Agenda item

      i.        Cabinet Member

Councillor Dick Tonge will talk about his cabinet responsibilities for Highways and Transport, and respond to any questions.

Note – questions for Councillor Tonge may be submitted in advance – please email penny.bell@wiltshire.gov.uk.

    ii.        Community Area Transport Group

The Area Board will consider recommendations from the Community Area Transport Group for small-scale local transport and highways related improvements.

   iii.        20 is Plenty

The Area Board will consider a report on the 20 is Plenty initiative.

Cabinet Member

Councillor Dick Tonge, Cabinet member for Highways and Transport, provided a brief overview of his portfolio responsibilities, which included new projects and repairs to the highways, passenger transport including trains, flooding, markets, cemeteries, speeding, grass cutting and car parking.

Councillor Tonge introduced two officers to the meeting; Bill Parks, Head of Local Highways and Streetscene, and Martin Rose, Principal Traffic Engineer.

Bill Parks gave a presentation regarding Wiltshire Council’s Highways and Streetscene service and the new Community Teams.

Community Teams would be asset-led and matched to the Area Board areas, and there would be a shared ‘pull service’ for larger kit and other resource. There would be direct engagement with the community regarding need, priority and co-delivery arrangements. There would also be minimum handoffs and duplication in customer contact, and customers reporting defects should get through to local service teams in one step.

This new way of working aimed to deliver:

•         Community and asset priorities as the driver

•         Improved community relationships and partnerships (community resilience)

•         Flexibility to meet changing needs

•         Quality, fit for purpose service and improved asset

•         Removed waste and duplication

•         Continuous drive for improvements.

Following the information from Councillor Tonge and Bill Parks, the following questions, issues and discussion points arose:

·         From June next year, all Highways and Streetscene works would be outsourced.

·         The Community Teams would deal with routine maintenance and repairs and so was different to the work of the Community Area Transport Group, which aimed to identify improvement needs.

·         Towns and parishes were encouraged to continue to identify and report any works required, but schedules for routine works would be provided.

·         Working in partnership with Community Payback had been trialled in Trowbridge. There were some technicalities with this but it could be looked into and developed further, particularly if the parishes took lead on this.

·         To ensure efficient running of the Parish Stewards scheme, each parish had intentionally been encouraged to provide a single point of contact, and all issues should be fed in through this nominated contact.

·         It was important that statutory duties, such as cutting the grass and foliage around road signs, should not be lost.

·         The new, structured approach was welcomed, and it was suggested that a further meeting with parishes should be arranged to provide an opportunity to review the scheme and provide/receive feedback.

Councillor Tonge provided some information on the Council’s programme of highways resurfacing.

The Council carried out an annual assessment of all roads to detect condition and safety. Specialist, laser-mounted equipment was used to look under the surface of the road to check the condition compared to the previous year. This process was applied to all main roads across the county, and the smaller, residential roads were visually inspected. The Council also measured the skid resistance of roads on a regular basis in order to monitor safety and prevent accidents.

The resurfacing of estate roads was dependent on the condition of the roads, not the time period since the roads had last been resurfaced, but an average estate road surface could be expected to last approximately 30 years.

Pavements were treated in exactly the same way as highways in terms of condition and safety. If utilities companies or their sub-contractors were required to dig-up roads or pavements, they were obliged to repair the damage to the Council’s standards when they were finished. The Council also offered training courses for utility sub-contractors to encourage a higher quality of work.

Councillor Tonge reported that a document was available that detailed the highways information for each Community Area. The information for Chippenham was available on the website via the following link:

http://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/parkingtransportandstreets/roadshighwayspavements/areaboardhighwayinformation.htm

Councillor Tonge also talked about the success of the Community Area Transport Groups (CATGs).

The CATGs were working very successfully, and the decisions and budgets that had been delegated to the Area Boards were making a real difference in the local communities.

Wiltshire Council had recently set-up a scheme in partnership with Community First whereby community buses were provided and managed, which offered much-needed transport, particularly for vulnerable people in rural areas. Councillor Tonge was keen for the CATGs and Area Boards to become involved in this and find ways of providing community transport in their local areas.

In response to a question regarding car parking, Councillor Tonge reported that officers were currently in the process of collating the parish and town council comments on the review of road restrictions for parking. Councillor Tonge advised that consultation regarding residents parking schemes rarely generated many responses and it was difficult to reach a consensus. He stated that, for this reason, the Council was not keen to pursue residents parking schemes simply due to the amount of work and cost that was involved. Councillor Tonge also confirmed that the Council did not have a view on limited parking restrictions and that it was not something that the Council had been asked to consider before.

Councillor Rooke asked whether a SID could be deployed in Lowden for a short time at some point because even though there was a metro count recently and no further action required, residents were concerned about the few cars that went well above the speed limit rather than the average speed of the cars. Councillor Tonge reported that all requests for SID deployment had to go through the Area Board, as per the current process.

20 is Plenty

Martin Rose, Principal Traffic Engineer, presented his report regarding the current issues relating to the request to trial a ’20 is Plenty’ scheme in Chippenham.

The Area Board considered the information provided by Martin contained within the report, and the associated recommendations.

Decision

The Area Board agreed:

      i.        Not to pursue a ’20 is Plenty’ trial in Chippenham at the present time.

    ii.        To instead use a targeted poster campaign to promote road safety messages in the selected areas of Chippenham, subject to consultation with the local community.

Community Area Transport Group

The Area Board considered a report and recommendations from the CATG for the prioritisation of small-scale local transport and highways schemes.

Decision

The Area Board agreed:

      i.        To approve the list of schemes recommended for prioritisation in 2012/13 as at Appendices 1, 1a, 1b, 1c, 1d.

    ii.        To approve the list of schemes recommended for retention and further consideration in 2012/13 as at Appendix 2.

   iii.        To approve the list of requests recommended for removal as at Appendix 3.

   iv.        To approve the deployment of the Speed Indicator Device (SID) allocated to the Chippenham Community Area to 3 new sites as at Appendices 4, 4a.

    v.        To select the C154, the C180 and the C185 (as a reserve) for speed limit assessment in 2012-13.