Minutes:
The Leader of Council made the following statement:
Covid is still prevalent amongst our community and although its serious impact on individuals has considerably been reduced because of vaccinations and boosters.
It is still life threatening to some, and illnesses from the virus compounds the severe pressures faced by our hospitals and care facilities particularly at this time of the year. I continue to urge you to take the usual careful measures to minimise the spread of the virus. Please take up your vaccinations and boosters and encourage others to do as well.
Whilst continuing to deal with the Covid response we are also working hard on our recovery, focusing on those things we need to build upon to be a better Council and enable a more thriving community. Two key themes of work in this regard are equalities and anti-poverty.
We already have an Equalities Strategy with a cross-party working group in place to drive this forward. We are developing a Residents’ Equalities Forum as a key part of this ongoing work and want this Forum to represent all protected characteristics. This includes: gender, race and disability, amongst the others.
At Council last Thursday we were clear in our position that we fully support the principles and messages conveyed by the White Ribbon movement. We are, in fact, pursuing what could be called ‘White Ribbon Plus’ in that we are committed to creating a community where everybody is safe and to promoting equality, inclusion, and a safe community for all. So, whilst today’s focus is about tackling violence against women and girls, and that is absolutely right, as the authority responsible for all community safety, our overarching focus must be wider.
Our work on anti-poverty is equally important and also driven by a cross-party working group. We have already established a Hardship Alliance and a broader Voluntary Community Sector Consultation Group led by our extremely capable Chief Executive at the Wokingham CAB, Jake Morrison.
In collaboration with the VCS, and in consultation more broadly with the public, we will create an initial Anti-Poverty Strategy for consideration by the Executive in March and we will seek to develop our actions following this.
We are not, of course, waiting for a strategy before acting as we know there are issues of financial hardship that require an urgent response.
We have enacted numerous schemes and interventions in this regard over the past 18 months, the most recent being the allocation of the Household Support Scheme. This will focus on the continued provision on free school meals as well as targeted contributions to those most in need, utilising the intelligence of our highly valued VCS.
I would like to take this opportunity to thank the voluntary and community sector for the great work that you do and reinforce my commitment to keep working with you in a genuinely collaborative way.
Last week we brought forward the Local Plan Update Consultation. It will run until 24th January 2022. We would like as many of our residents to reply to the consultation as possible. Please use one of the accredited methods. Online at engage.wokingham.gov.uk, email LPU@wokingham.gov.uk or just send a letter to the Growth and Delivery Team at Shute End. Petitions and Facebook posts cannot be considered but every reply in one of the three channels will be taken into account and published.
Please respond to what is in the plan not what your read or hear elsewhere.
I would happily not build in Wokingham anywhere as I believe that Wokingham has taken its fair share. However, all the political parties nationally agree that 300,000 plus, in both the Lib Dem and Tory manifestos, should be built. There are very, very, few brownfield sites in this Borough.
Wokingham Borough is bounded by areas of natural beauty, green belt and royal lands. Practically the whole of the undeveloped Borough is optioned by some developer. If we do not have a Local Plan which has been subject to inspection, any developer can gain planning permission. The net result would be several times the development required by the housing numbers and the planning in the Borough would be directed by central Government. South Oxfordshire has found this to its cost.
The housing numbers were not “derived in February 2016 by a group of people none of us know who”. They are derived from the National Planning Policy framework and guidance from published statistics. We have taken advice from the best to ensure that these figures are at a minimum. Whilst we cannot justify “exceptional circumstances”, it is pleasing that the campaign I led to change the proposals, which would have taken our housing numbers to over 1,635, was successful.
We have the opportunity of knitting this Local Plan to our climate change and biodiversity agenda. It is dependent on central Government bringing building regulations into line with its climate change and biodiversity objectives.
The Council’s objective is to square the circle between development, climate change and biodiversity. It is a tough objective, but it must be doable.
There has been a lot of scaremongering regarding Pinewood. To be clear we are not proposing to remove any of the valued community groups from the site. The consultation does not plan any development in Pinewood, notwithstanding the claim that it plans to concrete it over. The consultation asks what the organisations within it would consider to fund these organisations’ stated need for considerable investment.
The winter is now
upon us. Due to the old and poor state of repair of the
utilities and the pressure placed upon them, we will
unfortunately see more failures. This will bring more problems on
the roads. The demand for broadband with people working from home
has exacerbated the issues on the roads. The Council will do all in
its power to ensure that the disruption is kept to a minimum, but
we can’t have people without lights, gas, water and Internet connections. They are now all
essential to our way of life. Utility companies must deal
with emergencies. The Council cannot intervene. We can delay
maintenance to ease problems. We all use the roads and understand
the frustration and delays caused on the Borough roads. We will do
all we can to keep them to the minimum.