Agenda and minutes

An apology for absence was received from Councillor North.

An apology for absence was also received from Councillor Sam Dalton, Cabinet Member for Environment Capital.

Item 6 – Trees and Woodland Strategy

Councillor Sandford declared a personal interest as he was employed by the Woodland Trust.

The minutes of the meeting held on 4 November 2010 were approved as a correct record.

There were no requests for call-in to consider.

The Committee considered the response made by the Executive to the recommendation made in relation to the development of an Open Spaces Strategy.

ACTION AGREED

(i)                  To note the response made to the recommendation; and

(ii)                To seek clarification of the timescale for production of an Open Spaces Strategy.

Further to the last meeting of the Committee, the report provided an updated draft of the Trees and Woodland Strategy for consideration.

Following the last meeting of the Committee where a draft of the Trees and Woodland Strategy was considered, a separate meeting which involved interested members was held to enable them to compare the 2006 version of the Strategy with the submitted draft and to ensure that any new initiatives were included.  The informal meeting had been held in early December 2010 and was attended by Councillor Sandford, Executive Director of Operations, Head of Operations (City Services) and the Trees & Landscape Management Officer.

Questions and observations were raised around the following areas:

• Councillor Sandford advised that he had also had a good meeting with the Cabinet Member for Environment Capital and had gone through a number of issues with her.  The majority of the references to expansionism had now been included within the Strategy and he was quite happy with the revised draft on the basis of the changes made.

ACTION AGREED

To endorse the draft Trees and Woodland Strategy for wider consultation

The report provided an update on the changes made to the subsidised bus network that had been approved by Cabinet in February 2010.

A review of Council subsidised bus journeys had been undertaken as a result of improvements to commercially operated bus services which had reduced the need for some Local Link journeys.  A different way of delivering bus services to rural areas which provided either the same or better period of operation had also been identified.  This service allowed the vehicle to operate only at times when the service was needed rather than adhering to a rigid timetable and the bus operating with no passengers on board which wasted resources and emitted needless CO2 emissions.  Some Local Link services had seen an increase in patronage and therefore it was suggested that a trial of improved frequency was undertaken to assess if this further increased passenger journeys or whether the same number of passenger journeys were undertaken but simply split over the more frequent departures.

One of main changes had been the withdrawal of a number of journeys operating in the rural area which had been replaced with the Call Connect service.  As part of that change a number of children who were eligible for free school transport had needed to transfer from the withdrawn services to contracted home to school transport.  Also a number of passengers had been using the subsidised services even though a comparable commercial bus service was available.  Assessment of the impact of this change had included looking at the number of passengers who had used the previous service compared to the number of passengers who used the Call Connect service.  The number of passengers using the previous service had varied from day to day and after removing the number of school children and passengers who had a comparable commercial service available less than 10 passenger journeys per day would have had no alternative means of transport other than the Call Connect service.  By comparison on the Call Connect service, an average of 25 passenger journeys per day had been made in October 2010 and an average of 30 passenger journeys per day in November 2010.

The other main change had been the trial of increased frequency of the Local Link 406 service from hourly to half hourly.  After assessing the impact of the change, the number of passenger journeys had increased between 13% and 74% and as a result the half hourly frequency would continue.

There has also been a number of other changes including the withdrawal of the evening journeys to the Showcase cinema, some evening journeys on the Local Link 406 and a number of Local Link journeys around Dogsthorpe.  A small number of complaints had been received from residents affected by the changes of which the majority had been concerning the withdrawal of the Local Link journeys around Dogsthorpe.  Dogsthorpe was well served by commercial services operating on a 10 minute frequency during the daytime and as such, there were no plans  ...  view the full minutes text for item 7.

The report gave details of the criteria for deciding which footpaths were resurfaced.

Highway maintenance was a wide ranging service that included the following activities: -

• Reactive maintenance
• Routine maintenance (Cyclic)
• Programmed maintenance (Planned)
• Regulatory maintenance
• Winter Service
• Emergency response

Area Highway Inspectors carried out a basic assessment of the condition of footways during routine safety inspections within their geographic areas and this was complemented by ad-hoc inspections triggered by reports from the public, Councillors or other parties.  Where an Inspector believed that it was not economically viable to restore a section of the network to a satisfactory condition with limited routine maintenance work they would complete an assessment which identified the location and type of treatment they felt was appropriate. The Highway Maintenance Team Senior Engineer would then complete a desk top audit of the information before adding the site to the Highway Maintenance Scheme proposal database to be surveyed and rated accordingly.  Throughout the year the Senior Engineer surveyed sites on the database and applied three other factors - condition, hierarchy and cost to complete the assessment process and the sites would then be ranked against each other.  A final judgement was then used to decide on which schemes should go forward for inclusion in the Highway Maintenance Programme each year.  The programme for 2011/12 was currently being developed and would be considered at the Joint Scrutiny meeting which was proposed for late February.  When assembling maintenance schemes it was important to consider other programmes of work which affected the network including improvement and street lighting schemes and major works proposed by utilities and developers and in some cases opportunities to co-ordinate works could be achieved.

Budgets were under increasing pressure and this had impacted upon the Council’s ability to maintain current service levels and standards and it may be more prudent to move towards a ‘holding strategy’ with larger portions of available budgets being targeted towards preventative maintenance measures that were cost effective and not only provided an engineering solution but also a real visual improvement to the street scene.

Third party insurance claims received in Peterborough in 2008/09 and 2009/10 for incidents on footway and cycle ways, whilst being on average four times less frequent as carriageway claims, were in fact more costly to the authority.  Consideration needed to be given as to whether the current emphasis towards carriageway schemes should be reconsidered with the view that the overall proportion of funding directed to footpaths and cycle ways should be increased. The table below showed the budgetary split (shown as a percentage) between carriageway, footway and other assets in respect of the 2008/09 to 2010/11 LTP, Capital and Revenue scheme allocations and the proposals for 2011/12.

The evidence supported a steady increase in footway funding as a proportion of the available budget since 2008/09 however this has not been able to be sustained as we moved into  ...  view the full minutes text for item 8.

The latest version of the Forward Plan, showing details of the key decisions that the Leader of the Council believed the Cabinet or individual Cabinet Members would be making over the next four months, was received.

ACTION AGREED

To note the latest version of the Forward Plan.

We considered the Work Programme for 2010/11.

Clarification would be sought as to the current position of the costs of the Waste 2020 Programme following the figures submitted by Friends of the Earth.

ACTION AGREED

To confirm the work programme for 2010/11.

Thursday 10 March 2011 at 7pm

Thursday 10 March 2011 at 7pm