Councillor Jonathan Drean, Cabinet member for Transport made the following announcements:

Mobility Hubs - £105 million Transforming Cities future fund in particular the flagship Mobility’s project. Plymouth City Council would be awarding contracts for electric vehicle charging points, an electric vehicle club and electric bike elements in the project. This would provide drivers access to electric charging vehicle points across 300 parking bays over the city, of which over 100 would be rapid chargers.

A contract would be awarded for electric bikes which would lead to over 400 E-bikes delivered to Plymouth by 2023.

Plymouth City Council are in the process of delivering an electric vehicle car club for use by residents and businesses and information would be shared in the New Year after contracts had been awarded. 

The Department for Transport had sponsored the upgrade of the CCTV Centre, this would see the replacement of the Urban Traffic Control Software, Video Management system and replacement of aging monitoring arrangements.

The Plymouth Highways team had:

Commenced white lining of roads in Plymouth using an MMA which was a cold plastic Methyl Methacrylate system, this would last longer than the current road marking techniques. It would be laid at a lower temperature and would reduce carbon emissions and set quicker and therefore eases congestion by reducing on time site.

Continued works of upgrading of subway lights, pedestrian crossings and traffic island bollards using LED technology and the service had achieved all targets within the Carbon Reduction Plan. 

Prepared over 90,000 tonnes m2 of Highway ready for next year’s micro asphalt surface treatments. The Processing comparison of traditional road surfacing would see a saving of 85% carbon emissions.

Commenced work in setting up a Social Media page which would highlight all works being carried out on Plymouth’s road network and would be working with the Corporate Communications Team but be led by the Highways Team.  

Repaired street lighting columns, there are now less than 100 street light columns to be repaired. Two teams were out in the day repairing 30 columns per day. The repairs had been undertaken under warranty from the manufacturers. South West Highways, the contractor had a sufficient stock or lanterns and photocells and would be working up to Christmas Eve before commencing again in January on the annual repairs. 

Disabled parking bays at Devils Point Car Park had been doubled from 4 to 9 with waterfront parking and Plymouth would be looking to adding more on the Hoe Promenade in the future.

Plymouth had assisted Blue Badge holders with Electric vehicle charging in the Theatre Royal Car Park. Holders would be able to ask staff to connect their vehicles to the charging point at no additional charge. This trial would be reviewed after four months. 

Councillor Mrs Maddie Bridgeman, Cabinet Member for Environment and Street Scene made the following announcements to Cabinet:

Household Waste and Recycling Centres would be open throughout the festive period (except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day) and the staff would be working hard to deal with the increased use during this time of the year.

Plymouth City Council had closed its first full season of the new garden waste collection service, which was extended into December to ensure that all residents had a final collection. Over 57,000 registrations and record tonnage of green waste was collected.

Plymouth City Council’s cleansing teams would be working over festive period and collections would start again next Wednesday.

Councillor Mrs Bridgeman thanked all Street Services frontline staff who had continued to work hard throughout the pandemic.

Councillor Patrick Nicholson, Deputy Leader of the Council made the following updates:

The Play Area Improvement Plan 6 of 10 sites had been fully ordered and will be implemented early in the New Year. Sites included; King George V playing field, Lancaster Gardens, Albion Park, Staple Close, Lower Park Drive and Yealmpstone Farm. For the other 4 sites, consultations would be taking place early in the New Year with company supplying the equipment and it is hoped this would be agreed with relevant ward members to enable ordering. 

2021 trees had been planted by Plymouth City Council as part of the tree planting programme

Cabinet members were then presented with a short video to look back at some of the events that took place in Plymouth.