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:
Stuart Munro, Executive Member for Business and Economic Development:
I would just like to briefly give people listening an update as to where we are with regeneration in Wokingham town centre. I think it has come to a point where we need to take stock and look at where we are at and get some facts on the table. So, I am going to go through lettings and where we are with our stock of houses that we have built, and then some comment at the end about how well this has been received by the outside world.
So as far as anything is concerned, we are continuing to see several new businesses continuing to fit and open in our town centre units. Our emphasis remains on a good mix of local independents, to sit alongside quality nationals. A few come to mind in the last few months; R Young Art Gallery in Elms Field, the Lazy Frog in Denmark Street and BXG Fit, the town’s first boutique boxing and fitness studio due to open soon in Peach Place. We continue to see strong interest in the remaining few units. We will be announcing new names soon after the paperwork has been completed. We continue to use regeneration to help the local community as well. For example, temporary lets to the Royal British Legion, and to the Christmas presents Community Project led by the First Day’s children’s charity, in Elms Field. Also, Peach Place will be used for the Wokingham Winter Carnival stage and entertainment on Sunday 28 November.
Despite tough conditions nationally over the last few years, the town centre continues to outperform many in the UK. Increased numbers of people working from home rather than commuting to London, offers a great opportunity to capture more of the local market share. Growing footfall and eating out as people start to return to shopping and entertainment. Low numbers of closures, and primarily related to nationals rather than local and boutique shopping, minimal vacant units and those that are empty, have seen interest across the town, not just WBC, privately owned ones as well. Regeneration currently has 91% let, and on target to achieve 94% by Spring of next year, the target we set ourselves. This means we continue to cover the cost of the regeneration. As well as generating a good return we can fund services for residents. Income will continue to rise as costs paid back over the next ten years or so. It is also a milestone because the asset value of the stock is far in excess of the loan.
On residential sales, another good news story, with prices continuing to generally meet or exceed predicted sales values, and 84% of the properties released to date, exchanged, and completed. All of this has been very well received in the outside world. We are receiving lots and lots of recognition, both locally and nationally. I will just mention a couple; a win of the Rural Town Planning Award for Excellence in planning for a successful economy; Association of Public Sector Excellence Best Housing Regenerated or New Build Initiative; Urban Land Initiative Award for Excellence Mixed Use; Business Magazine’s Thames Valley Property Award for development in Peach Place and SPACES (Society for Public Architecture, Engineering, Surveying and Construction) Yearbook entry for Peach Place and Elm’s Field, Elm’s Field going on to win the spacious regeneration award, last week. Finally, we have been approached by the Local Government Association to write a case study about the regeneration to share as best practice with other councils. So, Mr Mayor, it is clearly a highly successful programme of which you should be proud, with more exciting developments to come such as the Carnival Hub, which Councillor Smith, mentioned earlier, which is looking very impressive and yet to be delivered on time by a very organised German organisation. Visiting the town centre and seeing all the restaurants and other retail businesses come to life means more than just money and vibrancy of the place. The play park with mums and dads and their children confirms to me that it was the right decision to regenerate Wokingham town.
John Kaiser, Deputy Leader and Executive Member for Finance and Housing:
When I spoke earlier in answer to Councillor Loyes’ question, I just wanted to touch on the finances of the Council. With other local councils getting into financial difficulty, it is important to give our residents in Wokingham Borough confidence that we are in a strong position and not at risk. Recent news on some authorities, for example Labour led Slough, which has had to declare bankruptcy, and are finding it impossible to make ends meet, with little chance that the situation will change for the foreseeable future. Residents are naturally concerned. Could we go the same way? The short and simple answer is no. How is it that we are delivering more services and facilities, when other councils are closing swimming pools and libraries? We are opening new ones and providing better facilities and services such as Bulmershe, Cantley, California Country Park, Lower Earley and Arborfield Green. Too good to be true I guess everybody will say.
Let me explain how we do this. In fact, it is the Conservative administration’s careful budget monitoring, prudent borrowing, and shrewd investments. Our finances are among the soundest in the land, even CIPFA say that we are in the top twenty in the UK. How are we going to safeguard our financial future, which is the cornerstone of being able to provide great services? We regularly report on expenditure throughout the year and keep a close eye on expenditure. The first thing I did when I took this role was to insist that the Budget in all its glory went to Overview and Scrutiny before it is published in its final format, and over a long period of six months, so that everyone can have their say. Last year the Budget came in slightly underspent, and even though it has been a very tough year, we are currently on track this year.
Let me talk about debt. All local authorities must borrow if they want to forward funds things such as leisure centres, regenerated towns, solar farms, and other improvements for the community. Even more important, is to fund that infrastructure, as and when we need it, such as roads and schools, rather than waiting for the money from the developer. My rules around borrowing are quite clear. We must have a clear route to pay back, make commercial sense and deliver services and facilities to residents. I clearly understand we are not some company or commercial entity. That does not mean we should abandon prudent, fiscal control, like I say some Councils seem to have done. The money we spend is the residents’ money, as such they are shareholders, and more importantly they are our funders, and as such we must deliver services and environment that we all want to exist in Wokingham Borough. This means the key is to ensure that anything you borrow can be funded and paid back, a return on investment is backed by the asset and produced. In our case the cost of the borrowing does not just offset the returns we are making, the Council is generating revenue which can be reinvested in services. Without the money we could not balance our budget and would have to cut these services. Our net debt when you offset our internal borrowing investment is around £140million today and the interest paid is 2% of the Council’s total income, all of which not only paid by the return of our investment but it is forecast this year, by March 2022, that we will be generating over £30 for each tax payer in this Borough through our investment, nearly three times more than we did last year, all of which can be spent on vital services.
In addition, we are looking to reduce our external debt by £100million at the same time, and we have reduced the cost of borrowing by nearly 1%. That is nearly a 40% decrease in our borrowing.
The biggest threat to the Council and the economy as a whole is inflation, as we see prices rise in all areas of life. We must keep pace, and there will be some tough decisions on pricing and services that we provide across the Borough. We have relatively low costs compared with other councils. Car parks is a classic case, where less than 1% of our income comes from it, and we have councils that surround us who collect over 10% of their income through it. We do not intend to go down that route and the last time we raised our car parking charges was 2017. Some councils, believe it or not, even raised their charges last year during Covid, can you believe that? That said any increase in fees and charges will be measured and only designed to allow the Council to keep pace with the cost. No doubt charges will be needed to respond to the massive increases we are seeing in energy prices, building costs, both labour and materials, as well as an increase in care and schooling. Even though we are considered to be the most prosperous area we still have poverty, and it is our job to ensure that the increases fall on those who can best afford to pay, as the only option will be less services, which will fall on the old and the most vulnerable in the Borough. We have strong reserves.
Gregor Murray, Executive Member for Resident Services, Communications and Emissions:
Firstly, I am delighted to say that our new carbon neutral Dinton Pastures Activity Centre featured at COP26 last week, as an example of best practice and sustainable construction for community use.
I am sure that every Member will have seen recently that the cost of energy has increased significantly. With this in mind I wanted to update you on some of the vital and incredibly forward thinking work of the Council’s Energy Team concerning our climate emergency. As I have said before, our Eco Flex to heat scheme has been a huge success for the Council. I am very pleased to say that this year 968 homes have had either cavity wall insulation, loft insulation, or both, installed free of charge to the resident, as a result of this fantastic scheme. These sites have all been made significantly more energy efficient as a result of this programme, reducing energy bills for the residents, providing real time savings for families most likely to be impacted in the sharp rises in energy prices. Mr Mayor, I am sure that you will agree, that the foresight of our Energy Team should be applauded by this Council, and by the residents who have benefited so greatly from this free scheme.
In the last two weeks I have visited schools in Woodley, to see completed installations of new solar panels. At the end of this year the Energy Team will have completed thirteen additional solar PV installations across our Borough’s schools. Combined they will generate well over 250,000Kwh of energy and will save a combined £52,000 a year in energy costs for those schools. That cost saving is money that goes directly back into the schools’ budget to be spent elsewhere, supporting the education of our Borough’s children. I should remind you also Mr Mayor, that these solar installations cost the schools nothing up front, so the school gets all the benefits of reduced energy costs and carbon savings without any of the upfront installation costs. Councillor Howe and I are both delighted with the success of this programme to date and have started discussions together on how we can accelerate it to other schools across the Borough, including our academies. At Bulmershe School, Wokingham Borough Council have upgraded an existing solar array, installing new panels that are capable of generating more than twice the electricity capacity from the same rooftop space. I am sure you would be interested to know that the previous panels have not just been scrapped, they have been relocated to Dinton Pastures where they will be used to provide power to the lake’s aerator. Mr Mayor, I am also pleased to inform you that twenty one schools have had LED low energy lighting systems installed this year by our Energy Team and the Council completed installation upgrades at seven commercial sites.
Turning to trees Mr Mayor, I am very pleased to say that our 250,000 trees project officer has been appointed and started work. As part of her role, she will become the point of contact for town and parish councils as we look to identify additional sites for siting our tress, and I know that she will be contacting those councils directly in the coming weeks, if she has not done so already. She will also manage our garden forest programme, where we are looking to site up to 10,000 with residents to plant in their own properties.
As part of our tree planting initiative, you may have seen a consultation that has gone live using our new Engage Wokingham Borough platform. Already in use for our Waste Strategy consultation and now the Local Plan update consultation, this new platform has been launched to create a more constant two-way dialogue with our community on many issues, as already seen by several thousand residents signing up to engage.
Finally, Mr Mayor, you will have heard me say on numerous occasions that encouraging and adopting sustainable living behaviours in our residents is the most important thing that we can do as a council to combat climate change. With that in mind, on 21 and 22 October WBC held an open market engagement event where we invited businesses and individuals who are experts in behaviour change and sustainable living to come and pitch their ideas and tools to officers from across our council. I am pleased to say that over twenty five different pitches took place over two days from a variety of organisations, all proposing sustainable ideas relating to transport, energy reduction, waste reduction, active travel, food waste and consumption behaviours. Our officers are currently collating feedback and benchmarking scores from those pitches and will be arranging more detailed follow up meetings to discuss more opportunities in more detail shortly. This is a vital step in building sustainable living behaviours across our Borough, and I am grateful for the Officers who made the time in their diaries to attend the two days.
Wayne Smith, Executive Member for Planning and Enforcement:
As most of you will know, last week the Executive approved the consultation for the revised growth Local Plan Update, which starts next Monday and will run to 24 January. I wanted just to say a few things. We have set up a number of events that will start next week. We have got an event on Monday evening at St Crispin’s School, and then we have got an event in Arborfield the following week. We have also got four different virtual events, which already via our new Engage platform which Councillor Murray was referring to, we have got two hundred people registered for those events. Obviously, we are going to have to pay close attention to what happens with Covid, and to make sure that we have got precautions in place. We are also going to be having a section outside in the reception area where we will have all the maps and all the information available for residents to come along, and also if they go along to the Engage website, they can see when officers will be available to ask any questions or any points that they want to pick up. Also, there are various routes to engage with our Team. They can obviously engage through online, or they can write to our Team, or they can send us a letter. We very much hope that you can spread the word and ensure that we get as many people as possible to come along to our events, if not virtual, in person, and to give us their views on our Plan. As I said, we start next week, and it will run to 24 January, and we do hope that you come along and get involved.
Parry Batth, Executive Member for Environment and Leisure:
Mr Mayor I welcomed your presence at the opening of our two brand new leisure facilities, to benefit the health and wellbeing of our residents. The two facilities that you helped open are the boxing hub at Peach Place in Wokingham and the synthetic skating rink at Cantley. The synthetic rink mimics the characteristics of real ice. It creates a smooth and even surface for residents to skate on, with a low frictional resistance resulting in an enjoyable skating experience for all. Residents of all ages had fun skating the afternoon away when it opened over a week ago and showing off their skating skills. So far up to now over 2,750 tickets have been sold, and a couple of people that were expecting ice have been refunded. The state-of-the-art boxing hub will also be open to the public on 26 November. The hub includes a training ring, storage rig with three fitness stations, a functional cube ring with attachments for up to six stations and punch bags, including aqua bags, heavy bags, and upper cut bags. This offers a range of fantastic boxing facilities and is available to everybody whether you are looking for a 1-2-1 training membership, ad hoc classes or to hire the facility. The brand new facility packs a punch and will be very popular with our community, and will help them compliment an active lifestyle.