HERTFORDSHIRE HIGHWAYS

JOINT MEMBER PANEL FOR THE DISTRICT OF THREE RIVERS

Meeting of the Hertfordshire Highways Joint Member Panel for the District of Three Rivers held in the Penn Chamber, Three Rivers House, Rickmansworth on Wednesday, 9November 2011 from 6.30pm to 9.25pm.

Present:Three Rivers District Council

District Councillors:Stephen Giles-Medhurst, Paul Gordon, Pam Hames,Ann ShawOBE, and Martin Trevett(Vice-Chairman).

Officer:Janet Ide,Committee Manager.

Hertfordshire County Council

CountyCouncillors:Frances Button, Deirdre Gates,Steve Drury, (Chairman), Paul Goggins, Barbara Lamb MBE, Chris Hayward and Stuart Pile.

Officers:Ian Brownell, Lead Assistant District Manager, Hertfordshire Highways and Bob Hall, Highways Services Manager.

In attendanceCouncillors Chris Ayrton, Eric Bishop, Alison Scarth, Tony Barton and Chris Whately-Smith, Parish Councillors Pam King, Jackie Worrall, Gordon Harold, John Gell and Lyn Sutherland.

An apology for absence was received from District CouncillorJames May.

13/11INTRODUCTION

The Chairman welcomed everyone to the meeting.

14/11MINUTES OF THE PREVIOUS MEETINGS AND MATTERS ARISING

The Minutes of the meeting held on 6July 2011 were confirmed as a correct record and were signed by the Chairman.

15/11NOTICE OF OTHER BUSINESS

None.

16/11DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

Councillor Martin Trevett declared a personal, non-prejudicial interest in any agenda item relating to St Clement Danes School as a parent of two pupils at the school.

17/11PETITIONS UPDATE

The Panel received a report updating Members on the petitions presented to the Panel and the progress being made with any approved actions and schemes.

The Panel received two new Petitions for traffic calming measures in Lytham Avenue and Ashridge Drive, South Oxhey plus an updated report from Sarratt Parish Council providing accident records and requesting the Panel revisit their request for Vehicle Activated (VA) signs on the Green in Sarratt.

The Lead Assistant District Manager advised that sleeping body and street management strategy surveys would be undertaken to see whether these measures conformed to Highways policy and to report back at the January meeting.

The Lead Assistant District Manager made further updates as follows:-

Subject / Scheme / Present Position /
Comment
Park Road Pedestrian
Crossing
Rickmansworth / Improved crossing
facility / To formally liaise with the cycling group. Agreed to carry out another site meeting to resolve issues that had been raised. If a mutual understanding cannot be arrived at would bring back to January meeting for Members to consider whether to over rule or support them.
Hampermill Lane / Speed compliance scheme / Currently on site.
A404 Chenies Road, Chorleywood
St Clement DanesSchool / Pedestrian Facilities / One objection received to the Phase 2 and 3 TRO formal application. Met with the objector and had a good discussion on reasons why we were introducing the measures and the objector had withdrawn their objection. Try and get the Order sealed and include as part of the scheme this financial year.
Heronsgate Road, Chorleywood / Traffic calming to reduce speed and volume of traffic / Following an incident last week met with householder to discuss scheme in more detail. Advert for 20mph had gone out.
Chalfont Lane, Chorleywood / Safer provisions for horse riders / Plan had been approved and CouncillorMartin Trevett had been to the stables and spoken to them. Estimated cost £10,000 and trying to come up with funding to implement that and anticipate the stables contributing something towards that.
Bedmond Road / Traffic island and speed limit change / Traffic island actually in detailed design with implication to get on site this financial year. Order had been raised to erect signs through that section and once a date was available the sealing of the Order would be implemented. CouncillorPaul Goggins stated the traffic island was part of the proposal but had been rejected some time ago. So work was just signing for 40mph.

ACTION AGREED:-

that the report and update be noted.

18/11HIGHWAYS LOCALITY BUDGET

The Panel received a presentation on the Highway Locality Budgets by Bob Hall, Head of Highways Management, Herts Highways.

Mr Hall reported that this had been introduced successfully in pilot schemes in Broxbourne and Dacorum. A decision had been made to role out the locality budget scheme on a County wide basis. Presentations had been made to CountyMembers with wider invitations being extended to District and Parish Members. EachCountyMember would have £90,000 ring fenced for highway works. Members had the choice of choosing schemes from the officers’ lists or to choose their own schemes. £1.2m had been committed and delivered already with a remaining budget and works being planned.

The Highways Locality Budget gave a local focus to work delivered in each particular area. There was concern that the highways budget for Member Panels was quite restricted in terms of input of District Members and a lot of Members were not involved in the wider highway issues.

All Members of the District and Parish Councils had been invited to Liaison meetings to discuss strategic issues in their area, locality budgets and matters of interest.

There still some issues outstanding such as Petitions and Traffic Regulation Orders (TROs). In terms of Petitions and TROs both functions were governed by Herts County Council Corporate procedures, with standing orders and guidance to follow. For local Petitions and TROs these would be dealt with by a local CountyMember but large Petitions and TROs with a wider significance or across a boundary between Members, could be referred to the Highways and Transport Panel.

CountyMembers could access Section 106 Agreement and Developer contributions currently and District Councillors received copies on a quarterly basis. This would change in the future with the introduction of infrastructure and the District would have a more permanent role.

No change was envisaged to urban transport plans.

Currently there were fairly extensive documents reported to the Panel. The proposal was that in April each year draft one of the Integrated Works Programme (IWP) would be posted on the web site. A list of integrated works programme that affected each CountyMember’s area would be provided to them. The proposed build programmes included draft two of the IWP and the Highway Locality Budget. Build programmes would be reported to the Liaison Meeting in April 2012.

Detailed guidance and procedures for Members still needed to be developed with significant matters being considered at the moment.

. CountyCouncillor Stuart Pile introduced himself to the meeting as theExecutive Member (Highways and Transport) and had been the Executive Member for 7years.

He stated that there was a clear commitment from the administration at Herts County Council to dissolve decision making to a local level to enable Members of Herts County Council to engage fully with District Members and Parish Members as well as residents. The decision was taken in 2009 and this was the beginning of what could be an ever growing programme of decision making in Highways and other areas with local people making local decisions. This was not unique in local government at the moment. He felt there came a time when Joint Member Panels were no longer considered appropriate and some had been hijacked politically. Each one was different in each of the Districts and with the advent of new technology and giving information out, the age of having paper reports to panels was disappearing. The County Council were now able to point Members at all levels, residents and businesses on where to find information rather than having paper copies.

The scheme had been through apilot exercise and had been seen that there could be a variety of engagement methods but sometimes CountyMembers struggled to get District and Parish Members on board. There needed to be acceptance that there could be true engagement between the County Council Members and other Members at whatever level.

A report to the Transport Panel brought up more concerns, including the wish for Joint Member Panels to change into something else and be less frequent. As a listening Council it was decided not to push forward these proposals that we had but to give time for Members at all levels to listen to what we were saying and come back with arguments, points of clarification and anything they wanted to say at these meetings. A decision was required fairly quickly now of what was going to be done and how we would do the Liaison meetings in the future at the end of March and beyond.

In response to County Councillor Stuart Pile, Councillor Ann Shaw said she realised that, in describing this plan, he had used all the right words – Localism, the Big Society, etc and made it sound very good, butsome found the suggestion very worrying.

It seemed to be a political gimmick designed to promote the distribution of goodies where it would have most political benefit. The claim that this would raise the profile of CountyCouncillors and must be in before the next set of CountyElections confirms this.

Instead of increasing community responsibility it undermined local democracy by depriving the public of the right to hear and contribute to decision making and replaced debate with secret canvassing and allocation of funding.

Local experience showed that from time to time larger, more expensive schemes that cross County ward boundaries were required. These proposals would make this unlikely as inevitably schemes would be decided on a parochial basis only and the description given at this meeting of how it would work confirms that it would be less efficient, less effective and certainly less economical.

Councillor Martin Trevett stated that if he was asked to invent a way to get involved with the local community, he would invent a Joint Member Panel. This Panel had worked successfully. It seemed to be broadly maintenance type issues, traffic islands, verge repairs, tree planting, lighting schemes and he was concerned as to whether they would be done and would lose their input into Three Rivers schemes because there would not be a Forum to discuss it. The Panel worked well and he would not want to throw it out.

Councillor Chris Hayward was interested to hear Councillor Ann Shaw’s robust views but he felt that the reality was that this was about greater accountability and transparency and not a political gimmick. The public needed to know that we were going to consult. He said he intended to make his consultation process as wide as possible including inviting Parish Councillors and residents via their Resident Associations and consult when an on line polling process was introduced. He stated that Members were here to represent the people and invited all Councillors to joint with him to make this scheme a success.

Councillor Stephen Giles-Medhurst felt it was to be welcomed that this would give Members a greater influence over highway budgets than previously but there was a disparity on how the money would be spent. With the abolition of the Panel meetings there would be no written reports for discussion and no decisions would be taken. The Executive Member accepted that there should be a formal meeting for the District and County Councillors to make some decisions and influence what the County Council was doing in relation to highways. Particularly concerns over Traffic Orders, transparency, democratic accountability and how they were dealt with and recorded. All decisions would be taken in private with no public minutes. This was not open government and was not good democratic accountability. There should be a continuance of some format of Highways Panel such as at Watford. There should be the potential to scrutinize where each CountyCouncillor had spent £90,000. It will be on the web site but with no ability to question why a particular road was repaired. Not all members of the public had access to the web site or the ability to reach documents of this nature with lots of figures and roads. It was valuable for members of the public to be able to speak on items on the agenda and not just Petitions.

Councillor Paul Goggins considered this to be a fait accompli and Members had to make the best of it. He took comfort from the fact that County Councillor Stuart Pile had come here to listen and asked him to take back and consider what he had heard at Three Rivers.

County CouncillorFrances Button stated that the Herts Highway contract came up for renewal in 2013 and receiving the Work Programme now was a very useful step, where Members were changing at the same time that contracts were changing. She said residents cared what happened in their community and their roads and pavements and were delighted to have the opportunity to consult. In terms of localities and local policy which people who were not on the Panel, but here as a resident, were able to ask a question.

County CouncillorFrances Button on behalf of Mr Hall stated devolution to a local level and to Councillors with detailed local knowledge was likely to achieve outcomes which met local needs more closely. But when a large budget was sub-divided in this way there was an increased chance of duplicating costs so that there was less money to spend on real outcomes. What monitoring would be done to monitor this and deal with it.

County Councillor Stuart Pile stated that the locality budget meetings that were proposed would be open to all Members at all levels and public meetings and there was no reason why the public and press should not attend. He understood the concerns about transparency and accountability which was the driving force in his attending so many meetings. He stated that full transparency was required and everyone should know what decisions had been made and how they were arrived at, in particular Petitions, TROs and Section 106 agreements. Details would be made as transparent as they could be made.

Bob Hall took on board the issue of residents without access IT.

Bob Hall advised that monitoring had been carried out on the sub division of the budgets and was bring broken down into smaller chunks. Officers were still able to release efficient and effective delivery by combing works. That aspect had worked well. It was critical for Members that decisions were taken at the right time to provide effective delivery of works as being secured. Procedures were being developed and it was hoped to reduced and streamline them.

The Vice Chairman stated that Watford continued with the removal of the discretionary budget and enquired whether it would be possible here and County Council Members could come and give an annual report on how they spend their locality budget.

CountyCouncillor Deirdre Gates said she was in favour of the continuance of these Panels where there was a tremendous amount of knowledge and expertise to help new Members. It would be such a shame if such experience was lost and not made available to Members of Three Rivers.

In terms of the decision making at the end of November Members were asked for their preliminary decisions and indicative costs. Detailed costings for these schemes were about to be undertaken and a plan to indicate what was to be done, where and what it would cost. By the end of November Members ought to be completing their consultation on Phase 1 works. Phase 2 would pick up some of the smaller issues and look forward to what Members wanted to do in the following year.

Members had been informed that there was no money available for additional grit bins. CountyCouncillor Stuart Pile reported that there were 1065 bins on the network which took two weeks and £40,000 a time to fill. They had been filled by the end of October and had already had salt removed. If Members wished bins to be moved to better locations the County Council would bear the cost. Members were working with officers to develop a system whereby County would provide the salt in locations so residents could collect it themselves free.

Members sought clarification on how individual schemes within the Wards/Divisions they represented would be financed in the future and Highways Officers gave information on the current situation.

The Chairman thanked Bob Hall and County Councillor Stuart Pile for attending the meeting and presenting the Highway Locality Budgets.

ACTION AGREED:-

that the views outlined above be noted and the presentation be noted.

19/11SECTION 106 DEVELOPER (S106) CONTRIBUTIONS

The report advised the Panel of schemes funded by existing Section106 contributions and new developments that had recently been added to the list that had contributions available.

At the last meeting Members agreed to see only new unallocated Section 106 contributions for discussion on possible use.

The Lead Assistant District Manager enquired as to whether Members agreed the new developments or wished to take away to consider and e-mail in any suggestions to him.