Agenda and minutes

To confirm and sign the minutes of the meeting held on 8 May 2024.

The minutes from the meeting held on 8 May 2024 were agreed as a correct record.

Members of the Committee are invited to declare any pecuniary or personal interests relating to specific matters on the agenda.

Please see note (a) at the end of the agenda.

No declartions of interest were received.

To consider an update on the following areas of the Electric Vehicle Strategy:

·       Public EV ChargePoint (EVCP) Deployment

·       Government LEVI Funding

·       GCC Fleet EV Migration

·       Arle Court EV Charging Hub

·       Zebra (Zero Emission Buses) funding

4.1       The Chair invited Steve Lowe, ULEV (Ultra Low Emission Vehicle) Programme Manager, to give an overview of this item. Members noted the following points:

·         A high-level map at 2.1 of the report showed the deployment of public charge points to date. This included 33 locations with 4 charges per location and each district had at least 2 locations.

·         This deployment was 60% funded by Department of Transport (DfT) funding and 40% by GCC.

·         This phase of the strategy was aimed at providing on-street charging for residents who did not have access to a driveway. Whilst some of the locations were in busy town centres, the coverage was equitable across the county.

·         It was hoped that by providing residents with assurance they would have access to charging, this would provide an incentive to make the change to an electric vehicle.

·         Some of the areas had low utilisation at the moment (as shown in the graph on page 17) but this was expected to increase over time. The Council were also not trying to provide chargers in commercial locations as it was expected the private sector would fill this space, and local authorities would focus their resource on the less commercially viable locations for the benefit of residents.

·         For the next phase, GCC had been awarded £3m in LEVI funding from Government, in addition to £500K internal funding and £400K LEVI capability funding over 2 years.

·         LEVI funded Phase 1 would be delivered within the 2024-25 financial year and provide another 200 charge points across 50 sites. Locations were currently being identified and officers were engaging with local members on these.

·         LEVI funded Phase 2 required a tender process which GCC had begun to progress. This phase would expect to see a much larger volume of charge points installed as a concession arrangement gave the operator more control over the deployment.

·         Pages 22 – 23 gave an overview of the GCC Fleet Migration progress by location and the graph at 3.6 gave an idea of the already significant energy benefits of the change.

·         Within the new Arle Court Transport Hub, there were 100 contactless charge points being installed, and these will be activated in stages according to demand.

·         The final section of the report gave an overview of the £6m secured from DfT to introduce Zero Emission Buses.

4.2       In response to question about county coverage, which was referred from the Corporate Scrutiny Committee, officers advised that all district areas in the county were covered in the first phase of the Council’s deployment. When next year’s delivery operator was selected, there would be strict criteria around equitable coverage enforced to ensure this continued. Officers were also working with district councils to deploy charging points into their car parks, for example.

4.3       It was noted that often the biggest requirement for residential charging was within areas of parking contention, residents may be concerned that having a charging point installed outside of their house would have implications on their ability to park. This  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

To consider the attached update report.

5.1       The report was taken as read and the Chair asked for members questions.

5.2       Noting the significant recruitment issues faced for this area of technical expertise, a member suggested working with higher education establishments in Gloucestershire as a potential avenue for developing the expertise locally. Officers advised that they had reached out to the local University and Agricultural college but hadn’t received engagement on the issue. It was further commented that the knowledge required to process applications is very niche, and apprenticeships were often more generalised, thus consideration had to be made whether any benefit to the team would likely be more than offset against the training input required for the length of time of the placement.

5.3       Officers explained that Gloucestershire was not the only local authority struggling with a backlog of applications and recruitment. They also confirmed that the Authority is part of a national ‘Best Practice’ group and has altered some processes as a result; However, on the whole, we were in line with best practice. The process could be very complex, there were no set timescales around how long an application could take as it would entirely depend on the amount of engagement/documentation included etc. 

5.4       It was added that officers had taken steps to make more use of the option to use officer delegation to decide on applications, which was a faster process. A Terms of Reference had been put in place to ensure this power was used appropriately.

To consider the attached report on the Council’s approach to highway repairs.

6.1       Kath Haworth, Assistant Director of Highways & Infrastructure, introduced the item. Members noted the following points:

·         The long-term solution to road condition was resurfacing and capital repairs to the network, but in the meantime, there were potholes and other defects that need to be fixed as well.

·         Good progress had been made on resurfacing across the 600,000km road network, with specific focus on improving the quality of A and B roads, which were the roads that carried the most traffic and were important to the county’s economy. The next phase would be to focus on Gloucestershire C and unclassified roads, which made up 50% of the network.

·         The department was now a year into its Transformation Programme, and this had included trialling initiatives such as the Find and Fix gangs, who operated separately from the safety defect gangs and were programmed to visit locations where there were less critical, road condition issues, such as a cluster of defects in one area.

·         The Find and Fix gangs had been really helpful in terms of having extra capacity to fix defects before they turned into potholes or safety issues and had also been very positive from a customer feedback perspective.

·         Officers felt that initiatives like this were enabling the department to move towards a more preventative position, being able to address defects before they turned into safety issues.

·         Safety gangs were also now able to address multiple defects in one site where they were attending to address a safety issue and traffic management was already in place. This was resulting in an additional 10% of defects being addressed.

·         A lot of different trials had also been explored and these were outlined in section 5 of the report.

·         The Fix My Street application was allowing customers to report issues in a much easier and slicker way and the use of this was increasing month on month, as well as the number of issues being reported.

·         Officers reflected that this had been a really positive journey for the department, and they were hoping to reach a position that allowed capacity for more preventative works, rather than just reactive repairs, more efficiency and financial savings as a result.

·         There was no ‘single’ innovation, technique or process that would achieve improvement but a ‘jigsaw of pieces’ that needed to be put together in a coordinated way to get the right solution. This also needed to be done alongside sustained investment.

·         Section 8 of the report outlined future opportunities.

6.2       Members questioned what the next phase for the ‘Fix My Street’ application was. They raised suggestions such as being able to report maintenance to streetlights or road signs, the need for street sweeping or gully cleaning etc. Also, for the application to have functionality to send district responsibility requests to the right Council, it was noted that often the public were not aware which council had responsibility for which area and we needed to make it as easy as possible to connect these.

6.3       Officers confirmed this  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6.

The attached report is to be taken as read and members have 30 minutes allocated at the meeting to ask questions. Members are encouraged to pre-submit questions beforehand if they are able via Sophie Benfield in Democratic Services.

This includes Quarter 4 2023/24 performance data.

7.1       The report was taken as read and opened up to questions from members.

7.2       The Chair noted that Cllr Whyborn had pre-submitted three questions and a written response to these can be found at an Annex 1 of the minutes.

7.3       A member raised a significant delay he had experienced in delivering a Traffic Regulation Order for a school in his division and questioned how the recent budget amendment allocating additional funding to school road safety improvements would be used. It was advised that the pressure for the TRO team was largely around capacity due to recent recruitment pressures. The additional money had allowed extra resource to be brought in and officers would follow up with the member after the meeting on specific details.

7.4       There was a discussion about the future of The Robin service. It was noted that further expansion beyond the current trial would depend on continued and increased utilisation of the service. Officers were monitoring the use at the moment, but it remained unclear what decision would be made once the trial had come to an end. It was also noted that the service was currently funded by Government and therefore continuation and/or expansion after the trial would need to have alternative funding.

7.5       It was added that the current service hours of 7am – 7pm did not encourage young people to use the service and officers could consider working with youth services to help promote it. In response, officers advised that they had used all the available funding for this initiative at the moment and were providing the best service possible, within the financial constraints.

7.6       Members concluded the item by paying their thanks to Jane Everiss, who was due to retire from her position as Head of Library and Registration Services, for all her years of hard work.

To note the attached update report from Climate Leadership Gloucestershire.

This report is to be taken as read. If members of the Committee have any questions, these should be emailed to Sophie Benfield in Democratic Services who will liaise with officers to provide a written response.

8.1       The report was noted.

To note the updated Committee Terms of Reference as recently approved by Council.

9.1       The updated Terms of Reference were noted.