Agenda item

To note the written updates attached to the agenda and to receive any verbal updates from representatives present.

a)    Salisbury City Council (SCC)

b)    Laverstock and Ford Parish Council

c)     Police

d)    Fire

e)    Salisbury BID

f)      Community Engagement Manager

g)    Dementia Friendly Salisbury

Note: Speakers are reminded that they each have a 3 minutes slot, unless they have previously discussed alternative arrangements with the Chairman.

The Board received the following verbal updates:

Salisbury City Council (SCC)

Matt Dean – Leader

·         Election outcome overview – 17 Conservative, 5 Labour, 1 Lib Dem

·         The first meeting of the new Full Council would be on 5 June 2017, at the Guildhall commencing at 6-30pm.  Thereafter the Council would be back into its published committee cycle.

·         A meet your new Councillor event was planned for this coming Saturday 27th at the Guildhall 10am to midday.  This was an opportunity for anybody who so wished to come along and meet their new elected representatives for the City.

·         A sunset ceremony would take place as part of the Salisbury Live event on the Market Place on 9 June.  The ceremony, performed by the band of the Royal Artillery would commence at 6-30pm on the Guildhall Square.

·         The asset transfer implementation continued, with large scale additional investment into street cleaning starting to happen.  The Market Place and Guildhall Squares in particular, were already showing a big improvement.

·         The new Council’s focus would be on improving the cleanliness of the City, investing and raising the standards in our parks to the highest levels and to increase the number and diversity of the events programme in the City.

·         The Council would also soon be starting on its large scale capital programme and looking at investment requirements for facilities such as public conveniences and children’s play areas.

·         The Council had commenced a programme of weed spraying around the City.  This was part of a 3 year programme , with two full sprays of the City per year.

·         During the week commencing 5 June the Council was funding and managing a large capacity, highly powerful street sweeping truck to address the weed and detritus issues around the A36 from Tesco roundabout to St Pauls.  This truck was being brought in from Bristol and was the most powerful available.  It would be in Salisbury for a full week.  Once finished, smaller, more routine machines had been funded to access the areas the bigger machine could not and to also address, over a four-month period, all the other main roads into and around the City.

·         During the next two to three weeks a significantly increased number of hanging baskets would be appearing in the City, focussing this year on the Market Place and Guildhall Square areas.

The spraying, cleansing and floral initiatives would certainly have a very beneficial impact on the City environment.

The Chairman noted that the Area Board worked well and closely with SCC.

Laverstock and Ford Parish Council

David Burton, Chairman; gave the following updates:

·         Play Areas in Laverstock and Ford Parish. 

The Locally Equipped Area of Play at Old Sarum Country Park which Cllr Waller mentioned at the March Salisbury Area Board meeting was completed on time and to budget. It was proving very popular with the young people who helped select the play equipment in it. Our Neighbourhood Equipped Area of Play, together with an intergenerational Trim Trail, a new Multi Use Games Area and a Solar Powered Mixing Desk would be installed at The Green, Old Sarum in July.  At Bishopdown Farm, three Play Areas owned and managed by Wiltshire Council had been shut by the Contractors without notice to Laverstock and Ford Parish Council. (The Parish Council has subsequently managed to work with the Contractors and re-open the most popular of these Play Parks before Half Term).

·         Laverstock and Ford Country Park.

            Progress with transfer arrangements from the Developers continued to             be very slow. However the Parish Council had convened a team of             twenty volunteer residents from both Laverstock and Ford Parish and             Salisbury City Parish to develop the management plan for the site in             preparation for handover. We are making significant progress with the             Developer too and expect some good news on this front ahead of the             next Area Board meeting.

·         Salisbury Bee City Trail.

Laverstock and Ford Parish Council were supporting this initiative as Main Sponsor and were funding a Bee City point by the One-Stop and food outlets in Laverstock. This point was well placed to attract interest in the Trail from students at the three Secondary Schools and Junior School on the Laverstock campus. The point will also link the Bee City Trail with the Laverstock and Ford Meadows and Downs Trails which run across our Parish. We are keen to do more bridge-building collaborative work with Salisbury City Parish of this nature following resolution of the Community Governance Review Boundary issues in 2016.

Police – Inspector Pete Sparrow

A written update was circulated at the meeting, in addition, the following verbal update was provided:

·         Following the recent event in Manchester combined with the Westminster event, the National threat level had been raised last night to critical. This meant that a third attack was highly likely.

·         Military personnel would be deployed across the country where needed.

·         At this stage, there was no known threat to Wiltshire. Be alert but not alarmed. The telephone number for the Counter Terrorism Hotline was 0800 789321.

Fire – Jason Moncrief

In addition to the paper update attached to agenda, the following verbal update was given:

·         There had been a shuffle around of Officers before the elections. Jason was the District Commander looking after the stations of Salisbury and Wilton.

·         For the period of March and April there were 60 incidents, with 40 of those being fires. Other incidents included assisting The South West Ambulance service to gain access to properties and to provide assistance with bariatric patients.

·         Salisbury was a 2-appliance station, with one full time and the second, manned by retained staff. This gave100% availability to the first appliance and 87% to the second appliance. 

Salisbury BID – Steve Godwin

Experienced a change of direction of new SCC. Our small budget comes from businesses within the ring road. Footfall was up this year between January to April by1.8%. This would be affected by the tragedy in Manchester.

Although there were some empty shops around we are well below the national average.

We have uniformed rangers in the city supporting people in the city. We will have a third ranger by the mid-summer.

Spending a lot of our budget on promoting the city. ‘a City of Stories’ was a new initiative to encourage people to ‘Shop Salisbury, shop local’.

The City council in bloom initiative would be enhanced by the BID by installing flower towers, at spots around the city, such as Fisherton Street and Catherine Street in areas just outside the immediate city.

Work was already underway planning Christmas.

The Chairman noted that the BID was so good for our city.

Cllr Rogers asked for an update on the work of Rapid Response cleaning, whether they have moved out of city centre occasionally? Answer: We have an electric vehicle with steam cleaner, this had been removing the graffiti along the ring road. It had also been to the five Park & Ride sites, and had been to Bemerton and Harnham.

Community Engagement Manager – Karen Linaker

The big pledge DVD was shown. Karen urged people to get in touch for further information if they were keen to get involved.

Dementia Friendly Salisbury – Karen Linaker

A year ago the Area Board committed to making Salisbury a ‘Dementia Friendly’ community. This would always be a work in progress.

Tourist coaches that bring people to visit, may include visitors with a low-level dementia. Progress had been made on this work, by the working group and forums. The main group that sits behind this was the Dementia Action Alliance.

Groups come together to help one another out and make progress.

Last week was the Dementia Action week, this takes place every year in May.

Karen thanked Salisbury Cathedral for their work in Dementia Action week.