Agenda and decisions
November 19, 2024 View on council website Watch video of meetingTranscript
Good evening, everyone, and welcome to this meeting of tonight's Transport, Overview and Scrutiny Committee. This meeting is being webcast and some officers are actually accessing virtually this evening, I can say. We also have Councillor Hogg joining us online for some of the early papers as well, so please do bear with us if we experience any technical difficulties. My name is Councillor Fraser, I'm Chair of the Transport Committee and welcome you all this evening. Members of the Committee, I'm going to start with Councillor Mayorkas on my left in a second, if you just would like to go round and introduce yourselves, please. Councillor Mayorkas, Trinity Ward. Councillor Matthew Tiller, Roehampton Ward. Councillor Sarah Appes, Sheffield Spring, Queenstown Ward. Good evening, Chair. Tony Belton, Battersea Park Ward. Good evening. Councillor Nicholston, West Putney Ward. Hello, Caroline. Let's usual, Sir Mary's Ward. Hello, good evening. Daniel Hamilton-Ballum. Thank you very much, and apologies this evening have been received from Councillor Critchard and Councillor Locker. Members are reminded to please do ensure that your microphone is turned off unless you are speaking. When you are called to speak, and every time you do speak, please state your name, and bear in mind that this Committee must remain court at all times. So agenda item 1 this evening, we have the minutes of the last meeting held on Monday 7th October. It doesn't feel too long ago, but please do let me know, can that those meeting minutes be agreed? Thank you very much. I will sign those initial days. Are there any declarations of interest in this meeting this evening, pecuniary or non-pecuniary? No? Okay, thank you. Just before we delve into the business this evening, I'm going to ask whether Members would be okay with a small switch around of the agenda. I'm going to propose to keep items 3 and 4 as they are on the Local Plan and Clapham Junction Master Plan, but we have one officer joining us online for the Battersea Park CPZ paper, which I think will probably pass quite quickly, but to make sure that we can have him kind of log off a bit earlier this evening, is it okay with councils if we take that after those items? Thank you very much. Okay, so agenda item 3 is the Local Plan Partial Review. I believe we have Councillor Hogg on the line for this, on the line, online, who would like to say a few words on this paper before passing over for an officer introduction and then questions. Hello Chair, can you hear me? Yes, we can hear you, thank you. Wonderful, thank you very much for the opportunity to speak this evening. My name is Simon Hogg, the leader of the council, but also within the Cabinet. I take responsibility for strategic planning issues like this and yeah, it's a really exciting paper because we all know Wandsworth is a great place to live and we welcome all growth and investment, particularly in new housing and I think this is a really important milestone in a hugely crucial priority for us. I think 50% affordable housing in all new developments will transform lives because a decent, affordable place to call home is the foundation of a good life. We have more than 10,000 of our fellow residents waiting for housing at the moment, 3,000 of those woke up this morning homeless in Wandsworth council temporary accommodation. So this is absolutely crucial, we can deliver more affordable homes because local people can't access those new build flats by the river if you've grown up here, they're out of reach for you. So this administration has been very clear, we're delivering genuinely affordable homes for local people, not you know luxury flats targeted at overseas investors and that's a really important distinction. As a listening council that means consultation on this proposal we've engaged, we have put forward amends, we've considered feedback and I would really strongly recommend that the committee backs the specific local plan amendments that we've put forward in the paper. Thank you very much. Thank you councillor and now I'm going to pass over to Mr Goodman to say a few words on the officer side as well, thank you. Thank you Chair. I think all I would add at this point is just to kind of iterate some of the next steps following this paper subject to obviously committee decisions. What we're looking to do next is to take these policy amendments out for a further round of public consultation, so this is called the regulation 19 consultation. At this stage we'll be looking for respondents to provide views on whether they feel like the amendments we're making are sound and legally compliant and there are a series of tests prescribed for those kind of statements. As part of that consultation obviously and as I said out in the report we'll be looking to kind of cast the net as far wide as we can and engaging with anyone with an interest and who's likely to be affected by what we're looking to do. Following that consultation we would be looking to submit the draft policies, any supporting documents and any responses received to the consultation to the Secretary of State who will then appoint a planning inspector to oversee an examination next year. At this point very happy to take any questions from councillors at your discretion Chair. Thank you. Thank you very much. So councillors it's over to you now for any questions. Okay thank you. I've seen Councillor Apps, Councillor Belton and then was that a hand there Councillor Hamilton? Okay Councillor Apps, Councillor Belton, Councillor Hamilton. Thanks very much. I'm very excited to see this policy developing and I hope it develops with good speed. My main question is about how this policy is cost effective, you know how would the rewards compare with the costs of delivering it. So if there's more you can say on that, that would be helpful. Thank you. Thank you Councillor. If I begin to give an answer I may pass over to my colleague Debbie Turner to give some more kind of meat on the bone if you like. As part of this process we've undertaken new pieces of kind of technical evidence. One of the key parts of that is a kind of whole plan viability assessment which looks at the kind of material impacts of pursuing these new policies on general viability. What we're really clear about as part of this is it's an opportunity to deliver more social rented housing which is clearly the priority here, more genuinely affordable housing overall and for the first time tap into contributions from smaller developments which previously weren't required to deliver any kind of contribution towards affordable housing and that's been tested through that evidence base and we're confident at a position that it's achievable across a majority of sites and that there's mechanisms within the policy to deal with sites which genuinely cannot provide that level of contribution. So that's the real benefits in this scenario. In terms of the cost that whole plan viability piece again is the area where the impacts on deliverability of developments etc has been tested and as I say I mean we're confident that across the piece, across the borough, we're looking at a set of policies which are deliverable for the majority of sites that have been tested or sites apologies that have been tested. I don't know Debbie if there's anything you want to add at this point. Thank you. Yes thank you. Yes my name's Debbie Turner. I'm the principal development viability officer and I've done a lot of work on the on the whole plan viability as well alongside the consultants BMP Paribas who have done the work for us and obviously have an extensive knowledge and experience of values in the area. I think one of the key aspects is that obviously delivering more affordable homes obviously limits them pressure on temporary accommodation which at the moment is a substantial cost to the council. So by increasing the level of affordable housing delivered and especially the level of social rented housing as that's really where the need is and that's often where households are waiting for social rented housing. That's where they can often fall into temporary accommodation and increasing that level of social rented housing by on top of the 50% also looking to looking at the tenure split of the 70-30 social rented to intermediate tenure and that's another way where we can we can really improve the level of social rented delivery and that would in turn make it more cost effective to the council as well. Okay thank you very much. Councillor Belton you're next. I've got a couple of questions really. One is about the tenure issue that's just been mentioned and isn't covered in the plan at all. I'm not sure it can be but in my ward, Battersea Park ward, very close to Battersea Park station, Battersea Power station, Tube station and Queenstown Road station, just going into any block it's a constant stream of people carrying suitcases. It's just continuous and half the properties including council properties that have been sold on are now out for B&B use and that's all that happens to them. It's just amazing just going there everyone bump into suitcases all the time. In a way it's a very difficult question for you and I think I can aim it politically at both parties. What are we going to do about that kind of usage because it seems to me it's just soaking up accommodation all over the country and the country resorts, seaside resorts particularly, but everywhere and we just haven't handled that but that also builds into tenure and the council house sales policy that still exists and I wonder what anyone has thought about that. That's one set which I think quite difficult for you. The other area that intrigues me is that we've got the London plan as well which this has to cohere with but quite clearly the aspirations in here are not necessarily the same. I mean they may be aimed towards the same goal but they're actually not the same in terms of percentage of affordable, percentage of rentable and in terms of the student accommodation. If the government finally, the inspector finally agrees our version which in some areas is quite considerably different from the London plan, what do I as a developer do? Do I ask the architect to do something that's in line with the London plan or the Wandsworth plan and who do I ask and get advice to or from? Thank you councillor. If I may take the second question first if that's okay, just around the conformity with the London plan. The different components of the policy, so let's take for example the 70-30 tenure split in favour of social rented housing, that's in conformity with the London plan which as you may know says that essentially there's a kind of maximum position that any of the two types of tenure can have which is up to 70% so we're really pushing the margins of that but we are within that kind of envelope. In terms of the overall approach, the 50% target, the local fast track route etc. What we have looked to do is work within the kind of framework of the London plan, look at the mechanisms that are within the London plan to deliver affordable housing and seek to adapt those locally so the same principles and the same framework would apply but we have increased the threshold to use the fast track approach as an example. So as you say, I mean an inspector will need to consider our policies as part of the process that we expect to happen next year but what we have sought to do throughout this process is work within that London plan framework but also maximise what we can do to deliver as much social rented housing as possible and on the question around as a developer how you interface with that, there's a kind of key principle in terms of planning policy that more recent policy that's found sound would kind of supersede generally older policy so in that sense a new Wandsworth policy that's adopted would tend to be treated particularly I would suspect by Planning Applications Committee at Wandsworth and Wandsworth Planning Officers as more relevant and therefore the policy that should be applied compared to the London plan policy which dates from 2021 so that would I believe be the position that we would take in this scenario. And there is reasonable flexibility within the London plan to cater for local policies and an amount of local discretion on the interpretation of those policies. In terms of the first question I think as you touched upon it is a difficult question to answer from a planning perspective. I think in terms of how we deliver more social rented housing and more affordable housing overall and therefore reduce the need for B&B accommodation and temporary accommodation that is one kind of tool in our armory and one aspect and outcome that we would hope to get from this review and that may therefore have an impact. There is a degree to which planning rules around these things are not necessarily able to prevent those kind of changes from happening and so therefore we always have to stay within the kind of system within which we work but I think as a general point what we are aiming to do through this policy is obviously reduce the dependency on things like local B&Bs and what like for temporary accommodation and therefore possibly reducing the kind of scenes that you've been observing. Thank you very much. Council Hamilton you next. Thank you thank you very much and thank you also to officers and Mr Goodman in particular for the clarifications that were provided in the pre-brief which were extremely useful for us. I just have a couple of questions on this. The first I obviously have no argument with the fact that the executive and the administration could propose these type of changes. I think it's been a long-standing commitment that the Labour Party have had to bring through many of these changes but a question I do have is about the viability of some of this. When I look particularly at policy LP23 the affordable housing strategic policy I do notice that in the document I think the word viability is used 32 times in that particular report and the question I do have I've noticed there's plenty of sort of carve-outs here it mentions in respect of small sites that if they're not viable there'll be flexibility for the planning committee to put those projects through. Similarly in LP30 on the build to rent paper it again mentions that there'll be an element of flexibility from the committee. Is this plan, and I notice you use the word viability a lot, but is this actually just a sort of statement of principles or do you genuinely believe that this policy work that this document will really actually provide this housing mix that you wish to achieve because there appears to be a lot of flexibility built in here as opposed to really putting your money where your mouth is and wanting to drive this through. So just a question on whether this really is a viable plan. Thank you I'm just checking maybe more a political question. Oh yeah yeah and that's what I'm sensing, Councillor Hogg are you still with us for that one? Hello, yeah no absolutely I mean as you know this was a manifesto pledge it's going to be delivered. We do think 50 per cent of affordable housing is deliverable, it's just. We think it's viable in every sense but you know planning applications will have to determine things case by case. Officers will have to look at things site by site. You know we're going to be open and pragmatic as you know it's a different regime for smaller schemes and larger ones but you know I think it's worth saying at the moment those smaller schemes aren't contributing at all to affordable housing and this will actually close that loophole and ask for a contribution. But yes we're absolutely determined to make it a success and we hope you'll be able to support it. All right thank you. Do we have any further questions? Councillor Austin. Thank you very much Councillor Fraser. I've just got a couple of points. Moving on from viability as well the word genuinely was used quite a lot. So as a property person I look at KPIs, I look at costings, I look at build out costs, I look at whole values and land values but I don't mean what does genuinely actually mean? What are the key performance indicators on that? What are the build out costs? What constitutes a genuinely affordable home? It's a very rounded term but there's no specific detail and costing and such. If I can tack one on the back on page 23 you said that you tested a range of common site types within the borough. How many did you test and of those sites how many of them failed and for what reasons? Thank you Councillor. So just to cover the point around genuinely affordable. That's defined in the London plan. It's around the products that are considered genuinely affordable and products which are not considered genuinely affordable. So in a Wandsworth context we would obviously support things like social rent being considered genuinely affordable. The London plan also treats some intermediate tenures like London living rent as being genuinely affordable. There are other tenures of affordable housing such as certain I would say kind of discount market rent schemes which tend to be at a lower discount compared to particularly social rent which would not meet that definition. So the additional clarification is really just to make it clearer that there are certain products which we would consider to to meet a genuinely affordable need and there are certain products which mostly due to the limited discount they offer against market housing to not really cater for an affordable housing need the kind of rent or the cost of that affordable product still being very high and therefore out of reach of most people. If I may I might pass to my colleague Miss Turner just to cover the point about the typologies as she has a lot more awareness of the whole plan viability assessment than I. Thank you. Thank you. Yes in relation to the whole plan viability we tested around 48 different site typologies and those included obviously smaller sites so sites under 10 units also larger sites mixed view sites and as well kind of some student accommodation as well and other kind of sheltered accommodation site types as well. Those were based on similar site types to what were tested as part of the whole plan viability which formed part of the evidence base for the recently adopted local plan so and obviously that went through the examination comfortably in relation to the whole plan viability so we felt that that was a very kind of useful measure in continuing to use those kind of similar typologies as they do reflect the site allocations coming forwards within the within the adopted local plan and so we felt that that was a good number of site typologies looking at the different types of diversity of development through Wandsworth and we also looked at different open market values as well so there were nine different basically open market values that we looked at ranging from around £8,000 per square metre all the way up to around £14,000 per square metre so that then obviously brings a little bit of difference in terms of we can then really look at those high value areas versus the lower value areas across the borough as well so we did do very very thorough testing in relation to the whole plan viability and the majority of those site typologies were viable at 50 percent affordable housing obviously there is again there are always going to be some level of sites which which do have to have that level of flexibility there can be sites that have you know substantial contamination or substantial infrastructure costs so that's where that little bit of flexibility is kind of needed in in the policy thank you thank you very much councillor Hamilton was that your yeah thank you very much um just a quick question obviously there's um lots of debate at the moment about government revisiting announcements on local authority housing targets um just curious to know how these will be reflected in the revised local plan going forward and also a request on on the part of the conservative group we find it very useful if there could be a table i think in future papers which shows what the targets are for unit delivery and how those would change as a result of this plan so that could possibly be provided it would be very useful for us to see just while i'm here if it's okay if i could just be one one sort of further request and very much welcome on page 20.5 the mention of engagement with the borough residence forum on this proposed change scheme just a comment from the the leader if possible about what could be done if we do have other groups that want to feed into this are the executive willing to meet with other groups in the borough to receive further further input on the changes to the plan thank you thank you i think we had a question in several parts so is that kind of two for officer one political yeah okay um so yeah we'll move in that order then thank you thank you councillor in terms of the the housing targets and for anyone's benefit who who may not have seen the kind of press around this there's a recent consultation on changes to the national planning policy framework part of which related to the standard method for calculating local housing need i think the important thing to say for a borough like wandsworth and as it's true for any london borough is that we actually inherit a capacity-based housing target from the london plan um and so it's through that london plan interface that we work out what the housing target for a local plan should be so for context that housing target in the in the one in once was adopted local plan is 1950 homes per year the government's standard method at the moment calculates a housing need of around 2600 homes per year and under the new method that would rise to around 3800 homes the the the main caveat i'd put on those figures is that they are the result of quite a large algorithm that doesn't take into account the ability or the capacity of an area to meet that need it's based purely on demographics and so that london blank london plan capacity based approach is essentially an endeavor from the gla with support from boroughs to distribute london's housing need in a way that better reflects actual capacity within boroughs so in that context for the time being we're going to continue to use the 1950 homes a year figure to to assess the sufficiency of our housing supply we have a significant buffer in our planned housing supply over that figure and so in that sense we are confident that in pursuing these policies we are not going to impact on our overall ability to meet our housing target you may be aware that the gla are planning to update the london plan we will obviously work with them through that process and there may well be in the next 12 months a consultation on a draft london plan that introduces a new capacity-based housing target for onesworth that obviously we will advise on and it and it's likely as these things are are cyclical that we will need to do a full review of the onesworth local plan in the next few years to take account then of an updated london plan so just to reassure you that those figures that that are in that press aren't technically really relevant in the short term to a onesworth picture it's that london plan derived figure for the time being in terms of the question around kind of the components of change and how that looks that's the kind of thing that we'll definitely be publishing at the point of the consultation so we're planning to do a topic paper as is quite common to these scenarios setting out some of those statistics for the benefit of people responding so that i don't see there's any reason why when that's available in public then we'll obviously can provide a version of that hopefully that answers all your questions apologies if i missed anything do let me know thank you thank you and i think there's just one council hug on on engagement with with groups like the borough residents forum yeah absolutely so i mean credit to the officers involved this has already been an incredibly wide consultation you know hundreds of people and groups have been able to be consulted to feed into it but you know very happy for other groups to be encouraged to do that and next up is that six-week consultation early next year where people will have another chance to have their say great thank you very much i'm going to go to council belton for the final question in this paper a very minor detailed question has interest in the paper refers to roehampton university having full accommodation for students i don't think i saw any reference to st george's which must be possibly the biggest university branch possibly bigger than roehampton even i don't know and how is the accommodation do they they have enough accommodation to cover all their students thank you councillor so we've engaged with both universities in the past i think certainly the picture that we had at a point in time a recent point in time is that their accommodation needs are sufficient in terms of what's located in and around their own campuses i think it's always a moving picture it's important that we continue to engage with them around those situations but certainly we don't foresee in the evidence we've produced the housing needs assessment a significant need for additional accommodation for those two universities in particular but we'll obviously open to continuing to engage with them if that picture changes okay thank you very much councillors and officers for for your questions and comments on that paper i'm now going to to move on to the vote on this paper so the committee are asked whether they agree to support the recommendations of the executive in paragraph two of the report so please can i see a show of hands for all those in favour so five for all those against zero and any abstentions so three abstentions thank you very much councillors that concludes the item on the local plan and continuing on the strategic planning element of tonight's agenda item four is the clappin junction master plan and the proposed transformation of falcon road bridge again i'm i believe councillor hogg would like to say a few words on this and then i'm going to move to to officers for a quick update before questions so over to you councillor hogg thanks chair and apologies for not being able to there be there in person this evening very briefly just to say i think most people in battersea across the borough will know this rather unpleasant slightly dingy underpass at clappin junction it's been there for many years residents have told us they really want it to change to improve so really really pleased we've been able to bring forward this proposal use contributions and property developers and to fund real change as part of our decade of renewal in the borough so you'll already have seen a doubling of our investment in roads and pavements and not adding a penny onto your council tax now we're doing the same moving on to some of our infrastructure initially with this underpass so working with our excellent partners at the london festival of architecture we've got together these great designs dozens of entries now down to the final seven i think do please have a look there's a they're outside the bridge in clappin junction you can see them in battersea library you can vote for them online on your phone is creating a wonderful debate about you know which one's going to be the best but we are going to pick one very soon we are going to implement it very quickly and just to say there'll be more to come you know we have freed these developer contributions to be used in every neighbourhood across the borough so i would encourage both the councillors there this evening and all members of the public to you know please get in touch come up with your next idea for investment to give everyone pride in their neighbourhoods thank you very much i'm now going to move to i think nico mr mr andy on i can see you down there do you want to say a few words on this before we open up for questions thanks council just just to add to what council hogger said and just give a bit of wider context this project around the falcon road on passes very much seeing as a very first early phase of work within the area and the wider master plan had western williamson and partners appointed the end of last year they've been looking at lots of the issues around the station and the movement generally within the area looking at wider concepts of connectivity and that work will become much more public next year and it's progressing well in the sense of early ideas and thoughts around it but as councillor rightly says the the big eyesore remains the underpass it's it's come up a lot in in correspondence from from partners and stakeholders and residents and there's an opportunity here to try and tackle that in the during the course of the next calendar year we have got funding secured we've done some provisional work with our our term contractor common ways to get a sense of what sort of indicative costs might be involved with that we've built in a very healthy contingency at this point of around 40 percent because a lot of it is unknown yet and obviously we haven't got a design per se albeit it's coming forward but we feel with that amount of budget in place we can we can do a very attractive scheme that will look at a lot of improvements around the area and obviously act as a catalyst over the wider change thank you mr john okay so some very quick hands go up there so i'm going to go council apt council hamilton thank you thank you um this is a question possibly for councillor hogg or possibly for mr adonal i'm very pleased to see i see i'm very pleased to see this project as somebody living in baptistery you could hardly fail to miss it it's going to make a big difference I like all of the schemes i shan't tell you which is my favourite but i'll look forward to seeing it in place um on this though i know from page one to four um the comments from the executive director for finance that it's come from the uh general fund capital program but could you tell me a bit more about specifically where this is bit how this is being funded um and how that will move forward thank you Cymysgwch, dwi'n meddwl y byddai'n cwestiwn am y byddai'n cwestiwn i'w gweithredu. Dwi'n meddwl efallai y byddwch chi'n mynd i mewn a bydd Mr O'Donnell yn gallu cymryd amdanyn nhw os oes unrhyw beth o'r element ffundio. Wel, dwi'n mynd i'r cwestiwn efallai y bydd Sara'n dweud i mi ei dylunio ffawr iawn i'r bridd. Ond efallai y byddai'n gallu ddweud i mi hynny nesaf. Ond rwy'n meddwl y bydd yn ymdrechgar mewn Buffa'n bryd ein gwella beth o'n additionio'r ffundio Connect tudo a ymdrechgar i fofi'r gwypgynysgoedd hefyd. Felly, a dwi'n meddwl bod hynny'r gwaith hwn yn rhywbeth sy'n credu ei fod yn gwneud gwahaniaethau materiol i'r cymuned hwnnw, a dwi'n meddwl bod hynny'n gweithredu'r rhan o'r gwasanaeth. Mae'r cwestiwn rwyf wedi'i ddweud yw, mae'n dweud yn ddiweddarol, yn enwedig o'r ffaith bod rhywbeth o ddwyloedd wedi'i gweithredu gan Network Rail am y gweithredu o'r bridd yn Balwm, yng Nghymru, ond nid yw'r gweithredu gan Network Rail am y gweithredu hwnnw. Rwy'n meddwl bod unrhyw gweithredu yn gallu'i wneud. Rwy'n meddwl bod y gweithredu yn mynd trwy'r ddwyloedd, ond os oes unrhyw gweithredu yn gallu'i wneud i ddweud efallai unrhyw gweithredu o Network Rail, oherwydd rwy'n meddwl bod maen nhw'n gweithredu i'r gweithredu o'r bridd, i wneud yn bwysig bod ymddygiadau cymdeithasol o'r hyn yw £4.5 miliwn. A beth bydd hynny'n cael cymdeithasol ymddygiadau cymdeithasol yn y ddwyloedd? Yn enwedig, a oes rwy'n meddwl bod Network Rail yn gallu gael cymdeithasol i'w wneud hynny? Felly, yn y casau Network Rail yn enwedig, maen nhw'n mynd i weithio mewn cymdeithasol ymddygiadau cymdeithasol. Felly, maen nhw'n mynd i weithio'r gwasanaethau eu hunain a chael eu mewn ymddygiadau cymdeithasol am ymddygiad ymlaen. Felly, yn y casau Bannerman a Old York Road, maen nhw'n mynd i weithio mewn cymdeithasol ac maen nhw'n mynd i weithio mewn cymdeithasol ymddygiadau cymdeithasol ac rydyn ni'n cymdeithasol am beth maen nhw'n mynd i weithio mewn cymdeithasol. Er enghraifft, gallwn ni gyrraedd y gwasanaeth. Yn y casau hynny, er enghraifft, mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. Mae'n ddaeth yn ddaeth. according to the commission. Rwy'n credu bod hynny'n rhaid i'w ddiddordeb, ac rwy'n siŵr bod hynny'n rhaid i'w ddysgu oherwydd y perioedau cymdeithasol a'r plan ffwrdd y mae Network Rail wedi'i cael. Yn ogystal â mi, mae'n rhaid i'w ddiddordeb. Diolch. Yn ogystal â'r gweithreduau astedig, beth gweithredu a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a'r bai? Yn ogystal â beth gweithredu a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n mynd i'w edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer ped ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a allwn ni'n edrych ar gyfer pedestriaeth a I've just slightly surprised that we didn't have any, well, or perhaps we did, we just haven't seen it, but any kind of brief about what we expect in terms of maximum potential separation of pedestrian cyclists traffic, and whether we should not have given a more specific brief, but that of course we don't know about. So just to add to that, we have done assessments looking at the whips there. You have to accommodate a minimum whip for effectively two buses passing, or particularly two emergency vehicle whips. That sets your parameters. It's not very wide there, you can't gain lots of space. We think in an absolute ideal world where you take things right down to them and you might be able to squeeze about another half a metre for pedestrians. The question then becomes to build out half a metre and all the cost of what that entails, or the disruption of the traffic that entails, is it worth it? And there are variants within that. So that has been assessed. There's been no conclusion yet because we want to see and work with the design team that come on board and talk through some of those thoughts, ideas, how that may fit into what they're thinking. But there isn't a significant amount of gain that can be had, unfortunately, for pedestrians or cyclists. Thank you. Thank you, Councillor Tiller. Yes, thank you Chair. The consultation about the Falcon Road bridge has attracted a lot of interest. So can we run other high visibility consultations in the same way? It depends on the nature of how we're approaching it, but yes, generally speaking, when we have significant scale of investment, we do tend to do quite significant amounts of consultation. We've done a number of corridor schemes already, some which are out, some which are coming out quite soon. In this particular instance, I think it's generally more interest because of the element of the design aspect, the London Festival architecture and the generation of the concepts, if you like, which is a bit more unique to this situation. I don't want to do my own world a doom and disservice, but don't get quite so excited about roads and pavements generally. They tend to get more excited about art and design, and that's what's triggered a lot more interest. I hate to say it because obviously I'm the complete opposite to that. About the place, aren't we thinking about the place? I think it's set a nice precedent, and the level of engagement has given us plenty of food for thought about how we will look at other areas and other consultations. Thank you. If anyone happens to be listening about designs, they are worth looking at online if anyone's not seen them yet. I have seen some of the local Battersea sites having some fierce debate with local residents as to which option is the best. So, councillors, before we start voting on our favourite options on the bridge this evening, does anyone else have any questions on this paper? No. OK, well, thank you, Councillor Hogg, for your introduction and on officers and councillors for your questions. The committee is being asked on this item if they agree to support the recommendations to the executive in paragraph 2. Please can I ask all those in favour to please raise their hands? I'm happy to say it receives unanimous support, even if our choices for the final design do not, but we can come back to that in a future meeting. Thank you, councillors. That concludes our strategic planning element of tonight's agenda. As a reminder, I'm now going to rejig the agenda slightly to move online for officer introduction on the item 8, which is the Battersea Park area CPZ review. I believe that we have an officer online for an introduction. Thank you, chair. Yes, I can do a brief introduction. So, this report is on the outcome of a review, which included a consultation with residents and businesses within the Battersea Park area control parking zone. It's a zone that was introduced back in the mid-90s. We've had a number of calls over a number of years to carry out a review of this particular zone, and we did that this year during the summer. We looked, as well as looking at the actual operation of the zone, with officers doing site visits, we carried out consultation by delivering letters, pointing residents and businesses to our online consultation document, giving them the opportunity to provide their views about the operation of the zone and whether or not they are interested. The report sets out the summary of the results to the key questions in Appendix 1.12 in the paper, and the conclusion is that most residents that responded would like to see changes to the operational days and hours of the zone. We are proposing that the zone be changed so that it operates 9 am until 8 pm, seven days a week, Monday to Sunday. Thank you very much for that. I need Councillor Bell to give me his hand up. It is, of course, largely my ward. I think I made it the other way around. My ward contains nothing much else than this zone, is what I'm trying to say. I'm interested in a couple of things. When talking about the percentage turnout, whether you included in that account all the flats on the east side of the park, that is between the Victoria railway line and Queenstown Road, if you included all those, I suspect there's one-to-one private parking there in the basements. So I wouldn't be at all amazed if you've got a 0% response in that particular bit, but does someone can tell me? Sorry, can you just tell me again exactly which flats you're asking about between Queenstown Road? I think I could reel off all the names, actually, but let's start with a big one like Warwick Gardens. But all the ones on the east side of Queenstown Road, between Queenstown Road itself, or between Battersea Park, if you like, and the Victoria railway line. Thank you, Councillor Belton, for the clarification there. None of those addresses fall within the Battersea Park area control parking zone, so if you look at appendix 1— Yeah, okay, I get your point. Sorry, I just thought it was so totally the whole ward. I take your point, but it's all private parking there anyway, so I was mistaken on that. I'm presumably—it did include in your consultation all of the Ethelberger estate, did you? Although, of course, much of that has council-supplied parking as well, and indeed the big flats on the riverfront, the Foster's building and so on, those sort of places. Indeed, we did. The Ethelberger estate properties that is within the boundary of the control parking zone, and are you talking about Waterside Point and Holt Road? Yes, yes, yes. Yes. They would have been included because they are within the boundary of the zone. The only point I'm really making is that there's a very large number of properties there with either council blocks with council-provided car parking space or blocks with large private underground, so the fact that you've got a low turnout is not a surprise. That's all I'm getting around to say. For those people who don't have those kind of facilities, can I welcome this heartily? It's about the major issue. Okay, so many people will say people who are living in Prince of Wales Drive don't have many issues. Well, fair enough, that may be true of lots of them. But the major issue is parking ever since the power station was opened. It's been a real pain for them, and so they'll be delighted, and I'm really pleased to welcome it and tell them all next week that they're getting what they wanted. So thank you. Great. Just one technical question, sorry. Go on, I'm sure I knew there was a question in there somewhere. Because it goes on later in the evening and at various odd times, is there a staffing issue here in terms of the meter control, or we can make that work? Okay, can we? Would you like me to answer that, Chairman? Yes, please. We can meet the requirements for enforcing the zone during those hours. Civil enforcement officers will be deployed to cover the proposed 9am to 8pm. Thank you. Do I have any other questions on this paper? No. Okay, thank you very much. So on this paper, the committee asked whether they agree to support the recommendations in paragraph 2 of the report. All those in favour, please raise your hands. And Councillor Belton's residents will be delighted to know that the CPZ received unanimous support, and thank you, committee, for switching around the agenda. And then thank you, Mr Lane. You can now log off and enjoy your evening. So, just as a reminder, I'm now going to go back to the agenda as was. So, we are now going to move on to item 5 on the quiet cycling routes, and officers have been kind enough to print off some bigger versions of the map that appears in there, because it's quite a small one. So, Mr Tiddly has some A3 versions at the top of the table, should anyone want them, and his glamorous assistant is handing them out now. Okay, over to you, Mr Tiddly, when you're ready. Thank you, Chair. David Tiddly, the head of transport strategy. The committee earlier this year gave officers permission to consult on a number of quiet cycle routes, and just to briefly explain what these routes are is that they're observed routes that cyclists use to make good progress between points avoiding main roads. And some of these routes are based on our observations, some on feedback from cyclists has been very useful for them, and we've looked at them and assessed them and tried to identify where, by relatively minor interventions, we could develop quite a good network of cycle routes that are quiet and safe and attractive for all users. We went out to a first stage consultation, which was to effectively ascertain from our stakeholders and through an online consultation whether people agreed with the broad alignments of the routes. So, this was very much a consultation asking people, you know, do you think this is the right route, and some people would come back and say, well, we think that the adjacent road is a better road than this, et cetera, et cetera. And what you have for you in the paper is the results of that first stage consultation, which effectively makes us come to a conclusion that about half the routes are as currently sort of aligned, suitable to take forward to a more detailed consultation where we will undertake targeted consultation with the streets on the route and the people who live on the route about the measures that we then propose to introduce. So, I think with that, just one other point to make that there were a couple of other broad comments that came back. Some people also suggested additional routes, which we're happy to take forward at later stage. Some people mentioned a need to ensure that pedestrians were also considered on these routes, and that's something that we will certainly take forward in the detailed design to ensure, for example, crossing points are in the right location. And we also had a comment, as you'll see from looking at the plan, that there's a relative lack of routes on the eastern side of the borough. And that's primarily because most cycle activity on the eastern side of the borough does generally converge on the main roads, because they're the roads that people generally use to make good progress between places, so Queenstown Road, Battersea Bridge Road, Battersea Park Road. Because of the nature of the railway and the river and main roads, they do tend to be the roads which most cyclists need. And so, in those areas, there will probably need to be a higher investment in a different type of solution, in more segregated facilities on those sorts of roads. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Tidley. OK, questions? OK, Councillor Austin, Councillor Appes, please. Thank you very much, Chair. I think my ward has, I don't know if it's the majority, but it's certainly got 11, 12 and 13 of them in my ward. The last thing I ever want to do is go against this, but we need to think about all residents, pedestrians, car users, local residents. I know that 11 and 12 are going to further consultation, or 11 are going to further consultation. My two concerns, a lot of the comments that I had were around the pinch points, specifically around Granard Avenue and Putney Park Lane. There's a lot of pedestrians, dog walkers, and Putney Park Lane is not a vehicle route at all, that area of it, and there's a lot of concern over that. Secondly, around the Keswick Road and Clock Place Bridge, which is another converging point, which I think the next stage probably needs to be rerouted and certainly considered. But on the bridge itself, I had two more administrative points as well, which is what is the standard width needed for a bridge or a lane that is shared by two ways, by pedestrians and cyclists and movement, and does the bridge meet those standards? Thank you, Councillor. Just to pick up on those points, as you'll notice from the plan showing 11 and 12, they start in Roehampton, they move towards Putney, and our expectation is that they will converge into one route. So, all those lines on 11 and 12 will probably, when they're implemented, be an either or, and certainly we would expect that Dover House Road would be a route and not Putney Park Lane. Obviously, we'll see what the detailed consultation comes back, but I suspect that would be the result of that. In terms of the width, it really depends on the levels of usage and the distance over which something travels. So, obviously, you want a wider route if it's a long route used by hundreds and hundreds of cyclists. If it's a very short section of route that is only, say, 20 or 30 metres and isn't used by that many people, you can probably bring that down. So, I wouldn't want to give a precise answer to that. We're looking to it and investigating it as part of the detail. Thank you. Councillor Abs. Thanks very much. You might not be surprised here, I want to talk about Battersea, where, as we've identified, there's no routes. I would actually say there's quite a few quiet routes. I use a quiet route to get to the town hall on a daily basis. There's a quiet route, which is to the north of Wandsworth Road, which somebody told me about, which I've never quite managed to work out. I suspect that it might be complicated by the fact that some of it might run through Lambeth as well, because Wandsworth Road is quite complex in the borough boundaries. So, it would be good to know how you'd work with those. Thank you very much, Mr O'Donnell and to Henry, too. That is a very important quiet route to Battersea Park that a lot of local residents use. Maybe a lot of people commute through Battersea, but there are a lot of local people who've got their own little quiet ways that we'd like to share with other local residents. So, I suppose my question would be, when can we see some future plans for some quiet ways in Battersea, so that we can all benefit from some of the routes that some of us have discovered over the years? Thank you, councillor. I certainly think the plan should have shown probably Feasley Road, because that's a clear, high-quality cycle route along a relatively sort of segregated facility there that is very well used. And that does go into Lambeth and requires some work by Lambeth. Also, I'd probably say Ravenet Street, if you know that cut through there, that's very well used as well. And that forms part of a phase of works that we're looking at for improvements on Queenstown Road. Culvert Place is interesting, because there's always been this desire through the tunnel, then through the middle section of the railway, and then up on the bridge and over. So, again, it's very well used. Whether we can design a cycle route to cycle quality standards through there, or just accept that it's a good route for people to use, but not call it a quiet way, I'm not so sure. But we'll have a look at it, yes. I think Councillor Mayorkas. Just a few quick points before question. The first is just thanks to officers for this paper. I don't underestimate the work of going through nearly 1,700 comments, which, when we talk about responses to consultation, is pretty impressive, I'd say, for something that doesn't have artwork in it. Just an observation, you know, obviously the routes on the Commons have been kind of the most controversial and have the most feedback. I think my concern about delaying those, I think it's sensible to take that decision now, but my concern about delaying them in the long run and in response to what Councillor Austin said is that, for example, on Wandsworth Common, lots of people on bikes cycle those routes anyway. And so they are dangerous currently because they are not wide enough, and there is a wider question to be had over, does it make sense to actually widen them so that the chance of collision is less, and obviously then the risk is that you encourage people to use it, and I appreciate that's a very delicate argument, but I would, just as a word of caution for us all, people are going to cycle more, that's the way things are going, and if we don't make the provision, then people will do it anyway, and that could be more dangerous. And yeah, just a question for the Cabinet Member, can we expect to see next steps on the routes that weren't taken forward within this council term? Yeah, thank you, Councillor Mayorkas, yes, I think as I hope it's in the paper, officers will definitely be looking at the routes that we decided would have to go a bit more slowly to review very carefully all the comments, because obviously there were more reasons why those routes were potentially difficult to implement, but it is very much the intention to keep looking at them and look at the very helpful comments that residents have made and suggestions about how they could be changed or rerouted so that they can still be accommodated, and I don't know whether Mr Tiddly might have anything to add to that. I would just add that assuming the committee agree the paper tonight, then in the next few days I'll recontact the Commons stakeholders specifically to ask them about meeting to discuss the feedback and how we continue to take it forward, and it doesn't just, as you say, drift. Thank you, and yeah, and just to echo my thanks to the officers, because yeah, it's taken, I can remember these conversations starting when I was doing the Cabinet role and actually those walkabouts on the Commons started with consulting with those stakeholders who use and look after our Commons as well, and really it's been a really great process to engage with them and listen to them along the way and take them along this journey as well. Do I have any other hands, questions on this one? No, okay. Well thank you officers and thank you for printing off those maps, I think they've been a helpful part of discussion I'm sure will be used. The committee are asked on this paper whether they agree to support the recommendations. In paragraph two, can I ask all those in favour to please raise their hands? So there's one, two, three, four, five, six in favour. Okay. All those against, please raise your hands. And any abstentions? Two abstentions. Hang on, we had a councillor who voted twice on council decision. Do you support it or abstain? You support it. Okay, so six in favour and two abstentions. Thank you very much and thank you, I just wanted to make that clear. Okay. So yeah, so the next item we have is agenda item six is the Wandsworth corporate plan actions and KPIs and thank you Ms O'Connor and I believe we have an officer online for any of the finance based queries that if they come up on this one. So Ms O'Connor, over to you. Thank you. I'm Claire O'Connor, director of climate change communications and policy for Wandsworth council. The report that you have in front of you is the usual report that you receive twice a year. So it sets out the out turn at the end of quarter two against the key performance indicators that you agreed as a committee back in June. It also sets out the updates against the actions in the corporate plan that fall within the remit of this committee and again those are the actions that you agreed as a committee in June. I'm sorry that the paper came out a day after the agenda was dispatched. The quarter two is very close to dispatch for transport committee and as we did last year we needed just a few more days to verify the data and I would rather give you accurate data that we'd looked at rather than give you changes at the committee. I'm here with officers who lead on the services to take any questions you have. Thank you very much for that introduction. Do I have any comments or questions on this paper? There is silence on this paper. Do I take it that we would like to move to a vote immediately on that paper? It's for noting for information. Are we happy to agree that and take that as information? Thank you and thank you Ms O'Connor for being the easiest ride I've seen on that paper. You took me by surprise because usually there are some. Thank you very much. Next item on the agenda. We have the agenda item seven is the school streets programme review. So we are back to Mr Tidley on that one. Yes, thank you Chair. This is just an update paper just updating the committee on our current status of school streets in the borough. Members will probably not need me to tell you what a school street is but I'm going to. A school street is where we close the road or roads near a school at the children arrival and departure times. That helps improve safety for children, it helps encourage them to think about walking and cycling to school and also reduces the extent to which vehicles are polluting in the immediate vicinity of the school. We've had several phases of the school streets which are detailed in the paper. What we're proposing is to progress a further phase of school streets but at the same time we're also ongoing reviewing of the existing school streets to make sure that they are operationally still work. Some of them, as you'll see in the paper, we propose to make some improvements to the visibility of them and some of the measures. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thank you Chair. Yeah, obviously we'd love to welcome this paper and note that the target from the west has been reached one year early, just which is nice. I know that we are at the stage now where I guess the kind of low hanging fruit of school streets have been have been ticked off and we're moving towards ones that are more difficult because they're on main roads or they've had historic problems with with local community. And I just wanted to kind of open up a suggestion to the cross party where we might suggest that for the next phase we ask officers to do an audit ward by ward, send the local councillors an audit of their wards so they can see plain clearly here's how many schools in your ward, here's how many have school streets, here's any background of ones that have been rejected before and then councillors have the opportunity to work with their local community to revisit those plans or to perhaps come up with or help the school to visit them for the first time. I know, for example, in my ward there's a school that the local community refused it, but it wasn't a clear enough picture, I don't think, and that was the feedback from the school. So well, we as local councillors to put some time and effort into revisiting that, I think we could probably get it over the line. So yeah, open to feedback on that suggestion. And I think, Councillor Hamilton, I'll allow you, but I think it's a welcome suggestion, Councillor Hill, good. Yeah, no, certainly from a Conservative group perspective, let's see what's before. Thank you. But yeah, I don't, I'm, Councillor Appes, you've got your hand up. Thank you, and thank you for this paper on such an important topic. I wanted to ask about, on page 147, you've got the programme review and there's point C, which is about enhanced signage at selective school streets. This has been introduced into one of the local schools in my ward. What I would like to know is how that will be monitored, how you'll get feedback on how that's working, so that we know that those signs are being effective. It was good to see there was some evidence that they were being effective, so that's good news, but how will that continue? Okay, it generally forms, it depends on how the school street is enforced, but there tends to be several ways of doing it. One is from feedback from the school itself, one is through officers undertaking surveys and we regularly undertake surveys at these schools. And those schools where there's ANPR cameras, then it's a clear, relatively easy to then also match the numbers of penalty charge notices that are introduced, that are issued before or after these measures are put in. So there are a few ways of doing it, depending on how the school's been enforced. Yeah, if I could just follow that up a supplementary. I get a lot of feedback from local residents about how the school street's working as well as from the school, and sometimes when there's been massive infringements like a lot of U-turns and people driving and doing three-point turns in quite dangerous ways, I've heard that from residents rather than from the school. So I'd welcome residents being able to feedback sometimes as well, because I think sometimes they do have a good view on safety. Thank you, Councillor Atts. Are there any more questions on this paper? No, and again, thank you to officers on that one. And I think, as Councillor Mayorkas said, it's great that we've met that target early, but the work doesn't stop here, and yeah, it's, I'm sorry, I've just indicated to Councillor Yates to say something. Yeah, I just wanted to welcome that suggestion from Councillor Mayorkas, and I'm glad, Councillor Hamilton, you know, for your positive response to that, because I think that is a really good idea, and Mr Tiddly, hopefully, that's something that, you know, we can ask our very dedicated officers who lead on the school streets to take that forward, because I think, you know, obviously we face the situation that as we go forward with the scheme, you know, it becomes the schools that don't have the school streets are the more difficult schools to wear, by which to introduce these schemes. So if we can, you know, have ward councillor sort of buy in and support, helping to look at the challenges and how they may be able to be solved, I think that would be really helpful. Great, thank you, Councillor Yates, and I think there'll be board agreement on that. So moving to the vote on this, the committee are asked whether they agree to support the recommendations in paragraph two of the report. Can I ask all those in favour to please raise their hands? We have unanimous support for school streets, so thank you, councillors. And just as a reminder, so that was agenda item seven. Agenda item eight we took earlier on the Battersea area CPZ review, and so we now move to item nine on the agenda, the local implementation plan. I think we're back to you, Mr Tiddly. Thank you, Chair. So the local implementation plan is the council's transport plan setting out how the council would help deliver the Mayor of London's transport strategy at the local level. In order to help us deliver that local implementation plan, we've put in a funding application to Transport for London annually for TfL to help fund measures that will help us deliver the plan. And what you have in front of you is a paper listing out those schemes and projects that we propose to bid to Transport for London for. Now, just to briefly explain that there are several pots of funding here. There's some funding which is allocated to boroughs on the basis of a formula, and so it takes into account certain metrics. And then it comes up with a number, and that number for Wandsworth is £1.1 million, so we're relatively sure that there's £1.1 million available that we effectively bid up to that number for, and that's set out in the early part of the appendix. Then, in addition to that, there are then other funding pots, primarily for cycling schemes and for bus priority schemes, where funding is released as you go, depending on development of the schemes and that they are worthy of continued transport for London funding. So those are more discretionary pots which may or may not be awarded as we go. What I would say as well is that nothing that the committee decides necessarily tonight means that any of these schemes would necessarily be implemented because they would still require a degree of consultation or design and would come back to the committee for approvals in the normal way. However, having said that, one thing that the local implementation plan funding is particularly useful for is the funding of some council revenues programmes, particularly the school travel planning programme and the road safety and cycle training programmes, because those are programmes that cannot be as easily funded through council budgets, because the council has increasingly put funding into transport improvements, but it's primarily through capital forms of funding. So the TfL funding, despite being a relatively modest sum these days, is actually quite valuable in what it's able to fund. Thank you. Thank you, Mr Tiddly. And I'll come first to Councillor Tiller, please. Thank you, Chair. Yes, I'm very pleased to see a question of interest on bus priority and rationalised bus stands. And could the officers tell us more about the plans and particularly those for Longmead Road in Tooting? So there's a couple of things going on there. The council has a package of measures proposed to improve the Tooting area, which Mr O'Donnell and Mr Chung have been leading on. But one thing that has repeatedly come up is the impact that that stand on at Longmead Road has on the local area, because obviously there's lots of buses turning and it really does detract from the quality of the environment there. So, irrespective of this bid for potentially funding to help move stands, we're investigating moving those stands and how we might be able to extend bus routes and take buses out of that location and send them to other locations. So, for example, the Springfield development would be a good example of one that we might be able to take from Tooting and take it into Springfield to help serve the new development. That said, what we're also doing here is suggesting that if transport for London does have large amounts of money available for bus priority measures, then we could potentially use quite a good sum of it in order to actually rearrange the bus services in the area and remove the stand altogether. I hadn't particularly thought about bus stands, but now you've mentioned it. What's the average shift length of time a bus driver's allowed to drive without having a break? I don't know the answer to that. I'd need to check that one, because it does change quite regularly, but in terms of their standing, a bus would normally spend about 10 minutes on a stand as an average. I suppose also just to pick up on the point that the Clapham Junction bus stands that you probably know very well, Councillor, are ones again which we would like to think about rearranging. That sort of mix of stands about Flower, Grant Road, outside the station master's house, they could all probably work better than they currently do. I was actually thinking about it from the driver's point of view. If I'd been driving for, I don't know, an hour and a half or something through London's traffic, I can imagine one thing that I'd definitely want quite a lot of bus stands. And there don't seem to be any of those kind of facilities at, say, Mount Flower Road or Elko Street or the Green Man, unless you go, if you happen to be finishing your drive on a 37 or something, unless we have agreements with the pub. We wouldn't want to accuse the bus driver of having a quick pint, would we, but if he'd popped in there for his own comfort. I mean, it must be a really difficult problem with some of the stands, and what do we do for the drivers? It can be, and I think most stands have some rest welfare facilities. I certainly recall at Besborough Road in Roehampton was one that didn't, and we addressed that relatively recently. I'm not sure about Mount Flower, I have to say. I don't know what we've got there, but I'm pretty sure there's some facility there. I'll have to have a check. But one I was particularly interested in, Elko Street, I never can remember whether it's Elko or Howie. Is it Elko, out the back of the RCA building? Yeah, at the park gate, where there's always two or three 19 buses, and as you probably know, the pavement width is about the width of a kerbstone, just the one, you have to be quite young and agile to even get along it at all. That's totally inadequate, and fairly dangerous, and lots of complaints about it. Only that it probably lends more weight to our suggestion that we should get some funding in order to help deliver improved bus standing arrangements in the borough. That one there, I think, there was a bus garage there originally, wasn't it, and they were effectively, I think, TfL or London Buses, whoever it was at that point, built on the bus garage, and since then, there's been a lot of work on that. Okay, thank you very much for that. Are there any other questions on this paper, or points to raise? No? Okay. I just welcome, especially Mr Tiddly's remarks earlier, for the money that we're able to use and to allocate, certainly, to road safety and to keep those cycle trains going. I think they're things to be welcomed, and I know we get lots of feedback, positive feedback, from those who do undertake those. So thank you very much for that. The committee are asked whether they agree to support the recommendations to the Executive in paragraph 3 of the report. All those in favour? No. Thank you very much. All those in favour, please raise their hands. And the paper passes unanimously, so thank you very much. We are speeding along nicely to the final paper on tonight's agenda, which is the budget monitoring second quarter paper. And welcome, Mr Moylan, to the table. Good evening, committee. Thank you very much. My name is Alex Moylan. I'm the Head of Finance and Performance within Environment and Community Services Directorate. So this report sets out the revenue budget position for the current financial year for services within the remit of the Transport Committee. This follows on from the update, the quarter one update that was taken to the previous committee in October. The forecast for our current outturn is somewhat in excess of the budget of £319,000, which is an increase from our quarter one position. This is set out in summary in paragraph 2 and in the table in Appendix A. Part of this was associated with assumptions for spatial planning, which have been covered earlier in the agenda. Other movements from quarter one are a slight increase in expectations for costs associated with engineering, some central costs for the directorate within the finance and performance section, and some agency costs associated with the management of the parking service, leading to the small aggregate increase we have. I'm very happy to have any questions that people may have on the agenda item. Thank you very much. And do we have any questions on this paper? Silence all around. Okay, are the committee happy that I move to a vote on this? Okay, we can see some nods, so I'm going to do just that. So thank you, Mr. Moinen, for that. The committee are being asked whether they agree to note the report for information as per paragraph one of the report. Can I ask that that's agreed for information? Agreed. Okay, thank you very much, Councillors, and thank you again, Mr. Moinen. Please say that now concludes the business of the committee this evening. Thank you for your attendance, and I'll see you back here in February.
Summary
The committee voted to approve the adoption of proposed changes to the council's Local Plan, subject to a further round of public consultation. The committee also agreed to support the allocation of £4.5 million to improvements to the Falcon Road underpass.
Local Plan Partial Review
The committee considered a report on the council's proposed changes to its Local Plan. The proposed changes would, amongst other things, commit the council to aiming for 50% affordable
housing1 in all new developments.
Councillor Sarah Apps asked how the policy would be cost-effective. Debbie Turner, the council's Principal Development Viability Officer, said that delivering more affordable housing would help limit the pressure on temporary accommodation, which is a substantial cost to the council. She added that increasing the level of social rented
housing2 would be particularly beneficial.
Councillor Tony Belton raised concerns about the number of properties being let out as holiday accommodation or short-term lets. He also pointed out that the aspirations of the Local Plan are not the same as the London Plan, to which the local plan must adhere. An officer said that the plan was written to be in conformity with the London Plan, but that the council sought to adapt some of its mechanisms to maximise the delivery of social rented housing in Wandsworth.
Councillor Daniel Hamilton asked if the proposed changes were a statement of principles or if the council genuinely believed they would achieve the desired housing mix, given the amount of flexibility included within them. Councillor Simon Hogg, the Leader of the Council, said that delivering 50% affordable housing was a manifesto pledge that would be delivered.
Councillor James Austin asked how many site typologies were tested as part of the viability assessment for the new plan. Ms Turner said that 48 typologies had been tested at nine different open market values ranging from £8,000 to £14,000 per square metre, and that the majority were viable at 50% affordable housing.
Councillor Matthew Tiller asked about the accommodation provided for students at St George's, University of London. An officer said that both St George's and the University of Roehampton had been engaged with and that they both had sufficient accommodation to meet their current needs.
Clapham Junction Master Plan
The committee received a report updating them on the Clapham Junction Masterplan. The report focussed on the proposed transformation of the Falcon Road underpass, for which the council has allocated £4.5 million.
Councillor Hogg said that the underpass was an unpleasant and dingy area that residents wanted to see improved. He said that the council had partnered with the London Festival of Architecture to develop designs, with seven finalists now on display outside the bridge, in Battersea Library, and online.
Councillor Hamilton asked for further information on the funding for the project. An officer said that the funding would come from the council's general fund capital programme and would be supplemented by developer contributions.
Councillor Tiller asked if, given the level of interest in the Falcon Road underpass project, similar high-visibility consultation exercises could be held for other schemes. An officer replied that this depended on the nature of the scheme, but that more significant schemes generally attracted more consultation. He added that the design element of the Falcon Road project had generated a lot of interest, and that the council would look to replicate this engagement in other areas.
Battersea Park Area CPZ Review
The committee considered a report on a proposed review of the Battersea Park controlled parking zone (CPZ).
An officer said that the council had received a number of calls for a review of the zone, which was introduced in the mid-1990s. He said that following a consultation with residents and businesses, the council was proposing to change the operational hours of the zone to 9am to 8pm, seven days a week.
Councillor Belton asked whether the consultation had included properties on the eastern side of the park. An officer said that these addresses did not fall within the Battersea Park CPZ. Councillor Belton welcomed the proposals, saying that parking had been a major issue for residents since the opening of Battersea Power Station.
Quiet Cycling Routes
The committee received a report on the results of a consultation into the council's proposed quiet cycling routes. The routes are designed to provide cyclists with safer and more attractive ways to travel around the borough.
David Tiddly, the council's Head of Transport Strategy, said that about half of the proposed routes had been deemed suitable to be taken forward to a more detailed consultation. He added that there had been a number of comments about the lack of routes on the eastern side of the borough, and that this was primarily due to the fact that most cycle activity in these areas converged on the main roads.
Councillor Austin asked about the pinch points on routes 11 and 12 in Roehampton. Mr Tiddly said that the council expected these routes to converge into one, with Dover House Road being the preferred option.
Councillor Appes asked when plans for quiet ways in Battersea could be expected. Mr Tiddly said that Feasley Road was a clear high-quality cycle route and that Ravenet Street formed part of a phase of works on Queenstown Road.
Councillor Mayorkas said that many people already cycled on the proposed routes on Wandsworth Common, making them dangerous due to their narrow width. He asked if the council would consider widening them to reduce the risk of collisions. He also asked for assurances that the council would continue to look at the routes that were not taken forward in this phase. Councillor Hogg said that officers would review the comments received and look at how the routes could be changed or rerouted.
School Streets Programme Review
The committee received an update on the council's School Streets programme, where roads near schools are closed at the start and end of the school day.
Mr Tiddly said that the council had met its target for the number of School Streets in the borough one year early, and that it was now looking to progress a further phase of the programme.
Councillor Mayorkas said that the council had now largely implemented School Streets in locations where there was local support. She suggested that officers should carry out an audit of schools in each ward to identify potential new locations, and that this information could then be shared with local councillors to discuss with their communities. Councillor Hamilton welcomed the suggestion on behalf of the Conservative group.
Councillor Appes asked about the enhanced signage that had been introduced at some School Streets. She asked how this would be monitored and how the council would gather feedback on its effectiveness. An officer said this varied depending on the school, but that feedback would be sought from the school, officers would undertake surveys, and the number of penalty charge notices issued would be monitored.
Local Implementation Plan
The committee considered a report on the council's Local Implementation Plan, which sets out how the council intends to support the Mayor of London's Transport Strategy. The report included details of the schemes that the council intends to bid for funding for from Transport for London.
Councillor Tiller asked for more information on the plans for bus priority and the rationalisation of bus stands, particularly in Longmead Road in Tooting.
Mr Tiddly said that the council was investigating moving the bus stands in Longmead Road as part of a wider package of measures to improve the Tooting area. He said that one option would be to extend bus routes to serve new developments, such as the Springfield development.
Councillor Belton raised concerns about the lack of facilities for bus drivers, particularly at bus stands in Mount Flower Road and Elcho Street. Mr Tiddly said that he would look into the matter.
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Affordable housing is a term used by local authorities to describe housing that is designated to help those who cannot afford market rate housing in their area. ↩
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Social rented housing is housing offered by local authorities and some housing associations. Rents are generally lower than in the private rented sector and most social renters receive some form of housing benefit to help them pay their rent. ↩
Attendees
Documents
- Agenda frontsheet 19th-Nov-2024 19.30 Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee agenda
- Public reports pack 19th-Nov-2024 19.30 Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee reports pack
- 24-325 - Appendix 2 other
- 24-320 - Report other
- 24-322 - Appendix 2 other
- 24-320 - Appendix 1 other
- 24-320 - Appendix 2 other
- 24-324 - Report
- 24-320 - Appendix 3 other
- 24-326 - Report and Appendix 1 other
- 24-321- Report other
- 24-325 - Report other
- 24-322 - Report and Appendix 1 other
- 24-325 - Appendix 1 other
- 24-349 - Report and Appendices other
- 24-322 - Amended Appendix 2 other
- Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Supplementary Agenda 19th-Nov-2024 19.30 Transport Ove agenda
- 24-323 - Report and Appendices other
- Decisions 19th-Nov-2024 19.30 Transport Overview and Scrutiny Committee other