To receive any statements by the Leader of the Council, Executive Members, and Deputy 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:
Pauline Jorgensen, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Housing:
I have got nothing to say as Deputy Leader at the moment. I just wanted to give a quick update on housing to point out that the Council remains committed to delivering much needed affordable housing in the Borough, helping people get on the first rung of the housing ladder through shared ownership and providing more affordable rented accommodation. Current development programmes suggest that there will be 386 affordable housing completions in the Borough this year, made up of 188 social rent, 166 shared ownership and 32 intermediate affordable rent.
We will also open Broadway House in January next year, providing an extra 10 units of temporary accommodation to reduce our use of Bed and Breakfast, which is obviously better for the people concerned and also saves us money, so it benefits us both ways.
I am also pleased to be able to confirm that we are progressing the Wheatsheaf Close self-build project, which was discussed recently at the Affordable Housing Implementation Group.
Norman Jorgensen, Executive Member for Environment, Leisure and Libraries:
I have three things that I would just like quickly to bring to your attention tonight. Firstly, as you are aware, Re3 over the last year have been running a campaign to increase the amount of glass we recycle called ‘Lot of Bottle’. A number of events have even named the new glass collection trucks to get more and more publicity. That has resulted in a more than 4% increase in glass recycling during this year, so that has been a great success. There were 49 groups engaged in that process, around 30 of those were schools and young people’s groups, for example Wokingham Brownies got involved in the process. There was a competition for that and the prizes are going to be awarded very soon.
The second item is just to update you on the introduction of food waste collection from April next year. The preparations for that are well under way and all the containers and instructions and what to do will be getting rolled out in February and March next year. The blue bags will be distributed earlier than in the previous year to get them out of the way before all of the food waste items are delivered. The blue bags are on order now and will be going out early in the new year. So just to remind everyone, there is no change in weekly collections, same number of blue bags and the food waste will get added.
The third item I would like to bring up is that the site for the new build of Bulmershe Leisure Centre has now been officially handed over to the construction company. The demolition site clearance has finished and the construction company took over earlier this week. They are doing all the preparatory work and setting up on site. You will begin to see the building coming out of the ground in early Spring, still on schedule to open in Summer next year.
Anthony Pollock,
Executive Member for Highways and Transport:
In early October I
think it was, there was an article in the Wokingham newspaper which
said that I had disbanded the Traffic Advisory Group which David
Lee had previously set up in the beginning of the year in response
to a petition, which was actually untrue. We got our wires crossed because it clashed with
the Party Conference. I would like to
announce that we will have our first meeting on the 27th
of this month, and I am particularly wanting it to focus on
congestion, congestion alleviation, both the tactical stuff that we
have currently and also, as we have heard tonight, we have got
challenges of new housing developments over the next 20 or 30
years. Having done the Highways brief
before, and as David Chopping and I well know, the roads we put on
the Local Transport Plan in 2006 are only now just being
built. If we want roads in 2030 or 2035
we need to have a good idea where they should be going now because
it takes 10-15 years for them to come through the
process. I am looking forward to that
Group and I trust that it will provide an opportunity for
particularly some local residents to contribute to our
deliberations.
Two Council meetings ago we approved the new Highways Services Contract and Highways Maintenance Contract and I am pleased to tell everyone that the mobilisation and demobilisation of the various contractors is taking place. I would like to thank Rachelle for attending our cross party meetings. We are monitoring this and say that we missed you Lindsay, although I understand that you were otherwise engaged.
The other aspect, links again back to congestion. I was driving into Wokingham a couple of weeks ago and there was an accident on the M4, which meant that there was problems on the M4 and traffic was being diverted. There was a murder in Finchampstead, I must admit I thought Finchampstead was a lot more civilised than that but there we are. Was it Wokingham Without? Then I apologise to Finchampstead for maligning them but there are obviously parts of Wokingham Without that are a little uncivilised. I also discovered later that there were problems on the M3 and the M25. This shows what happens when a few things happen on the wider network. It took me an hour I think to get into Wokingham. I subsequently came across an app on Google, which Simon sort of looked at me askance and said ‘well did you not know about that?’ The answer was no I did not. For those of you that do know, you will know it, for those of you that do not, in Google Maps you can switch on a congestion aspect, the more information that I think residents need and have at their disposal to plan their journey as I am very aware of a lot issues about that in my ward. The second point linked into that is that I have had long discussions with Officers around how we communicate congestion issues and network disruption issues to residents because I am very, very conscious that Officers do a lot of communicating but sometimes residents do not receive it. So with Sarah and her team I have been working on that because I think it is really important that if there is an issue, and I have got an issue which is in my ward and has been going on for a number of months, the more residents and drivers that know that is going to take place, they can either leave half an hour earlier or they can find another route. I think the more information we give people the better.
Pauline Helliar-Symons, Executive Member for Children’s Services:
Three things I would like to report on. Given the challenges over the last year or so in Children’s Services we were pleased with the outcome of the recent Ofsted inspection, which focused on our front door and on our working with the multi-agency support hub. The challenges are well known. There has been an increasing number of children coming through our front door, coming our way, for child protection, and the impact that, that has had on social workers’ caseloads and the number of interims that we have had in our senior staff. Use of agency staff has brought caseloads down to a normal level and we have a Working Group looking at future recruitment and retention issues. The Inspectors liked the plans that we are developing. They also recognise that we now have stability in our senior officer team. We have a permanent Director in place and just today we appointed an excellent new Assistant Director for Education whose name is Paul Doherty, subject to all the usual Occupational Health checks. On Monday we have interviews for an Assistant Director of Social Care. From next week we hope to have a fully permanent senior team. Three things stood out for me in the Ofsted report. Firstly, that we know ourselves well and what needs to be done and we are doing it, that the Inspectors were satisfied that no children were found to be unsafe, and lastly that our staff are making a difference to children’s lives. That is particularly pleasing to me.
Secondly, St Dominic Savio Primary School has come in at number 184 in The Times’ best Primary Schools list. They are the only Wokingham state primary school in the top 250. I should like publicly to congratulate the Headteacher, the staff and the pupils for their hard work.
Lastly, you will all be getting a letter from me to ask you if you will contribute to a Christmas gift from you as corporate parents, to our children in care. The Officer in charge of children in care has asked that this year we contribute to hampers for the children in care leavers who often live on their own and have few opportunities to spend Christmas with their loved ones. I have already circulated an email asking your view on that before I go back to Anisha Reed, who is in charge of these children. Please could you email me with what you think so I can go back to her with the majority view of what we would like to do? Thanks very much to all of those who have replied and to those who have not could you let me know by the end of this week, being flexible let us say the end of Sunday, rather than the end of tomorrow, but if you could let me know by the end of the weekend then I can start to get that organised.