still want to travel around the city and we heard what could we do better and what could we help them with as a council. I think we sort of heard around some of the trials around using Queen Street, which is not currently traditionally open on these events, so there's some work going on around that. We also heard around some of the inconsistencies around closing Custom House Street and some sort of potential thoughts about how Callaghan Square could be used in the future in sort of supporting some of these bus services. We asked about free buses to sort of football events and I'm heard that that sort of sits with some they are funded by the Football Club or the Football Association for Wales and that's dependent on them funding them. It's not something that we do, but we could sort of explore that further. We also heard about sort of, again, sort of the importance of the role of marshals and volunteers in supporting these events as well. We also asked about sort of, you know, what difference the new rolling stock will have if we've got an increase in capacity, sort of how will that impact and they didn't have details to hand, but they said they would forward them to us. I think it was interesting to hear that buses have a reduced revenue on event days because people don't tend to come into town, so as businesses they operate at a loss then. There was sort of also comments around park and ride mentioned and maybe having consistent park and ride facilities. And we also asked about the additional trains after football being operated from three stations, so Grangetown, Ninian Park and Central and they hope to do that more. So, are there any other comments that you would like me to make or any recommendations or anything specific you'd like me to capture in letters? Anyone online? I just wonder if there is something around if we're able to improve that reliability around communication, whether people would travel into town and actually what they're doing is taking other routes. But there's just something there I think about enhancing that liaison communication, you know, because if you change a bus route, pick up or drop off, that's what puts people off using it. So, you know, potentially some of the changes that come in will help with that, but I think there's probably some feedback around that liaison that would be useful to include. I think you're right. I think Alex mentioned it in terms of getting their best information to the marshal so that they could use it as well. So, yes, I'll include that one. I think just a general comment following from the letter that Cardiff bus sent and also some of the questions that Councillor Green was asking about, you know, the profitability of Avente services. I think we've got to recognise that, you know, these are all commercial operators and of course if we want more sustainable travel to these major events, it has to be worth their while to put it on. We can't expect the likes of Cardiff bus to run a massive loss just to get people home from things and the same with stagecoach and adventure travel. So, you know, to listen to have the representation from adventure travel and the written representation from Cardiff bus to say that, you know, actually it causes them a loss of revenue on match days. I think on big event days it was quite surprising to me. So I don't know what the answer to that is or whether it's a question of the council trying to help to remove some of those operational costs or something like that or to improve whatever information or access or whatever. But I think, you know, we need to recognise that that has to be a part of it. We can't. Erica, can you please sum up in relation to planning, transport and environments direct delivery plan? Yep, thank you again. So some of the questions and queries we raised around the directorate delivery plan were around the solar farms and phase two of that. We also asked about the management team structure and the head of climate response. Important. We also asked about the climate response team there and whether that was adequately resourced given there was an audit committee report that said they needed to cost some of their projects. So we asked about that and in response to that, we were told there was a report coming forward. And I think there's on the agenda, we've got the local energy, local area energy plan coming forward to a future meeting. So that would be interesting to look at. We heard about sort of the importance of retrofit in terms of improving some of the poorer households in the city and also about the importance of energy generation for us as a city as well. We asked about progress in relation to the coastal flooding plan and heard that that's sort of there on site now to deliver that. We asked about the canal quarter and the benefits of that and what phase two and what phase three might be. And we also asked about the SEDS and reviewing SEDS. We also asked about, given it's such an ambitious plan, is there sufficient resources in the directorate to deliver? And I think we heard about lots of the things in the plan aren't necessarily currently costed, but we go through sort of funding applications to sort of external third parties. So having strategies and plans in place is important to demonstrate that individual plans fit into a much bigger strategy. We also sort of briefly raised around larger sort of developments in sort of urban areas and how they cope with the roads. We asked about road condition and, like I say, public perception is they're very poor and heard that the sort of KPIs may not cover majority of roads in Cardiff because they're not classed as A, B or C, but we have an asset management in place to manage that. And then we also asked about the assessment against the sort of wellbeing of future generations and engagement with sort of wider groups and what they're doing there. And I think the sort of the final question is about how this committee can support their work going forward. And I think that's a key thing for us to stress in the letter, really, is, you know, we can support the work they are doing. Just we've done the event day traffic management, we had a bit of a conversation about how we can take that forward as well. So is there anything else that you need me to include? A couple of things on that specific roads question, the response that most roads aren't classified under A, B or C is a bit puzzling to me. I thought most roads in the country were classified under A, B or C. So a little bit further explanation as to why that's the case and just a more general point. I mean, this directorate delivery plan still has Councillor Wilde's name attached to a lot of it. And of course, we have a new cabinet member in place. I don't know. I think Councillor Mackey was invited to this meeting, was she not or not? In which case, you know, I think we should have invited her. And if not, then something for the future, because I would have liked to have had the chance to ask her, you know, as new cabinet member. What does she see for the role? What does she see as being the future for her department? So I think that's something to take forward in relation to Councillor Mackey. The only thing I had to go on is her portfolio title, which is waste street scene and environmental services. Now, wasted street scene fit into economic development. So that's a different directorate delivery plan. And in terms of environmental services, we've invited shared regulatory to a future meeting so that she'll be invited to that as well. So and in terms of this was a draft delivery plan that they submitted to us. They have subsequently sent one, an updated one that has the correct cabinet members in. I can circulate if you want to see that one. Do we need to have a quick look then again at the terms of reference to the committee, because at the moment waste material management and street cleansing are down on our paperwork. That that's absolutely correct that they're in our terms of what they're not in is they're not in planning, transport and environment directorate delivery plan. They sit within economic developments delivery plan and to deal with two delivery plans in one meeting would be a bit too much. I think it's just how the portfolios fall within different directorates is the issue. Anyone online observations, comments? No. Okay, brilliant. I will move on to the last agenda item closing date of next meeting to say, say thank you to everyone and thanks for all your warm introductions for me into this meeting. And just to remind you members that our next meeting is Thursday the 11th of July at half four, which is a change date following the announcement of the general election. [BLANK_AUDIO]

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