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:
John Halsall proposed the suspension of rule 4.2.12 q to enable him to speak for up to 10 minutes and for the Statements by the Leader of the Council, Executive Members and Deputy Executive Members item to be extended to up to 25 minutes. This was seconded by Chris Bowring. Upon being put to the vote, it was agreed that the rule be suspended for the meeting.
John Halsall Leader of the Council:
First of all I take pleasure in announcing that Charlotte Haitham Taylor will chair the Arts and Council Working Group in the future.
Wokingham Borough Council and Wokingham Borough is facing an existential threat. I do not use those words lightly. The beautiful Borough that it is my honour to serve could very soon be no more if we do not stop the Government’s plans to inflict an avalanche of housing development upon us. The innocent sounding but deeply pernicious changes to the current planning system consultation, ends in just two weeks. This consultation was launched in almost total secrecy during the school summer holidays when the nation was focused on GCSEs, A levels, lockdowns and quarantines. It was also launched alongside a far more heralded consultation called ‘Planning for the future’ which has generated debate and notoriety, which is in fact a smokescreen as it is only a Green Paper; a set of ideas that may or may not become law at some point in the future. The changes to the planning system on the other hand requires no change to the law and could be enacted almost immediately after the consultation ends, with just the Minister’s signature, and yet its ramifications will be felt in our Borough and many others across the country, forever more. We must be clear what is at stake. In just two weeks’ time at the stroke of Secretary of State Robert Jenrick’s pen, we could be condemned to face 1635 new houses being built in the Borough each year. That is a town the size of Wokingham in less than a decade. This would come with less affordable housing because fewer developments would be required to provide it. There would be no appeal, no further debate. Two weeks, that is all we have got.
Let me paint you a picture of the dystopian future. Our levels of congestion would be intolerable. Access to medical services, schools and other basic services, would be stretched to bursting point. We would see the green of the Borough disappear. This level of development would see an increase of just short of 25% in ten years which would approximate to 15% with the land mass. The plan led development, which has been at the core of the Council’s strategy, for a sustainable future, would be imperilled by the lack of a defendable five year land supply which would need to be in the region of 10000 to discourage speculative land promoters. This would further imperil the infrastructure funded by the developers. The Government says all this destruction is necessary to get the economy going and to prevent NIMBYs blocking necessary housing. But that is a false position. We have proved with our carefully planned development in recent years that there is an alternative to both the Government’s Developers Charter and just say no attitude. We are not the NIMBYs of the Government propaganda. We believe in building the homes that people need, in providing Council housing and genuinely affordable housing for all. We do not believe in and will never accept the position of a concrete swamp across our fields and villages.
Since early August, I have been working ceaselessly to ensure that our cause gains the widest publicity. I have used any and every stunt to gain notoriety. All our MPs have been hugely supportive. I have spoken to huge numbers of Council leaders and Members of Parliament, probably within the hundreds now of each. I have undertaken an influential debate with England’s leading planning barrister Chris Katokowski, who was part of the authorship of the Planning for the Future White Paper. Anybody who wishes to see it and who has not, please contact me. I have used any and every stunt to gain notoriety as I have said. Conservative Home helped, as did the Daily Mail. I have led the Unitary Councils Network’s response and that of the South East’s Strategic Leaders. It has been a little like chucking mud at a wall unceasingly in the hope that some sticks. I have talked to Kent County Council. I have talked to all the councillors in the Westmead. I am delighted that finally I seem to have broken through, and had a long and productive conversation with Robert Jenrick on Friday last. I used the opportunity to invite him to the Borough, which he was pleased to accept. However, that is only the beginning, the end of the beginning. It is important that now he is aware of the issue he becomes aware of the strength of feeling in the Borough. We have appealed to all residents to write to their MP, the Secretary of State, sign up to the petition, and respond to the consultation. I am urging everybody to join me in that campaign. Time is running out but hope is not lost. Please take action today.
We are facing another threat whose effects are equally serious and can be devastating. We are continuing to face Coronavirus. Initially we thought, we hoped, that it would be short term and then a solution would be found. This is far from the case. During the emergency, we should remember that though our cases have been low some have sadly died and others have been very ill. We have changed the way we worked, supporting all our residents and ensured that the services ran as normal as far as possible. Whilst this was expensive financially this was eminently doable in the short term, and I believe we did the right thing. We now are having to face both ways. We now know that there is not going to be a short-term fix. Much of that, that we did at the height of the crisis, we shall continue to need to do. We have returned with few exceptions to delivering all our services, but and it is a big but, the financial environment is very strained. Not only do we have to recover the cost of what we did earlier in the year, but from a lower income base than we had in the past. Also, we have to confront the cost of expanded services. An example is the expected income of leisure services and car parking is very much lower. On the cost side, we are looking after more of the vulnerable children and adults, and the cost of care homes has increased. So, in confronting 2021-22 we will have be more imaginative and more commercial. We may not be able to achieve all the aspirations that we had in the short term and delay the implementation of projects. This will be the debate of many months to come and it is somewhat dependent on the length of the emergency and the extent of Government intervention.
Lastly, please follow the Government’s guidance of physical hygiene i.e. wash your hands, social distancing at all times, cover your face when required to. It saves lives.
Pauline Jorgensen, Executive Member for Highways and Transport:
The Highways team have been busy progressing the Borough’s new road schemes, taking advantage of Covid lockdown when roads were quieter to resurface busy areas such as the A4, Showcase roundabout and Molly Millers Lane. The new Arborfield Cross relief road is progressing well and we look forward to opening it at the end of October. The new London Road cycleway in Wokingham will also be completed by the end of October. This cycleway is designed for young cyclists to be use either the road or considerately share the new wide pavement depending on their confidence, cycling ability, and of course the speed that they want to travel at.
Works to the north Wokingham distributor road to connect the Old Forest Road to Reading Road, has commenced and major investment is underway in highways maintenance with the doubling of the budget this year to £8million. Over one hundred roads are earmarked for resurfacing. We have done quite a lot of microasphalt already with the resurfacing schemes dealing with some of the worst roads starting soon, with the long awaited resurfacing of the top of Hartsbourne Road which will start around 19 October.
I am very keen to return Wokingham town centre to as near normal as possible following the Covid related restrictions introduced when shops were first reopened on 15 June. The aim is to assist businesses and also to make it easier for pedestrians to cross the road and taxis to operate. Following conversations with local shop keepers arranged by local councillors Julian McGhee Sumner and Phil Cunnington, and several meetings with shop keepers representatives of the Town Council, I am pleased to advise of the successful removal of barriers in Rectory Road and Wiltshire Road. We have agreed that Covid barriers on the normal side of Broad Street from Nat West bank will be removed this weekend, restoring the taxi rank. If this is successful, we are scheduled to remove all the remaining barriers on the weekend of the 26th/27th. At the request of the Town Council the traders’ representatives, the barriers on the Post Office side will not be removed until 26th/27th either. We will also be adding some more signage to remind people to socially distance and also to please ask them to support local businesses.
Charles Margetts, Executive Member for Health, Wellbeing and Adult Services:
I want to briefly update Members on a few things that are going on in terms of Public Health. First of all the current situation with Covid 19. Cases remain low in Wokingham. As things stand currently our Track and Trace figure is running at nearly 90% which is a reflection of the hard work that is going on to keep these things this way. Wokingham is currently a very low risk area for Covid and everyone is working very hard to keep it that way. This ison a background of when schools have gone back and we are trying very hard to keep the message going out about following the Government advice, as Councillor Halsall mentioned.
Members will be aware of the NHS Track and Trace app which is now live from 24 September. This has been months of work to get this ready. We looked at all the other apps on the market basically and are convinced that this is by far the best one, and encourage all Members and residents to adopt it, and all local businesses. It is a key part of how we fight Covid.
As the time has gone on, we are obviously changing our response to Covid in the community. We will see shortly in a few weeks, we will be launching what we call Community Response Part 2, which was changing and adapting to the situation; focusing on mental health, people who are stuck at home and are too scared to come out and need support, focusing on loneliness and also focusing on those who may sadly about to become unemployed and providing them with the support and advice that they need.
I wanted to also talk about testing which has been much in the news recently. The national situation with the shortage of lab capacity is obviously very concerning. Can we assure everybody that as things stand today our care homes are safe and have enough testing and the situation there is being continually monitored. We have been working very hard to get some progress with this. Myself, Councillor Halsall and Councillor Kaiser attended a meeting with John Redwood, James Sunderland and Teresa May online to lobby forcefully our unhappiness with the situation and to get them to actually work with us to resolve it. I know James Sunderland had a meeting on our behalf with the Health Minister yesterday to raise these issues. I am pleased to advise that we have secured extra testing from our health partners which will be available for key workers as and when we need. We are keen to go forward to make sure that all the needy, the vulnerable and the key workers of Wokingham are supported. In April when central Government could not provide PPE, we mounted a public appeal and private procurement to secure enough PPE to keep our key workers going, to keep our care homes safe. In May when the Royal Berkshire was discharging patients with Covid into our care homes without tests, we broke central Government advice and refused discharges to keep our community safe until basically testing could be put in place. Today, central Government cannot provide enough testing. We have secured extra testing for our key workers from our health partners already and we are in the process of procuring further private testing to ensure all of our key workers, social workers, dealing with the aged and vulnerable, education key workers as well, have access to testing and that we have provision for any possible emergencies that come down the road. Again, we are trying to be proactive, positive and do everything that we can to keep our residents safe.
UllaKarin Clark, Executive Member for Children’s Services:
The Covid restrictions over the recent months have posed unprecedented challenges to Children’s Services in Wokingham. I am proud to say that our dedicated staff have continued to work tirelessly to support children, young people and schools throughout this crisis. The Learning, Achievements and Partnership service has worked closely with schools to ensure their safe opening this term, supporting work with individual parents and carers to ally their fears and securing save and sufficient school transport, including additional buses, taxis and routes to support existing arrangements. We also have in schools made the best use of the catch up premium and national tutoring programme announced by the Government in July, which is designed to help children make up for the lost teaching time that they have experienced. This has been a tough year for school leavers but I am delighted to tell you that four of our children in care and care leavers have been offered places at university to start this year.
In social care, arrangements were swiftly put in place at the beginning of the lockdown to ensure that the most vulnerable children continued to be seen face-to-face, using appropriate PPE. Children received regular contact though innovative use of virtual technology, something which has not been replicated in other authorities. Our Family Resource Centre has remained open throughout, offering safe opportunities for parents to spend time with their children. The Bridges Short Breaks Centre has continued to offer day and overnight respite visits for disabled children. Our other centres are now starting to reopen with appropriate safety measures in place. We have had many compliments from parents, foster carers and young people on our response to the Covid restrictions, and the support that they have received. I am sure you will join me in thanking our staff for their incredible continuing dedication and hard work in these most difficult circumstances.
Our new specialist Compass team, working intensively with children whose placements are at risk of breakdown or who are at risk of coming into care is now fully recruited to, and already supporting nine young people. Four new practice assistants have joined us this week to support the social workers in delivering high quality services to children and young people. At the same time turnover of staff in the social care teams, which had been very high, has reduced below that of our comparative authorities. The number of locum workers is reducing in line with our plans. All in all very good news.