To receive any statements by the Leader of the Council and Executive Members.
In accordance with Procedure Rule 4.2.23 the total time allocated to this item shall not exceed 20 minutes, and no Member shall speak for more than 5 minutes.
Minutes:
Councillor Lindsay Ferris,Executive Member for Planning and Local Plan:
The planning permission for the Arborfield District Centre given by the Planning Committee last week represents a milestone following several years of hard work, to ensure we give a real heart to the new community. It has taken longer to get to this point than expected because of the knock on impacts to the economy in recent years, with Covid 19 and the cost of living crisis etc, but officers, local Members and the developers have all worked hard to reach this milestone. With that permission in place, we will now work with the developers and the local community to make the best of the opportunity we now have. That means our officers and local Members can continue to work with Crest and local groups to bring forward new community facilities with the range of uses that local people want to see provided, and encouraging local businesses to contact Crest about the new shops and commercial spaces coming online in the next couple of years. At this juncture, however, and to celebrate the success of reaching this point, I just want to say thank you to our officers, in particular Connor Corrigan and Nick Chancellor who have been central to getting to the scheme to this point, and to Crest for their continued positive engagement with us, to my local Members, colleagues, who have brought their own influence to bear, that is cross party, on this work, and to local people for their patience and continued interest in this scheme. I have no doubt we will raise a glass of something, like we were a bit earlier, when we see the first spade in the ground.
Councillor Stephen Conway, Leader of the Council:
First may I just say very quickly that I am really delighted that we did extend question time then. I personally take the view that, that is one of the most important parts of the Council meeting, an opportunity for all councillors irrespective of party to ask questions about things that are relevant to the people that they represent, so I make no apologies for approving the extending of that. It is an important thing to do.
I want to congratulate in my statement as Leader, and in this case, it is relevant to say my statement as Executive Member for Housing. I want to congratulate our excellent housing team for its success at last night’s Royal Berkshire Property Awards, where our new temporary accommodation units at Grovelands, I do not know how many of you have visited Grovelands and have seen what those accommodation units are like. They are really impressive. They are environmentally incredibly sustainable and sufficient. They have been judged by the award body, the best residential development of the year, and that is a really great accolade for our officers. This is a really well merited recognition by the work put in by our officers and the architect and the contractors, and it shows with commitment and imagination we can deliver much needed temporary accommodation in a very high quality which saves both the Council and residents, money.
I also want to update Council on the work done to identify any RAAC in our estate. I am delighted to say that all Council properties have been assessed and only one has been found to contain RAAC, that is 28-38 Peach Street, and in that single case only to a limited extent as reported to the last Council meeting. I should like to thank our officers for conducting this work speedily and efficiently, and saving the council taxpayer the cost of employing external consultants. We are very lucky to have such suitably qualified officers available here to do that work, and I would like to thank them very much for what they have done here to enable us to come up with this really clean bill of health.