(1)

the title of the PID is amended to ‘Review of Subsidised Bus Routes and Through Ticketing’;

(2)

membership of the task and finish group is approved as follows:

·         Councillor Michael Leaves;

·         Councillor Nelder;

·         Councillor Nicholson;

·         Councillor Wheeler;

(3)

Gill Peele, Panel Lead Officer in consultation with Councillor Nicholson, Chair and Councillor Nelder, Vice-Chair, have delegated authority to amend the PID if necessary prior to its submission to the Overview and Scrutiny Management Board.

(a)

the report summarises the PCCCs responses to the ten most relevant recommendations that came out of the original 26 recommendations following the Mary Portas Review of the High Street in December 2011;

(b)

PCCC applied for Plymouth City Centre to be a nominated town in the  Portas Pilot Scheme, however, this application was unsuccessful on two occasions;

(c)

unsuccessful towns who applied for the Portas Pilot Scheme were invited to become ‘a Town Team Partner’ and Plymouth had signed up to this scheme;

(d)

the latest audit of Plymouth’s Business Improvement District (BID) revealed that out of 460 retail properties approximately 10 per cent were vacant; this was below the 11.8 per cent national average and the 20 per cent vacancy rates that many of the Portas Pilot Scheme towns operated.

(e)

Plymouth College of Art and Design were utilising the vacant store at 109 Cornwall Street, for a ‘Design2Sell’ scheme, where students were able to promote and sell their work in a store that would be vacant without this project. The PCCC were looking at using similar kinds of initiatives within other city centre vacant stores;

(f)

foot fall was lower for June and July in 2012 compared to the same period in 2011, however, this was a difficult statistic to compare due to weather variations having a major impact on figures. A more reliable statistic was cash spend which demonstrated that 63 per cent of retailers were trading at the same level or above for the same period as last year;

(g)

PCCC were unable to provide accurately a collective spend per head, although, CACI, a lead provider in marketing solutions, produced an annual report which provided a lot of data and statistics;

(h)

the larger vacant stores within the city centre were being actively marketed and it was hoped that at least one of the three largest stores would be occupied by Christmas 2012;

(i)

PCCC was exploring the possibility of hosting a monthly market and had ambitions to use the income generated to purchase market equipment with a view to creating a regular fortnightly craft and continental market.

(a)

despite recent publicity of Gdynia Way, the signage on the road meets legal requirements and follows the Department for Transport guidelines and the road was operating well;

(b)

the EETS was subject to a number of traffic surveys both before and after the scheme and a further evaluation project would be conducted after 12 months of the road being operational, this evaluation would provide more detailed analysis which would be provided to the Growth and Prosperity Overview and Scrutiny Panel.

·                     anti-social behaviour and vandalism in Cavendish Park;

·                     noise pollution on Mainstone Avenue;

·                     flooding in Heles Terrace;

·                     vacant shops and parking issues on Embankment Road;

·                     dangerous junction at Heles Terrace;

·                     traffic light system at Tothill Road;

·                     lack of a Park and Ride system at Plymstock;

(c)

monitoring the air quality at Prince Rock Primary School was part of the evaluation programme and was being undertaken;

(d)

the final evaluation survey, scheduled for January 2013, was postponed from November 2012 due to the delay on completing the Finnigan Road works;

(e)

the Transport Department were looking at ways of capturing data for the evaluation survey and would likely use traffic counters to measure volume of traffic and journey times, bus driver surveys from all three major bus operators (CityBus, First and Target Travel) and an online questionnaire;

(1)

Philip Heseltine, Head of Transport Strategy and Julie Wileman, Major Schemes Project Officer, would organise a meeting with members from the Sutton and Mount Gould ward in order that local issues could be communicated;

(2)

Transport Officers are requested to review the traffic arrangements at Heles Terrace to improve and attempt to avoid issues of congestion;

(3)

Transport Officers are requested to investigate ways to consult with the wider public and as to how councillors can assist in gathering intelligence and feeding through to the Transport Department;

(4)

a future report is submitted to the panel early in 2013 following the evaluation programme.

(a)

on street parking was a serious city-wide issue and the submitted report was the first step in attempting to identify the parking issues that the city was facing;

(b)

the review of on street parking was originally started in September 2010 via a series of resident and business surveys;

(c)

it was acknowledged that to resolve the issue of on street parking would be a long and difficult process, where a ‘one size fits all’ approach would not be satisfactory. In order to resolve this issue the Parking Department and Cabinet Member for Transport were keen to work closely with the Growth and Prosperity Overview and Scrutiny Panel.

·         vehicles illegally parked on public footpaths;

·         oversubscribed permit parking areas;

·         commercial vehicles allocated parking permits;

·         caravan and trailers parked on the public highway;

·         student parking areas;

(d)

this paper predominantly focused on controlled parking zones (CPZs) where parking permits had been severely oversubscribed;

(e)

further analysis and surveys would be undertaken to identify all of the issues;

(f)

student parking was a significant issue which was being researched through monitoring models adopted by other cities, Cardiff in particular.

(a)

the Planning Department were exploring ways to more effectively engage the public, whilst reducing costs and improving standards and to do this a new Code of Publicity was proposed;

(b)

the public notices, used to advertise planning applications, had been improved by including QR codes, to enable smart phones to access the information and by ensuring that they were more user friendly;

(c)

ensuring public notices were situated in the best possible locations to inform the public on development proposals in their areas and that this would be achieved through a new process that had been instigated whereby ward members play a more proactive role and work with the planning department on the siting public notices following the recently agreed ‘Probity in Planning’ code;

(d)

this new Code of Publicity has simplified the process of siting public notices meaning that the code is less complicated and that everyone has equal access to view public notices;

(e)

a publicity campaign will be undertaken to promote the changes in the Code of Publicity and also the department propose to work with Plymouth Disability Action Network to ensure that all members of the community have the opportunity to be engaged on planning applications;

(f)

due to recent rises in postage the Planning Department would no longer be sending letters of notification to householders and letters would be replaced by increased use of public notices, with exceptions for members of the public who had difficulty accessing public notices due to disabilities;

(g)

the public notices would be written in plain English, although all notices use internationally recognised symbols informing residents that there are translation services available.

(h)

the Government set the fees for planning applications and as such the Planning Department had no control over fee setting, which means that the additional costs of postage could not be passed on to applicants;

(i)

the changes to the Code of Publicity and ‘Probity in Planning’ code  allowed a more flexible and more proactive engagement with local communities and stakeholders on development proposals and potentially, through the further development of a cooperative model of delivering planning services, a fundamentally different relationship between local citizens and the Local Planning Authority.

(1)

the proposed new approach advocated in the Code of Publicity is welcomed and supported;

(2)

theMonitoring Officer, is invited to attend the next meeting of the panel to provide a report which advises councillors when it is appropriate to use council resources for ward work, particularly in  ...  view the full minutes text for item 19.

1.

Gill Peele, Panel Lead Officer, is to ensure that all items included on the work programme are populated with meeting dates;

2.

the following items are added to the panel’s work programme –

·         Inward Investment Team – an overview on how the team are working to generate inward investment. What have they done and what are their plans for the future;

·         Community Events and Road Closure policy - to be added for the next meeting and a report requested to be submitted;

·         BT Broadband connectivity – should include all service providers. Request a report for the next meeting;

·         Highway maintenance – request a report to be reviewed at the next meeting;

·         Market Recovery Scheme – request a report so this can be reviewed at the next meeting;

·         Youth Unemployment – this item to the included at the November meeting.