Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Monday 25 September 2023, 6:30pm - Feedback Tab - Start video at 0:39:44 - Tunbridge Wells Borough Council Webcasting

Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Monday, 25th September 2023 at 6:30pm

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Seat 3

1 Apologies for Absence

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1 Apologies for Absence

2 Declarations of Interest and Party Whip

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3 Notification of Persons Registered to Speak

3 Notification of Persons Registered to Speak

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3 Notification of Persons Registered to Speak

4 Minutes of the meeting dated 31 July 2023

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Minutes , 31/07/2023 Overview and Scrutiny Committee

5 Items Called- In

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5 Items Called-In

6 Presentation from the Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning

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7 Presentation from the Cabinet Member for Economic Development

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8 Work Programme

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Work Programme 25 September 2023

9 Urgent Business

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7 Urgent Business

10 Date of the next meeting

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11 Date of the Next Meeting

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Disclaimer: This transcript was automatically generated, so it may contain errors. Please view the webcast to confirm whether the content is accurate.

Seat 3 - 0:00:00

good evening, welcome to this meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on Monday, the 25th of September.

I'm Councillor Tom dwellings, and I am the Chairman of this committee

before we start, please give you a full attention to the announcements from the clock Karen.

thank you Chair good evening everybody. In the event of the fire alarm ringing continuously, he must immediately evacuate the building at walking pace officers were escorted via the most direct available route, and no one is to use the lift. We will make our way to the fire assembly point by the entrance to the Town Hall Yard car park, on Watson, Way once outside, a check will be made to ensure everyone has safely left and no-one is to re-enter the building until advice it is safe to do so.

This is a public meeting and proceedings are being webcast live online. A recording will also be available for playback on the Council's website shortly afterwards. Any other third party may also record or film meetings unless exempt or confidential information is being considered, but are requested as a courtesy to others. To give notice of this to the clock. The Council is not liable for any third party recordings. Can I ma, can I remind everyone to use the microphones when speaking and turn them off when you're not? The red light indicates that the microphone is on any comments that are not recorded for the webcast may not be included in the minutes of the meeting. it is very important that the outcomes of this meeting are clear at the end of each substantive item, the Chairman will ask whether the matter is agreed in the absence of a clear majority, or if the Chairman decides a full vote is desirable, a vote will be taken by a show of hands Members requesting a recorded vote must do so before the vote is taken. Thank you Chair.

thank you, Chair, Councillor Bland. present, thank you, Councillor Carey present, thank you, Councillor Ellis present, thank you, Councillor Page,

Britton, thank you, Councillor Lewis.

present, thank you, Councillor Rogers.

present, thank you, Councillor Knight present, thank you Councillor Dorling's

present,

thank you, and we have officers here this evening, we've got Paul Taylor.

Carlos Hone Jane Feynman and John strapping and also Councillors Hugo Pound and Justin Rutland.

thank you, Caroline.

for the benefit of anyone who may be unfamiliar with our meetings, I would like to explain that committee members have had their agendas for over a week and have had the opportunity to ask questions of officers ahead of the meeting.

we have to submit substantive items on the agenda this evening, both in the form of presentations, the first from the Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning, and the second from the cabinet member for economic development.

welcome me both to this evening's meeting

after the presentation, we will then move into member discussion and I will first ask for questions before opening the floor for debate. at the end of the debate, we will formulate a resolution and members should ensure that any proposals or actions are correctly captured before we move to a vote.

1 Apologies for Absence

now agenda item 1 is to note any apologies for absence from members of the Committee.

Caroline, we have some apologies,

thank you, Chair, we have apologies from Councillor Pope Councillor Palmer and Councillor Morton,

thank you.

2 Declarations of Interest and Party Whip

agenda item 2 is to receive any declarations of interest in items or party whip on the agenda, does anyone have any declarations to make

Alan?

thank you should become in terms of the

presentation Bobby back from economic development, I worked for adult education

and KCC, so therefore I will be discussing the Emilia Scott.

I, you'll stay in the room for the debate, you ain't absent, you went absent yourself,

your, I'll stay in the room if that's OK, yeah, of course.

any other declarations of interest,

so we move on to agenda item 3.

3 Notification of Persons Registered to Speak

which is tonight any.

committee members, non committee, members have registered to speak and we have no registered speakers.

agenda item 4 is to approve the minutes of the meeting held on the 19th of June, this is for accuracy, checking only no issues have been brought to my attention, but are there any amendments to these minutes?

as at 31st of July

right the minutes are from the 31st of July.

did suddenly seem a long way in the past.

so the motion is to agree the minutes and we agreed.

thank you.

4 Minutes of the meeting dated 31 July 2023

5 Items Called- In

item 5 is to consider any items called in under Overview and Scrutiny procedure Rule 13 but I can confirm there are no such items for this meeting.

6 Presentation from the Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning

agenda item 6 is

to receive an update from the Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning Hugo pounds,

a covering report is set out in the agenda from page 12.

this reports on planning, and later on, e d

are part of a rolling programme where, throughout the year, we will invite members

to the Committee to discuss particular issues that had been raised by Members of this Committee,

and this evening we've asked Councillor LB to give an update on planning enforcement including an update on recruitment

and appointment of planning enforcement officers,

I would also like to welcome Carlos Hone Head of Planning to the meeting.

I think very much Chair.

I'm only going to briefly introduced the item and then hand over to Carlos Hone who has a presentation to give to you, which will bring you up to date on the previous presentation from almost this time last year,

but just to give you a little bit of chronology and background,

it has undeniably been a fairly challenging time for the whole of the Planning team and over the last year since they were last at all since Carlos was last year at Overview and Scrutiny, he and I meet formally twice a month

and we also talk probably two or three times a week about various matters and and enforcement officers and their recruitment and retention has been in those discussions throughout the last year at the point at which Carlos joined Tunbridge Wells Borough Council just over a year ago, we had two enforcement officers, both of whom left fairly soon after his arrival, not because of his arrival, I hasten to add, but for other reasons,

but those two, as many of you will know, were quite long-term, eight or nine years, they were very knowledgeable, they had good relationships with developers, good relationships with members, they knew the landowners and so on, and sadly we lost two very experienced enforcement officers leaving only one at the point at which we presented last year and that individual then moved on and we were successful in recruiting, and it's a very difficult market, another enforcement officer who left and literally within weeks of arrival

and that left us and then with a significant gap which I think are Members have been frustrated by. We have now recruited to full-time planning enforcement officers, there is one vacancy which we are still pursuing and the work load has therefore is now being managed actively and and Carlos will give you some numbers in relation to that and I would just say that planning overall has done an extraordinary job over the last year, as you know, willing, looking still at the submission local plan we're still dealing with major developments. we're still dealing with issues that arise from planning, and the Chair of Planning is here

and actually, overall, the performance of the totality of this group has been really quite remarkable over the last year and I'm very grateful to them, I'll hand over to Carlos who will give you an explanation in and some metrics behind it thank you.

thank you Chair, thank you, Councillor Pat.

Good evening members, so as Councillor pounds sets out where we came about a year ago and presented a some data essentially about performance of the the planning enforcement.

section of the the Department and I'm gonna kind of go through those

that data again just give you a flavour of where we are with everything but just as a sort of summary update in terms of planning enforcement as a whole there's some sort of background but I'll go through for four new members so planning enforcement essentially is an administrative role it's administrative law rather than criminal law

and therefore to breach planning control is not a criminal offence unless it goes through the process of not being rectified, and then you go through the court system, so there are some exceptions that is related to the listed buildings and protected trees.

it is a statutory requirement for the Council to investigate potential planning breaches of planning control, however, is absolutely discretionary on the Council whether or not to take enforcement action, and that formal action may be required in order to to regulate a development itself.

cited decisions need to be carefully made

on whether to take action.

they it takes a lot of officer time in terms of taking action, and they need to be made on the identified planning harm so on, whether or not that harm is significant or not

on occasions, it will be not expedient to take enforcement action, depending on the level of the breach of planning control, whether or not it's significant on or whether or not it's minor, so you need to be reasonable in all aspects of making that that decision.

says guidance in national policy in the National Planning Policy Framework and the Planning practice guidance as well.

as I said, action needs to be proportionate, based on the planning considerations and in the public interest.

we have a Planning Enforcement.

The plans in place is an online

and the service essentially investigates breaches because we have a legal duty to do that

enforcement action as you take it forward, needs to be commensurate with the level of harm

and it needs to be fair and applied equitably. So no one case needs to be looked at

in accordance with how we've dealt with other cases of a similar nature. So formal action is undertaken when there is significant planning at home and all reasonable remedies have been exhausted to try and resolve that that breach

enforcement complaints are a priority prioritised, based on the significance of the the breach itself, and we try to operate a department efficiently and effectively.

so the tools available to the Tom

in terms of enforcement are various types of notices, and

they sort of vary from temporary stop notices to enforcement notices to formal stop notices. breach of conditions notices and then injunctions as well,

other less frequently used tools are section 2 1 5 notices, so those are for untidy sites.

advertisement, discontinuance notices or removal notices for adverts and prosecution of unauthorised adverts as well.

so as Councillor pounds sets out, we have three posts within the service which cover planning enforcement, it's actually just under three full-time places, 2.7 4 full-time posts

and as CasaPound set out when we've had to officers with vast experience leave around this time, last year was currently, we've got two new officers in post, they're settling in, well they're getting up to speed with all of the the backlog of the cases we also when we had a period of what just one person in post, we have an agency members staffing as well as

experience, and we still maintain that person there contract has just been extended for a further three months, so essentially we have three members of staff

we also have a tree officer, their caseload is is extensive sites dealing with the significant tree applications that we get, as well as looking into tree enforcement work

that the entirety of those posts look at an enforcement on a triage basis, identifying the breaches that are likely to be the most serious and require immediate investigation. down to those which are less urgent.

so looking at the data that we we presented last time and just reviewing that we've done this on a a the basis from working from April to March each year, so in 2018 19 we had 333 complaints that were received and then 2019 20 239 set dropped and then during the Covid years we jumped up to 480 in 2021 then 412 21 22 and then the previous 12 months 310 complaints that were received.

so all complaints are investigated, the support and status that say that there is a system on the the Council's website where somebody can click on the link and submit a an enforcement enquiry that to provide certain information or a map location, and then some details about the breach itself, so the time for investigations various depends on the urgency and how we go for that triage process.

so out of that, 310.

those 310 complaints were received during that 12 month period. You can see on screen how those a break broken down, so breach of conditions, a second rundown we received 68, so 22% of the work was in relation to breach of conditions from planning consents that were underway and members of the public had picked up that they weren't being built out in accordance with planning conditions and any other significant one is new operational development site, where the public felt that there was development going on in and around where they lived, which they felt didn't have planning consent late brought to our attention, but those kind of breakdown into the 310 that we've got

but breaking it down, so this is quite significant, like I said, we have to investigate each breach that we get notified of, but of the 310 during that 12 month period 46% or 142 weren't actually breaches of planning control, so we have to undertake the investigation, we have to make the site and we have to do the consideration of that. So almost half of that work that's generated isn't actually a breach of planning control, but moving down through the other breaches that we received, so 25 or 8% gained planning permission so that somebody who did some work or

undertook changes to their their property or change of use. They subsequently gained planning permission. 28 0 9%

went through as no further action because they rectified it, so they probably undo the work that they needed. Consent for

12 or 4% were deemed to be not expedient, fo enforced again, so I am fairly minor.

3% had enforcement notices served against them, and then 75 is still in the system that we're still investigating

and the average time when you average across all of the severity of different complaints is 15 days between I am getting the complaints going out on site and making the initial investigation, but based on that triage and how severe a breach might be, it is very severe, we will try and go out within a day and make a consideration within a day

if it's

slightly more less severe, we're trying to do it within 10 10 working days.

so within that 12 month period we served 13 tree preservation orders

and there were no recent unauthorised TPA works.

I showed the table the sunscreen AGM last year and I I indicates how we

enforce against certain.

matters compared with the rest of the county site at the top in yellow,

so the number on the left is from 2021 22, so what I presented last year and a number on the right of each column is from the subsequent 12 month period, so you can see that we've served eight enforcement notices there, no stop notices, no temporary stop notices, because I haven't been quiet, though so usually when it's something very severe

planning contravention notices to be served, 3

British condition outs. This we've set one and has not been a requirement for any high court injunctions. Looking down as it. There's certainly a disparity between certain authorities

the number of the others

some teams, for example, Seven Oaks or

Thanet, for example, have.

larger figures, but they have launched teams as there's more work to do, there were approximately in the middle, I would say, in Ken, in terms of the amount of enforcement notices that we serve.

so in terms of work that we've tried to do in the past 12 months we've reviewed the planning enforcement plan, so that's the plan, that's kind of sets out how publicly we, we look at enforcement that was reviewed in the past 12 months we took the the previous version, which I think was from about 2010 with ticket free planning policy working group. We took it to perhaps chairs meeting, we had conversations about that and how to update it. That's now been updated and it's on online

we've reinstated planning enforcement report, updates for Planning Committee. So that had kind of east of during COVID years we didn't do any, so we've done that now and I go every six months, we'll see if we can get those quarterly because it's maybe a bit more fresh information that way

lacks every update parish chairs as well. With that information we wanted to update web pages, but because of the staff resource we haven't really had the opportunity to do that. One of the things that would be good to update is what constitutes a breach of planning. What doesn't, and that may well, if we

refresh that, so that the public are aware what isn't a breach of planning control that might reduce the number of complaints that we get, which are actually breaches

and then communication on the successes I think we do need to do a bit more on that when we do get a success with a

a, an enforcement notice being upheld, we could maybe do a bit more about that in communicating that why widely

I think that was the end of the presentation Chair, but I'll happily ask answer any questions.

because thank you very much.

questions for Carlos or Hugo Allen.

thank you, Chair, can I just ask

how proportionate is

that 300 to other years?

the 300 odd complaints,

yeah.

yeah,

and

the other question I was going to ask was about actual

the conditions that are appended to successful planning applications is this?

investigated by the enforcement people as well,

because I know there are certain developments in in my ward

where.

in years gone by before you before your watch, I'll tell you that where

we know whether what conditions

they've had, but they've not been followed

and we've proposed that, and then nothing happens.

could you say something about that?

thank you said, the planning conditions have to be proportionate and

puzzling tests in order for them to be put onto the planning decision notice, we issue upwards of 3,000 planning consents a year, so it's very difficult for us to monitor each development as and when it comes forward, so we are somewhat reliant on on the public or people who are living near to that development, so let us know if they feel there is a breach of a planning condition but when that is received by us we will investigate it so.

it's that communication, I think, that that may well be not happening or it might be because of the over the past 12 months certainly that there's been that that sort of lack of staff in order to communicate that, but if you've got particular sites borrowings and put them through to the enforcement team again and will look at them and come back with some comments about either how they've been dealt with or whether or not we're still looking at them.

Godfrey plan.

could you go into a bit

more detail about how you try out

the

first?

looking at the staff and secondly for following it up,

because I take it that those are two slightly different, it might be two slightly different approaches.

so thank you so in the planning, enforcement plans or online

it sets out how we prioritise complaints, so there's four different

levels of priorities. Our top priority

is unauthorised works as a listed buildings

or trees or hedgerows or ancient monuments stuff, that's going to cause irreversible damage, and that's what we'll look to go out within a very short period of time, so hopefully same day within 24 hours the next party down is still unauthorised development where it's gonna be slightly less harm, but it's still important to to react quickly and we look to do that within five working days.

and then the sort of medium priority stuff is unauthorised development which causes limited harm to individuals. So a single neighbour might be impacted from work rather than something that's nationally significant and that will be dealt with through the triage process, but would still look to the to get out within 10 working days. We can see that the the volume of work that we get within a department means that when you average at our second 15 days on average to get out to things, but we triage it so if something is urgent it comes through, it comes through on an e-mail to about five different members of staff, so the enforcement officers, myself and the Development Manager all get the same e-mails so they get checked and if it's really urgent boo sensibly out straightaway.

so that 15 days that you quoted his impact on average. between the

get out there within the next 24 hours.

and

the other levels of priority.

do you have any sounds that?

we're taking too long on the lower level of

irritation

or harm.

because I suspect that some of our

council taxpayers.

I'm worried about it, but that.

I, I think it's a symptom of maybe getting nearly 50% of complaints coming through to us on breaches of planning control, so if we were to modify that somehow to reduce that percentage, then there'd be more time available to actually deal with the and get out to the breaches,

certainly it may well be that the person who is building an extension too long or in in an inappropriate way the neighbours,

being more anxious about it, there may be something else this more harmful, so it is very much case by case basis how we do our stuff and so that the low level of harm isn't as high a priority, but we have to investigate everything but I said it may well be a symptom of us having a high number of complaints and high number of which are breaches of planning control.

can I just sort of pick up on one of the points that you may.

you're talking about fairness, harm and enforcing equitably. now, if I had to identify an issue, it's it's the enforcement, equity and being fair to the people who put in planning applications and go through the whole process and feel that you know someone's criticising the size of their window. and yet.

if they disregard that and just

go ahead, then they will then be dealt with on a slightly different set of criteria and instead are an unfair assessment.

I think it depends on the the unlawful development really

we have to be fair in our approach to the planning enforcement system, is there not to be punitive to individuals who have maybe a window too big, for example, this is really there to mitigate the harm itself, so

applying retrospectively is part of the process is something that we would advise if, if we feel a retrospective application can resolve the matter, we will look to do that.

so if, if people are, for example, building something bigger than what it should have been and haven't realised that that is a legitimate process scaled-down, and whilst others might think that's an unfair process, it is still part of the enforcement regime.

so you don't think there's any difference in treatment between the retrospective applications and the ones that are dealt with in the

in the appropriate way.

whether planning applications will be considered on the merits of the case in the same way whether it's

prior to something being delivered?

or retrospectively,

obviously, we still need to have an enforcement system that works well.

and it is there to

maintain public confidence in the process as absolutely essential, and that's why it's important we have an enforcement plan in place, a way of dealing with applications enough staff to to do that quickly,

but there is still a copy of a fair process that somebody can go through rather than it just being an immediate reaction to serve an enforcement notice on somebody if there is a way to rectify something through the planning process that's what will advise that they do.

I accept that, but I think if I felt that you really needed to concentrate on fairness and equity, it's the between those who go through the correct process and apply and those who think they can ride roughshod over it, and that's that I just think he is or is is a worry because what we actually do we want to have people who are wholly law-abiding.

yeah

yeah, yeah, sure.

thank you.

just just to reiterate

Carlos his point, and it's the dialogue that I have most frequently with members of the Council, not with members of the public would put with members of the Council is the planning enforcement is not about punishing people for failing either deliberately or accidentally to adhere to the Planning policy, and it is about bringing people back into compliance with planning,

and so often I am having conversations with them per se, but they should be taken to court. They should be made to knock it down, they should, and actually that is not the reality of the relationship between either planning and its enforcement officers

and applicants. The idea is to look at an applicant or to look at a development and say how do we bring this back into compliance, and if we're unable to do so, then we have to go down different routes, and I think that Members particularly have to get their heads around the idea that that is the endeavour, not punishment, yet

never a suggestion from from me that that that was the case, although

it was not you to know that's

all I was looking for, was the equity of treatment between those who apply through the planning system, and those who have to be hauled in and dealt with them thing retrospectively

Mark

and then Brendan,

thank you Chairman. But you largely asked the same question asked has asked me back because

certainly when we're looking at things like the retrospective planning permission and when somebody actually withdraws the application itself, I mean, how are planning office gills actually integrated, working with those that people to actually ensure they get right, and what are the ultimate sanctions you actually I'm going to do if they won't actually comply but resign?

so whether an investigation source

one are enforcement to make a site visit, to make sure that the the breaches it's been reported is actually a breach of planning control, and if it is, then the investigating officer will consider with officers of the Department of Planning officers whether or not a breach can be rectified in its current form for example,

and if it is, then we'll say that there is a process to go through, and it's for the retrospective planning application process that application will be judged on its own merits but is judged against the same planning policies as it would have been if it was a normal planning application. If, if the process of retrospectively gain consent, isn't something that we think is likely, then we can serve a notice or initially will ask them to undo the work that they've done, for example,

if that is not happening within a set time period, we can go down the planning enforcement notice process that can be appealed by that person so they can go to the Planning, Inspectorate an appeal or an enforcement notice if the

planning enforcement notices upheld

again, they would have a a period of compliance after the enforcement notice being upheld, if they don't comply within that period, then we can go through the legal process and take its call, so there is a set way to do this.

local planning authorities have a four year period in which to start planning enforcement, so whilst

it is something that members of the public and Members want to happen swiftly, we do have a four year period within which to to undertake that process, so there is that there, as a back-up officer, we tried to do things a lot quicker,

but there is a set process.

certainly, if it does go down that worse route, can we recover costs.

there there is a process to to recover costs, and we can use other legislation as well proceeds of Crime Act as well to recover costs which the person involved in in the the breach may have gained through what they've done.

brendon

No, thank you, Chair, I mean this is just about the compliment.

of the enforcement team, I followed the story that two members had left and you have replaced them with two in the current FTE, full-time equivalent is 207, for, I think.

I just wondered if it's not, if they will compliment, is now complete, and if that's having any, if it's not, is it having any impact on

the efficiency

of the enforcement team?

so where one Member Stop down?

in terms of being on route, but we have two permanent members of staff who have been in post for a couple of months now and are settling in well, we have an agency member of staff,

he's on a rolling contract, until we can recruit to that last a full-time person what's important is to to recruit and keep people in posts so that they gain the knowledge of the the the area.

those particular sites where those issues and particular landowners that's that's why the two people who left it was quite a gap because they had been here for a long period of time, but we are working to get somebody permanently in on that last f t post.

he talked about successes

and it was the reference to the proceeds of crime that

that made me think about successes I mean, when I was on the planning committee,

the Planning Department very successfully

took someone to court under the proceeds of crime.

for illegal developments, on his part, on his plot.

I think took them for well over a six-figure sum.

well, I can assure you that those illegal developments are still on that side.

and it's as far as I'm concerned, every time I've raised it, it's it rested in the too difficult box,

and

I don't expect in public discussion for you to to to to to say 0 yes, I'd heard about this.

but I just think collector there are items which are

reported as a success and indefinitely and

or have definitely later proved to be,

and I just feel that

there are times when.

I think there are times when you, when you really do want to talk about your successes, but there are other times when you want to go back and and see what we are, what the outcome is in with the benefit of a couple of years.

OK, thank you, perhaps we can have a chat half as well a particular site, but certainly we want to make sure that the enforcement process is a tool to see things through, from start all the way to finish.

that might not have happened in that particular case, I don't know it so would if, if I can know the SCI address afterwards, then look into it.

thank you.

David

yes, thank you, Chair, yes, thanks call us that was a very informative report just to your point on staff retention, and I appreciate you might be limited in what you can and can't say here.

the two officers that left in their exit interviews, what was the reason they gave for leaving?

I'm afraid I know that and I tore Matson, I wouldn't be able to diagnose that dog outside in a public meeting anyway.

Alan

thank you, Chair,

can I ask?

about other

conditions in the how do we ensure that?

all developers do what they say they're gonna do in terms of.

contribution to the community.

who to check that is there a register to check that and what happens when?

if and when they're not saying Can.

developers would do such a thing

if, if they haven't. said done, what they they they've agreed to in terms of the contributions

to the community.

so as I think you talked, about 6 26 agreement signed financial contributions towards the delivery of infrastructure. We have two postholders in in post, which oversee section minus 6 contributions and delivery of lies. So I think they are fairly new posts in the past, probably two or three years,

and what they do is they sit in the the planning department and they review the large consents which are subject to legal agreements. Say it usually over 10 dwellings and above,

and they monitor those so as part of the written legal agreement which the developer signs up to, they have to let us know when they start on site and when they hit certain trigger points, and those two officers are there to ensure that those strict points when they're met the contributions come in, not only that, they ensure that the money gets spent, and that's an important part of that process. Certainly, and now that we've got to see what's in post every year, we have to writer Inhofe infrastructure delivery. Statement says how much money we've received, how much we've secured, and where it's spent, so that's an annual process which sets out all out in black and white, and we're trying to do our utmost to make sure that that's spent as quickly as possible.

and just to say that is online, it's on the Council website each year.

I have had occasion to deal with one of those officers and I could only compliment them for their efficiency, what they knew and how they pass it over, including something that I wasn't aware of, and that was that these things get inflated in the course of the in the course of the period.

are there any more questions for hedgerow cars?

I mean, I think that's really interesting, thank you very much, thank you both for your time.

I think it is an issue that people do get a bit of a bit quite a bit of a bang sometimes.

and I am really grateful for for for for, for what you've explained, so thank you, thank you both very much.

now the motion is to note the report.

another or any objections to us agreeing to note the report.

so we're all in favour of that, thank you.

7 Presentation from the Cabinet Member for Economic Development

item 7 is to have a similar type discussion with with Justin with two officers who are John Strachan and Jane Feynman on the subject of economic development and parking.

sorry.

0sorry and Paul's joining

Untold Paul.

yeah

right

now in our report pack.

in our report per pack we have noted the slides coming up, which I think Justine is gonna talk to

Justin.

thank you for inviting me along this evening, and thank you to Paul Jane and John who joined me to discuss certain aspects of our work programme. first of all, have presentation from the culture portfolio,

which is included in your agenda, we will then move on to parking where we will cover a wide variety of projects. by way of introduction to the culture portfolio, I would like to comment generally. There is a lot of fabulous work going on quite literally behind the scenes, and we are very fortunate to have a team dedicated to bringing to the Borough theatre, music, exhibitions, fairs, festivals, events and more, not to mention the Christmas ice rink and associated activities. I thank them all. It sounds like the portfolio for fun and it is enjoyable, and I only wish to note now that the Amelia Scott does not just host non-statutory services, but also the call centre and face-to-face enquiries, the library and the registration of births and deaths.

I will now hand over to Paul to present

just take a laptop, of course,

yes, please.

OK, thank you, Members, thank you for inviting us tonight.

not too many slides would be pleased to hear.

and I'll start off really with just a little bit of context, so I think the context in terms of presenting tonight in terms of the performance

of the Assembly Hall theatre in the Amelia is really just the backdrop of the financial challenge that the council is facing and clearly we are not unique in that respect, so we are in a similar position to many other local authorities looking at our budgets and coping with the inflationary pressures on contracts, cost of materials, labour and energy and of course all those things they affect the Amelia Scott and they affect the Assembly Hall theatre, I'm sure you'll have seen this graph a number of times,

I guess it's playfully referred to as Lee's graph of doom. but it does just demonstrate the challenge as we move forward over the years in terms of managing the Council's finances.

the other contexts really that it's worth just pointing at this time is that

a budget consultation that took place in in February. identified that if savings needed to be made, then

the public felt that those savings should come from the Amelia Scott and from the Assembly Hall, theatre as well, and that's really been echoed in a more recent survey, so the residents survey which I think had somewhere in the region of

1,500 responses. Again it identified that if savings needed to be made, then those savings,

a public vote, should come from both of those two particular services. However, there was a significant number of residents who said that they didn't feel that we should be making any cuts to services at all, so that's the context in into very quick summary slides

and then just turn into the Assembly Hall theatre in the Amelia Scott financial performance for 22 23. So for both, you'll see that actually fairly good use for both the services particularly pleasing. I think to see the fact that the Assembly Hall theatre has performed particularly well, so the actual budget for 22 23, just over 200,000, so 219,000, to provide the theatre and deliver the number of shows that we do just over 200 shows and then in terms of the Amelia Scott first year of opening again showing coming in and the budget to the tune of 126,000 so in terms of financial performance I think the teams have managed the costs that they can control as well as they possibly can. and where possible, particularly in the case of the Assembly, all theatre they've really pushed the revenue, the income

so we tried to summarise the performance in in a non-financial way, because there are direct and indirect benefits, and it's sometimes very difficult to get those non-financial benefits across, so we put together a number of infographics, this particular infographic that you've gotten your pack and it's a little bit difficult to show

on the screen really just identifies, I think, the reach of the Assembly whole theatre lots of local produce sold, lots of local shows community based shows. 11 sold-out shows during the year in a total of 200, shows

a fairly significant number of visitors and lots of.

in fact, just over 500 goalkick ticket sales, so I think that just tries to summarise in one slide nor the broad reach, the broad appeal and some of the non-financial benefits of having a theatre in the bar.

and then, in terms of the Amelia Scott again, we did a similar exercise to put together an infographic that just breaks down some of the headlines and shows them in a in a very visual way when the key things for me actually, when we looked at this data, was from the residents that we surveyed, 30% of the people who visited they used three or more services in the Amelia which I think shows the benefit of integrating the services, also a very high proportion, nearly 80% of those that again we surveyed, they thought that the Amelia is a place for the whole community and one of the important things about the Amelia was that really it should be that place for the whole community breaking down, sometimes the barriers between high art or culture and making it more accessible. So you'll see there are a large number of events in the first year

a significant number of people increasing in learning people taking out books, children taking at books so very strong, I think, an encouraging performance in the first year of operation for the Amelia.

so trying to summarise that really in in one slide, I think I've already probably laboured the point, but I think it was an excellent year for both of those services

despite seeing significant rises in uncontrollable costs, so I think for the Assembly Hall theatre, the utilities rose by something like 20% could sell a lot of tickets to cover a 20% increase in utilities.

and the Assembly Hall theatre team, particularly, I think, deserve some praise and who they've worked very hard with the previous portfolio holder and with Justin as the current portfolio holder, to look at curating a more balanced programme, one of the things that Members said to the team is that they wanted to see more original shows animal balanced programme rather than just relying on a tribute act. now that does require there to be the amount of product out there, but as I've already said, there were 11 sold-out shows and some of the recent sold-out performances included a week-long run of six which was extremely popular Johnny Ma which are again sold out and Ben Fogle,

the Amelia Scott which it costs is a different enterprise, a different business, if you can call it that it's raised the profile of the town hosting an incredible literary festival and actually securing 25,000 pounds with funding from the Heritage Lottery Fund

and they built really on the success of the inaugural literary festival. Michael Wills, which was the last exhibition, was the most visited with nearly 30,000 visits to show to 30,000 visits

and it's consistently been the best performing library in Kent with most sign-ups for the Summer Reading challenge that than anywhere else in the county

and just really perhaps just to emphasise that both the Amelia Scott and the Assembly all theatre, there are wonderful assets for the Borough, not every borough has a theatre and a cultural venue like the Amelia Scott

and we've tried to again summarise those benefits.

in in a slide,

and they really are a crew as direct benefits and indirect benefits direct benefits, you can monetise indirect benefits more difficult to monetise, so really just focusing on the indirect benefits, that's the additional footfall that helps businesses across the entire town and the borough, and raising the profile of the town, which is hard to put a pound sell on, but of course attracts visitors to the town and supporting really that place-making strategy about sustaining communities making communities vibrant and, a place where people really want to work and play.

so turn into future plans. so we've been working hard with a portfolio holder really to build on the good work from last year and the approach has been officers and members working constructively together at a high level, Members just undertook a tour of the Amelia Scotland Assembly Hall theatre to look at some of the challenges and there are some challenges but also to look at how they can be put on a more sustainable footing.

so in terms of those future plans, really the strategy is to focus from the Assembly Hall Theatre, an increase in income.

and the way that the officer team feel it's best to tackle increasing income by increasing the number shows.

so the team feel that by increasing the shows per year.

between 10 and 20%. We anticipate that that will increase revenue by somewhere in the region of 100,000 pounds per year. Now we think that's achievable in year 1, it gets more difficult clearly in years 2 and 3,

and it is subject, and I apologise this a mistake on the slide. It is subject to the availability of product and demand. They will clearly be a ceiling somewhere where it's difficult to get the quality shows

and there will be a point by which it's impossible to sell any more tickets in the venue, but the team feel that is achievable.

They like to be set a target, and I think there's something about commanders intent. You set the team, the target, you give them the resources to deliver that, and I'm very confident that we've got a very good team

that will do their best to deliver that increase in income

and then I think there is a piece of work to be done to explore longer-term options for increasing the income generating capacity of the venue, some of these things have been looked at a number of times in the past expanding the food and beverage offer could we show films, some of these things have a cost but they may well also have a longer term payback.

but for now the focus is on increasing, the number of shows for the Amelia Scott and Amy Scott is a different venue. it it's

it's a more difficult venue in terms of maximising its commercial potential, so the focus for the Amelia Scott will be pushing the room, hire,

looking at digital advertising revenue through the digital screens in the Amelia Scott, increasing paid donations, and trying to increase the income.

for hire and from the

agreement that we've got with a café, so there's a profit share in year two for for the café that should generating extra income, and we believe by looking at there was. income streams and by some small savings, we can probably generate somewhere in the region of 75,000 pounds in year 1, which will not affect the delivery. The service would also like to explore, in the longer term, increase in the use of digital technology in the contact centre. Now our contact centre is is very much focused on face to face contact and telephone contact now that's not the same as many of our equivalents across Kent while trying hard to drive those who can use digital technology to digital technology but to reserve the very scarce resource of human interaction for those very difficult cases. So I think in the future we need to put together a strategy that looks at how we use the best of technology but the best of human interaction as well in, hopefully, a very efficient way. The emergence of a I as a technology will surely help us in this respect.

Commit to the end

and the last light release is just to talk a little bit about skate, which a portfolio mentioned, so this season the ice rink will run for two weeks shorter than normal, typically the first two weeks don't have a great attendance and they are primarily used for really just making sure that you snagging and you're getting the the rink ready, the team have run the rink for a number of years now and are wealthiest to get in and to get out into having the facility shipshape and ready to use for peak demand. so by decreasing the ran it will save on fuel staffing and security costs, there was significant security costs last year actually,

but the main ice rink will include a toddler Bavarian curling smaller rink, much the same as last year.

and the addition, and in addition, this year will be operating and managing an on-site Santa event previously, the centre has been a concession. and this year it will be a high tech centre

with a virtual sleigh ride, garage, housing, the hydraulically operated sleigh with all sorts of bells and whistles.

and it sounds very exciting. Indeed,

we are submitting a planning application for what's called a happy wheel and I've included a picture there. We believe that that will also help drive revenue.

The drink is very weather dependent in a wet and windy season. It's very difficult to generate an income when the weather is Clement.

Then it's much easier. Obviously so we're hoping that the weather is favourable this year and with some changes in Vo vat in terms of ticketing for ice skating, which is now sport giant. I'm sure could tell you more about we're hopeful that again, that will make maybe a small or significant profit this year,

and just a note really that the Assembly Hall theatre team does actually run, manage, plan and deliver out the skate event over the very Christmas period, a very busy Christmas period when it's running panto as well, but it sits in a in a separate cost centre which doesn't touch the Assembly, all theatre books,

and that's the end of the presentation,

and if there are any questions, we'd be happy to take questions.

Paul, thank you, can I just paint a perspective

the request to to come to this committee was because actually we were massively supportive of the

the Assembly Hall and the

and the Amelia Scott and indeed ice-skating, and what we were concerned about, was that there will be a pressure being applied on with the with the budget situation on these services that we thought were really important, so I mean, can you just sort of pick up on

on on that site?

because what pressure is being applied, what pushed back?

and

where do you think this is actually going to take you in the current year?

certainly happy to pick that up. chair and Justine may well want to say something as well, so from an officer perspective, it's something that we do as a matter. Of course we will look at our budgets. Every year we looked at the LA to deliver the service in the most cost effective way and the focus, as I have already said in my presentation, has really been around driving income. It's not been about, and necessarily around cost savings or cutting back on the service,

and I have to say that the team in the Assembly Hall theatre have really, I think, embraced the challenge. They realise that in a time of austerity, and you can look across at colleagues in

in Woking in fact, J J, who used to run the theatre is now we're walking

and their contract is with

A to G, so colleagues, are aware of the challenging financial picture for local authorities, and so there hasn't been a great deal of pressure, we'd been asked to prepare savings and and look at that which we have done those savings of have been offered in terms of the Assembly Hall Theatre generating extra income, which I think the team recognise in terms of their future sustainability is something that they need to do and, as I said, they are quite happy to rate to race to that challenge. What they'd like to see is that they have the scope to do that. So commanders intend to me as you set people a target, and we do that across the Council. We say you need to deliver to this level of service or to this level of income, and then you give them the tools to do the trade and that, I believe, is what the Cabinet Member has sought to do in the Amelia Scott. It's a different proposition. It doesn't lend itself really to more commercial activities, though the team are doing their very best to exploit the resources that they've got. What we'd been asked to do is to operate as efficiently as possible and in the context of that, as you've seen during the first year of operation, we've come in and the budget and we'd been asked to put some further to give some further thought to how we could be more efficient and deliver that service, and that's how we've come up with 75,000 pounds worth of additional income and savings which do not affect the delivery of the services to the public, so from the perspective of the public, what should they see they should see more shows in the Assembly or theatre hopefully good quality shows what should they see in the merely Scott exactly the same as last year, which which I believe is a fairly high quality offer that appeals to a large, and very, very demographic, I don't know whether you wanted to say anything Justinian response to that.

yeah, I think pulls cabinet released a we. We are seeking to make savings over every area, obviously with the

financial outlook we've been to Paul and the culture team to talk to him and the team about what can you do over the next three years, so I can only be the setts are still a work in progress, so we have meeting next week with the portfolio holder for finance, it's part of the budget budget setting process, so we're it's in training and not been signed off in any way so that we are just aiming to save some money if we can and to increase income, but note no one has the appetite to to be cutting anything that's offered because it's so valued by our residents, and there's an inner economic development benefit. Of course, to have her people coming into the town in the borough and, as I mentioned, on the presentation, the culture team do go out into the borough

to an extent as well. So,

yeah yeah,

thank you thank you do so you thank you, Paul

as I say, we, we were concerned that the culture might be the soft target and where is re reassured, I think that, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

Mark

thank you, Chairman, thank you Paul before asking the question could actually add to the minutes.

I thank you for all the staff with medium assembly, all theatre and particularly mentioned their mighty pelvis passion and has actually really driven so much of this to actually improve theatres. I think so many people get unmentioned, they're doing all the hard work behind this and I think that should be noted in the minutes of their she'd done this now the question of God is particularly around

the capital investment in the the theatre itself, because the two things you can do you can never was the dream, ticket sales and freeth people sitting round spending their money at the theatre as well by discretionary spending, what particular plans have been got and will try to ensure that happens.

the good question actually mark you right that there are a limited number of parameters that you can vary in the theatre you've seen the theatre members of of walk round, and I think it was last week we had the Tour two weeks ago and Time-Life

and we looked at some of those potential.

capital projects that might help drive income,

so the things that we looked at were actually reopen the box office to have in the box office in the building to make it more vibrant to attract more people in, to be able to potentially sell drinks in that space because at the minute it's not a well used space since the box offices has moved into,

into the Amelia, so that's something that the team are actively exploring, we looked at the F and B offer you, could you increase the the bar space is very difficult because you've got two bars, one is downstairs and slightly out of the way and the other one is is linear and during performances.

sometimes you know, it's very difficult to sell perhaps the number of drinks that we would like, but we've recently invested in a new till system, we've recently invested in new wifi for the building, so we can actually now spot sale and upsell in the whole of the building the Wi-Fi, the broadband connection when in the week before last and the IT team will be coming to make sure that,

they test the Wi-Fi and they get all the Wi-Fi points, or so we're looking to make the building more usable and accessible for the team for them to upsell to use the exist. The existing spaces is very difficult to extend the bar by knocking it out without costing an arm and a leg. And could I actually say that you'll be able to make back that revenue, I think, not having been involved in the Amelia. I really do know how much things cost, particularly in listed buildings, the key for me and this is coming from the team, not just for me because I don't run the business is get bums on seats, but more shows and good quality shows, and I think they've demonstrated that over the last year, so there are small things that you can do and the team are looking at them and we were encouraged to bring those things forward. all of them have a cost, could I actually then say at the end of that cost, that we can guarantee X amount of income, although we can't we guarantee extra income from a show that's got 500 bums on seats, so we guarantee income and then anything then we sell at the bar that adds to that income, so the primary driver is getting the right quality show and getting bums on seats for those shows.

Work to start up, and I think it's a very exciting way of looking forward of actually, instead of culture being squeezed at the plan is to make it grow, so when I looked at the and a little bit to do with this kind of thing when I used to work with the Festival Hall they have faced all the same sorts of issues.

so the

future Plan number 1 in future plan number 2 are just exactly the things I would have been hoping to hear, but just so I can understand it better, you've said that you would rather be growing income with more activity than making savings.

but just going back to the figures you presented to us for 22 23.

all there is there are actually,

and both times you've there's been a.

the surplus

for both centres, but there are two questions had about that surplus is to what extent is it surplus compared with the prediction to do with savings, and to what extent is it to do with

extra extra revenue or extra bums on seats if you like and the other thing is those funds although hypothecated to stay with the with the theatre and the and Emile has got or they go back into the pot.

yes, he said.

yes. I don't have.

into Messi's.

I haven't got my microphone so I haven't got a breakdown of how that splits down between increased income and savings in terms of the controllable costs, but I can probably get that for you, I certainly know that we sold more tickets and we've had more sell-out shows so income has certainly increased from. the previous year.

and I imagine it, and it's increased year on year since COVID, because one of the issues straight after COVID for the Assembly on theatre was simply the availability of product to do and COVID the people couldn't perform

and as a consequence of that the the wasn't really that amount or supply of having ready product lots of comedians one-man shows not so many large performances. the the industry itself now as it has started to recover from COVID and so we are, we are seeing a better quality of performance and more performance is available, which is why the team themselves and the team came forward with this view wasn't me it was members the team came forward with a view that they should try and increase the number of performances month on month and year on year

and I I can try and find that figure to tell how that breaks down and supply that to the committee if that helps it.

Alan

thank you very much, and thank you for the presentation and to approve your hard work, I mean, I must say, I've gotten the long list of ideas as to what I'd like to see happen. culturally in Tunbridge Wells,

top of it at the moment is his music, I mean, it's, as you say, about Johnny Marr, which I very much enjoyed.

it's very evident, and it has been for a number of years that Tunbridge Wells is a musical town.

we now have

full record shops. we've got a number of venues that I've been trying to think of as long as your arm.

and

under this deal will subsist this.

committee, we did

have a.

or are

a thing called sounds of the world where we tried to badge

venues in different types of music in

Tunbridge Wells 2, to continue the the idea of temperatures being a.

destination town, to draw in people from from London to sell them the is cheaper to travel from London to temperatures and vice versa, because when you look at what we've had lately and what you've got coming up, but Johnny Marr we've got from the Jam, got the Hollies

past in that the Forum is, we've got Buzzcocks trying to crisis, we've had Ash the flocks seagulls, I mean, you know, they are names that will draw people from from a distance because I'd go to Guildford because there are people to play in Guildford the downplay in terms of jewels, and that's often the nearest place, so people will travel

and if we advertise it as such, we will get more people come into Tunbridge Wells.

I think as well that

I might be telling you to suck eggs, but I think we should be taking the Assembly Hall outside of the building as well.

I went to a great event in Bristol done with the docklands where they they they used an outside area in the summer

for a concert, but you could do that with drama, we've got so many parks, we could have drama in as well diff different sizes of

drum dramatic performances.

I think we could use the downstairs area by the bar is a small, dramatic area,

we could have our own theatre festival in Tunbridge Wells, with one theatre and the number of all the different spaces that you can have the the Fringe Festival uses a number of pubs and we could use shops.

I don't know how it could do shops in the future, but you know it might happen.

we might be able to use shops for food for such a thing and a dot plus participate.

but

all the people participate in.

will get people in involved in culture and we will spend money, there is money to be spent in Tunbridge Wells and if they could spend it on cultural activities, will keep people in work and keep pupils happy in our town

and I'm happy to discuss the other ideas I've got

with with you another time but I think the future is bright in.

it in Tunbridge Wells for culture is just tapping.

but we've got the resources, we've got and making sure we use them sensibly, thanks very much.

I'd I say encouraged to hear comments like that Jacqueline.

I didn't want to say thank you to Alan for those, and

I would welcome a chat with you anytime about that, if some of those things I think are already. set it in the ether, so on our tour we went downstairs into the smaller bar with Dawn and she showed us this is where the hit stage could go, or this is where we could put a screen amino,

they would like to invest a bit in the building which is where we,

as Paul alluded to so

they have drawn up sort of initial little list of projects and very ballpark figures.

we can have a look and see what what can be done to help.

something that people might not be aware of is that the observation wheel, that's going to be going into cabinet grounds, subject to planning permission, and that's going to have to be a bit of movement of a bed flower beds to allow the equipment in more safely than previously and when we talk to

Dawn about that she did say that it would enable us to have, outdoor theatre in Calverley grounds, more easily in terms of getting kitchen stage staff in because I think local life had a lot of problems, I think they generally do getting their stage in, so

the team are already looking in that direction so.

it's it's all there, you're right, we just need to kind of grasp it and support the team and

try and give them what what we can give them a minute to enable them to deliver, I think what we would all like.

Alan picked up the point of the number of different venues there are, and I just think that we use the opportunity to promote Tunbridge Wells as a whole, and not just what goes on in the in the assembly hall and pull that together into a sort of summer programme I mean I think or even a winter programme.

you know, I think there is so much opportunity

you know if we if we can grasp it for the wider benefit of the community we ought to

yes, I think there was a music city concept a few years ago, Alan you promptly bit before my time.

that was sounds of the world and the the the the idea that that was the reason I mentioned Guildford Guildford House G Live, which is a big constable, but it also has.

a former pub, I can't remember the name of it, there's a church where they have concerts in.

and Guildford do not think of it as a music town, but it is.

and they've got a number of well-supported venues in them in Guildford and lots of pubs, as well

as this comes back to something we were talking about as a town sits, plan, meeting and telling me to buy a lot going on already and actually there made me think of the international music festival that is starting really soon in Epsom in early October. big opera, gala at King, Chelsea Motta so which is perhaps need to find ways of time things together, and

I am talking to the commerce team, see what we can do yeah.

thank you, Justin we've got, I've got David and then Mark.

as yeah, thank you, Chair, yes, I'll probably just the fantastic job, I think we should be jolly proud at what we've got and is absolutely fabulous and just hearing what some of the comments that were saying yes, you'd be grateful better Tunbridge Wells, Summer Festival and we think that'd be great because that would put a lot of things together, music, arts and everything so that perhaps I might wish to look at my question.

to whoever

really is just

happy is really the Assembly and Hall, and how are ticket sales priced who controls that the we can show that or did the promoter the artist do that and how has it changed over that of say the last few years please thank you.

it's very, very complicated in reality we aren't

most of the time we aren't in control of the ticket price, that's dictated to us by the promoter, and the shows have a number of different ways have been delivered at, so it could be a split there could be a first call, it's quite complex, you probably need to hear from Mike and Matt, if you want to know about all the detailed variations on the shows in terms of how quick or how ticket prices have changed.

They probably haven't increased greatly

since COVID, but there has been a small increase because of the costs. The production companies also incur the costs have gone up as well, but the way in which those costs are set is largely dictated by the promoter in the market. And we then at the mercy of of that. If you want the show, then you really have to negotiate on those terms and conditions, and if you get it right, then obviously you can make a profit. If you don't get it right, then there then the risk comes with that we did have the Proclaimers actually booked in sold out, but of course one of the Proclaimers had a better laryngitis or that there's certainly the tour was cancelled, but you know if you get the right act it is a music town, you're absolutely right Alan and if you get the right act, if you get the

the balance of the ticket sales and the costs and the marketing right, unless the team have shown you can do really well when I think I first came to Tunbridge Wells pretty sure that at 1.00 stage the cost of running the theatre I don't like the words subsidy but subsidy is the word most people use, I think it was about 400,000 junior from right. so to be down now at 219,000 is a pretty good job and if the team can get that down even further and they believe they can, I think we should support them to do them.

smart next, then it's Alan,

and then I feel that we ought to draw this discussion to them because I'm buried country, Suga John and Jane something uncle, OK, three questions and then we've drove a discussion.

thank you indulge me, the Chair.

as we're making suggestions itself, I have actually had conversation with civil society about things, but what we can do to improve upon the positive suggestions actually had wills that for once the door, in the wrong bar, we end up the courtyard accessible for open air and open up the kitchen areas then available again which has not developed a moment if

it wouldn't necessarily be a major capital investment and they said that English Heritage, would necessarily have an issue with that kind of area, but is that something which could be fitted?

so one of the things that we discussed when cabinet came to have a look round.

everything's possible, but most things come with a cost. One thing that you need to remember about the kitchen is that the kitchen is now seemed to be sizes due to be reduced, and it's we need to make a secure exit corridor in the kitchen because when we have

shows the capacity, the fire officer has said that we need to make sure that the exits are sufficient to evacuate that number of people, so the kitchen is gonna be reduced significantly in size when a corridor is put through the

to allow people to exit in the event of an emergency kitchen is as old as the Assembly Hall theatre is itself, and actually the challenges of opening up into the courtyard are fairly significant

in terms of the fact that it's a listed building parts of it elicited how you knock through the costs of knocking through using that courtyard yes in in reality we'd all like more bar space.

but it is quite challenging, so anything is possible, I think

it's a more difficult scheme than you actually think, but certainly the team of have looked at it and I've come back to with some thoughts and suggestions and ideas on that.

thank you very much,

just on a point about him, three points

I'd call it investment rather than subsidy, I mean I'm

a veteran of student politics in the 80 s, when we were told that the government invested in roads and subsidise the railways.

I will say as well, at the other point I was going to make, was about Comic-Con, which was so successful, I think, and that should be expanded across the town as well, because

we could be showing the relevant films relevant manga series of or whatever, and and I think that was hugely successful and it what made it so successful.

was that it was bringing in people that don't normally go to the Assembly Hall.

and if it was a different community, there were lots of narrow, divergent people there that wouldn't

that felt safe in that environment, which was so beautiful to see.

and the organisers need a really good big pat on the back for that, and it will say as well the the point about bar sales Johnny Marr, the bar sales I think I mentioned would be through the roof, let me know if Attica tanked the downstairs bar because the upstairs ballroom was just that manageable in a way which is a nice problem to have but,

that's the kind of events where I wouldn't say that we want to encourage heavy drinking at the events of the Assembly, but

it does make him money.

thank you, thank you, Alan,

I think suggestions used to be heard.

thank you Chair.

on the topic of making the Assembly Hall look a bit more vibrant in investigations in the box office, I was wondering if there is anything can share about bringing the cinema lettering sign back into action rather than a static message.

yes, it must be the thing I asked about the most, I think.

there is that there is a plan

and it says sort of it's not quite going back to how it was, but it's a what should we call it

a solution

and

at creative solutions? I think am I right in thinking it won't have the lights, but essentially the team have come up with a solution which involves getting letters cut and we will be able to have letters back in the canopy and we're all very excited about it. Well, I am very excited. It's a very it's a kind of low cost. Low tech solution

and the canopy project is a slip-up project, in terms of probably on a par with opening up the books office again, but we do have a sort of shortish to medium term solution and I'm not sure what the timing

when the letters were on site

and so watch. This space quite requires welcome that springs quite literally, thank you, but it is. It is a low tech solution, but we recognise collectively and engage members and officers that it's really important to do that, and we have looked at the cost to

I'm all singing all dancing option, but because of the listings of the building because of the design of the canopy, actually it's quite expensive, but let's see how the low cost when it goes, and then maybe we need to come back and revisit that it's about making the venue more appealing and attractive as as Members rightly say.

Paul thank you very much.

Justin can we put John and James out of the waiting room?

the amendment

right,

we'll move on to parking.

parking is a very important part of the Eadie portfolio, we all know that the income that the council's car parks brings in helps support us deliver the services that our residents value

also residents hugely value, our car parks and being able to park quickly conveniently and safely managing the parking effectively on-street as well as off street is a huge task that includes keeping car parks in good repair, utilising technology to stream payment streamline payment processes enforcement to keep the highways and pavements safe and clear. and looking at how permit parking zones are working, I will hand over to Jane now to say a bit more about the work programme of the parking team.

thank you, so I wanted to try and give you a little bit of an update on where we are with three of our major projects that we're working on at the moment,

one of them is PR too, and I'm sure this hasn't escaped your attention,

it's been a very high-profile project in the town.

the second is the introduction of the charges in Donal and Park which are due to go live as of the 16th of October,

and the last is the installation of electric vehicle charges

in our car parks.

and we've been working on that for quite some time too,

so if I can start with public realm to

so really, really long, long-standing project that started with the rebuilding refurbishment of the public realm outside of the Amelia Scott

back in 2014 15, I was looking it up on the capital programme.

and between 2014 15

15 16 and 16 17 we spent over a million pounds, the council spent over a million pounds,

and this was a contribution towards.

the the changes that were made outside the Amelia

now the ambition was to make it a lovely part of town that was far more traffic, free,

far more pedestrianised

would help with reducing the amount of CO2 emissions in the middle of the town

and this this was completed, this work was completed on the public realm. in 2016 17 financial year, and I think there might have been tweaked bit right up until almost the the opening of the Amelia I was going to look at poor, but they really were tweaking bits I mean, the majority of it was finished by then and in.

2019. we first of all started

enforcing.

vehicles going going through that part of town

the public realm highway belongs to KCC, the scheme has to be approved by KCC and indeed was developed by KCC.

and all of the signage was erected by the

and

faithful by them,

and in 2019 we started trying to enforce

just using the

safety car at the time it's got a CCTV camera on the top of it, and we wanted to see.

what if what effect enforcement could have?

and

it started very positively for a short period of time a day, but it was then that we realised just what a massive task in forcing all day every day was going to be,

and at that point COVID hit and March 2020 we ceased enforcing.

there was very little traffic going through town in at that time and, as civil enforcement officers were all sent off to do other tasks, from keeping the crematorium going to helping to.

collect waste and manage waste,

and the civil enforcement officers that we did have we focused on what we, what we call blue light routes, which is making or making sure that all of the rates?

the ambulances and delivery vehicles and waste vehicles, etc through the town

they could focus on doing that, keeping those clear.

so COVID ended and

we went to KCC who were intending at the time to take over the enforcement of PR to themselves, and this was supposed to be from the 1st of April 23.

however, they were then having to grapple with new legislation that the government are bought in in June 22, which you're probably aware was to do with moving traffic offences, and this will cover all sorts of things.

including CCTV cameras around

yellow hatched areas for example,

and KCC was going out to tender for a contract to be able to enforce all of these very new moving traffic offences and public realm to were supposed to be wrapped into this contract.

only their contact contract tendering process was delayed and they came back to us eventually and said that they couldn't do it, and would we please do it for a year.

at that point, Cabinet had a decision to make about whether they would like us to enforce or whether they wanted to wait for a year for KCC to enforce, and the decision was made that they would like us to go ahead.

so we started sending warning notices out mid February, so any vehicle that passed through were we would be in receipt of a warning notice, saying.

you haven't entered

or an area that you shouldn't have done,

we're not enforcing at the moment, but please don't do it again

and we put a link to the website where everything was explained in quite considerable detail as to where where you could go and where you couldn't

on the 1st of April we started to enforce and started to enforce with live PCNs

but if anybody appealed

and they haven't received a warning, then we would again send them a warning, and we would it explain once again that they'd gone into an area that they shouldn't have gone into, if they were to do it again, then there's no then we wouldn't be rescinding the PCM they will be required to pay for it and this is what we have continued to do.

throughout the the period from the 1st of April.

and I'm really delighted to say it has worked, we started off with 900 to 1,000 vehicles going through there every single day and we know it was that many because we we've got pictures of them all on CCTV cameras because every single vehicle that passes through we have to go and check and verify manually.

so we, we started off with 900 to 1,000 per day.

and, as you can imagine, we had to get the team reorganised to be able to manage such a massive workload,

all of our supervisors and our managers. they turned on a six months and they started working going through these, they shared it all themselves.

we got extra staff in as casual staff to.

to look through the appeals process

when people appealed, we would go through that process that I explained

so we had to hire extra staff to do that.

right at the beginning.

our our normal PCM issuing we, we sacrifice a little bit, we didn't do exactly the same enforcement at the beginning, as we would ordinarily have done, but as the number of vehicles going through has reduced and normal.

issuing of of PCSOs and enforcement has gone back to normal again, and I'm happy to say that where we're looking at between 1 and 200

people going through their per day down from the thousand 900, so it has worked and depending upon the day.

it could be 100, it could be if it's a really busy day on a lovely sunny day, it can be up as far as 200, but it's very, very rarely that and the trajectory is still southwards, it is still going down.

this is very much on a par with what we had with the public realm, one which is the little stretch of road between the Post Office.

and that that goes in in front of.

the weather, Wetherspoons pub.

we found that it took a number of months to get down to people, understanding that they weren't supposed to be going down going through there and were down to 10 15 a day, and we fully anticipate that there will be appointed time in the future where public realm 2 will have exactly the same experience but we're still on that journey.

we have been in touch with KCC throughout, they wanted to learn what our experience was, because they have got all of this coming down the pipe.

with their moving traffic offences all over the borough.

on the 1st of April 24, which is when their contract is going to start, and indeed they will then take over the enforcement of public realm 1 and 2 via their new contract.

so we've been trying to tell them exactly what issues we've had, what we've struggled with what has worked well, what hasn't.

and indeed.

the public realm, too, has been a huge investment of time for all of the parking team, and I am so proud of the way they've said right, OK, I'll stop doing this and will focus on that, and we've all turned on a sixpence to do things very, very differently.

we've had some really good development learning

moments through it as well, in that once upon a time, we used to have a person who stood at the photocopier printed out all the PCNs or the

notice to owners that come later in the process we would, we will print them all out, we put them through our envelope stuffer would take them down and stick them through the franking machine, and then we'd send them off and this was a process that did take quite a considerable period of time clearly with the volume of PCNs that we were sending out and the volume of warning notices we couldn't do that anymore. so we now have a way of sending a file of to dot gov, who print and post it, or for us four

if you include the Labour less than the price that we were paying for the printing postage, the envelopes, etc before so it forced us to prioritise a project that has actually really improved our efficiency and will be great for us going forward so

it's been really good in in other respects as well

so that's that's the story really I don't know if anybody has got. any questions that they would like to ask.

just one thing you've probably seen on the media lots and lots of contention that that the the scheme

is flawed and it's unfair and the signage isn't accurate enough,

and I'm really pleased that we have put together all of the information regarding the PR to,

enforcement area, and when people have appealed to the traffic penalty tribunal, we have been

very, very successful at getting those penalties through, so it shows that the scheme is valid

and and present and correct, otherwise the traffic penalty Tribunal would would have turned down

our

our information and they would have let people off. via their appeals, so

it's it's a solid scheme,

so anything anybody would like to ask.

questions for Joan,

let's start with David, and we go on to Alan and then we'll go on to shoddy.

thank you Chair,

it's nice, we've got our own mini LA schemes and it is quite.

just I think it's netted us about 1.1 million isn't it, I think in income from approximately right

do we know what it's cost us is the first question,

the second question is yeah, I suppose really do we get to keep the money or has it got to go over to KCC? and if I may be cheeky and squeeze a third bone in,

has it had any noticeable effect on air quality and the pollution within the area, do we know if we've got any stats on that police jam, thank you Chair.

OK, so yes, you're right, just over 1.1 melanin income.

as per the way we have to do, the accounting accounting has to, we have to put the costs into set pot, so salaries have to go to salary costs, CCTV costs have to go into the appropriate code, so there's quite a large piece of work to go and extract those costs from all sorts of different places and put them together in what we would call a trading account. now we're in the process of doing that, right now, we were focusing very, very much at the beginning on just trying to make sure that the whole thing worked now, the things are settled a lot, that's what we're doing, we're trying to put together the total costs. and we should be able to report on those relatively soon

the second question was, do we get to keep any surplus? the answer is yes, we do

we for this year, between the 1st of April 23 and 31st March 24, we get to keep any

any surplus that we make from the enforcement.

This was really the result of our learning from 2019. We learned exactly what a task it would be and that we would need extra labour. We would need CCTV cameras that it wasn't going to be straightforward, and therefore we went back to KCC and negotiated that if we were going to undertake this piece of work, that we would keep the surplus

but it's really important to understand that this surplus cannot be spent on just anything,

it's very specific in the legislation were on-street enforcement.

surpluses can be spent on and at the moment with John's working quite hard with the legal team,

because.

as a result of the moving traffic legislation change in June 22

there's.

there was uncertainty over exactly what we could actually spend that money on, and the lawyers are still having a bit of a debate on exactly what that might be, so we should be able to get that quite soon because they have been working on it and and going through the old and the new the new legislation.

to to determine what what it can be spent on,

so sorry.

yes, the third thing.

it was a question that was asked quite recently, it wasn't it John on fire and FY, do you want to answer that one?

there isn't any air quality monitoring in that area of the town. but you'd have to understand that if you go from, say, a thousand vehicles was down to a hundred vehicles, it has that benefit has the benefit of pollution and noise pollution as well,

and traffic safety, but it's not measured.

yeah sorry, yeah yeah, so quickly or so, just to be clear, John thank you, thank you for that answer, John, that someone, obviously if they all electric vehicles, will be an issue.

just to follow on from my question of the surplus then that we get to keep

the definition of a surplus will be how, once we've worked out what our costs are presumably minus, the one point that will be ma am and write an understanding that will be I define surplus so I got that right

job that's absolutely about yes, so

thank you very much and

thank you thank you Alan then Chardy,

thank you very much Chair and I have to say that on next door this has caused more traffic car

then the question of what is the police helicopter doing in our boots,

but the question I was going to ask is about

what happens to the mechanisms the

there has been developed by our innovative and hard-working Tunbridge Wells staff. do we just pass it over to KCC and with professional pride? the other could I actually come up with any money for it, because

a lot of time and effort has gone on this and money and you know, it's it's you know Britain didn't necessarily develop benefit from the invention of the industrial revolution and the rest of the world did so we need to there's a salutary lesson that I think we need to follow the KCC if they're gonna make money from this in the future which I'm sure they will because they've got a bigger financial hole than most people.

the that we need to benefit as well.

why you picked out that perhaps you would also to say that? no, through quite specific things, what we have to do with it

did the same specify specific issues arrived for KCC, namely expenditure in the borough.

there was a

there is a good news story about this as well, I mean there is a serious point about next door in the

we do need to communicate the good news as to what's happened, PR, one MP or two, and how much life is better

in in that bit of Mount, Pleasant and, outside of

Cafe Nero and the like

just on the equipment and the investment that we've made.

certainly any efficiencies of the team, there's there's an investment, there's a there's a benefit to us. and will retain that been sending our documents, physicality Kent County Council will buy their own cameras in, so the cameras that we've we've actually leased them, because when it became uncertain as to the future of peer to MP all 1 we leased the pier to cameras so they will go back to the

to the company that supplied them outside of that, this does not a great deal of investment really.

and staff will return to their normal duties and the temporary staff will be let go, so this does not match.

sort of physicality and to the scheme itself.

I think your point was probably around the learning, and we've had to put an awful lot of time and effort into coming up with how we can administer the scheme, and we have now got the scheme to a point where.

it's quite easy for them to take over, I think their argument would be that the that the quid pro quo was that we do get to keep any of the surpluses for the year.

previously,

there was an agreement with KCC that we would get to keep 5% of any surplus for pr 1, so really it was tuppence happening for us, we were providing an enforcement service for them

this time I'm I'm hopeful that because of the level of of income

don't get me wrong, there are considerable costs to allocate against, but there will definitely be more of a surplus than the 2 1,000 that we we made per year for PR one for all of our efforts.

amis specific usage due Kent County Council have to spend what they collect in the borough on the borough or not.

the legislation applies to them in exactly the same way as it will apply to us, however they don't have to spend it in the borough, they need to spend it in the county because it would be their income for the county.

yeah, so nobody was killed.

Justin

yeah, thanks, I just wanted to make a point that

there has been a huge cost in time.

to the team and it has been quite difficult, quite has been quite a lot of hostility around the scheme, as you allude to Alan, but I would say I think our residents have probably benefited well, not probably I'm sure they've benefited from Tunbridge Wells enforcing the scheme rather than Kent because we are, we are closer to the ground and we we are, I think it is easier to reach. So yes, there's been a lot of work put in, but hopefully the residents

are in a better position than they would have been. Had it gone straight to Kent and straight to a contractor been very, you know, it's but a very human response. Sooner John has written lots of letters and, as Jane said, the appeals process has been very sympathetic and we've really

tried to communicate, we've had a lot of misinformation and of hurtling in from different directions, so I take your point about the communication.

but hopefully there's there's been a sort of less tangible benefit to introducing it at a borough level.

surely?

David actually asked the questions, I was going to ask so.

that speeds us on Mark.

will have a plethora of questions, but I would limit them to two this evening. OK, slow web at first is around EV charging now, but recent eBay battle combat therefore done quite a bit of research into this, so a bit more about what level of charge we're doing, what number charges do it and also the upgrades the car parks understands the Eddie Chu cars are heavier mechanics impact and the maintenance of bird car parks as well. How is that factored into the overall customers are come back? The second question after that

I was actually going to move on to tell you about

where we are with EV charges in a bit, so I

do want to do you want to just

hold it because you'll probably find the answers to it when I would I take you through it.

yet another question was it about PR too?

David John Peel, to

sorry,

just equipment Jan I forgot to ask, I think my understanding was from what you said that KCC were responsible for the signage, one of the criticisms, one of the few, such some comments that have been fed back to me from residents in Countess the Lambeth's my ward, obviously is that if there had been better signage,

it would have made things easier, so are there any plans to improve the signage, or is it done and dusted now and that Batty seats such a thing, thank you.

Jordan, we've been waiting for new signs for how many months,

and I've lost track of just how many e-mails John has written and we have been waiting for them for from KCC for quite some, while haven't we

started going forward.

some of the signs.

a lot of the signs are out as as he would as you, as you see them,

I think Councillor Rutland has met with Kent officers to to try and encourage them to put some additional signs up.

if you go on our website, it does show you every sign that's out there.

and, as Jay mentioned, the traffic penalty tribunal we actually do we present them with a drive through part of our evidence, pack is a drive through, and a lot of contention on some of these cases where people have appeal is to say that we didn't see the signs well if you could go down Church Road for example that the big big signs and there's three of them

Mount Pleasant Road, big signs, again, multiple signs

York, Road, even Dudley Road and the adjudicate. As I said, the signing is adequate and I think it is just one of those things of human nature that is, it's a very busy town. Central town centres are very busy and

perhaps people don't pick up on it or as readily, as you might think, but I mean I remember coming for it.

when I, when I was applying for this job, which was around about 2020 at the end of 2020.

I drove down York Road and I thought, Well, what do I do here and I actually just took note of the signs and went straight across or demonstrated

there's people that don't do that. certainly at the beginning, people did not value the scheme, they thought that we were never going to issue it with PCSOs, and that's where the warning notices came in, so I think there's a lot of people that thought Well I'm just gonna drive through here there's a sort of decoy doxing where a car goes through and then five cars would follow it because it was OK to do that and all that sort of going now is also falling away and we are left with

otherwise inadequately signed scheme I would say, but we are working with Kent to see if we can improve it.

question

or I will kill them, can I just pick up on the working with Kent, I mean, does that go to the extensive, you know, perhaps indicating a little bit more, that this is a not a through road? and the one that people always mentioned to me is the term ride only lane in Crescent Road, which has a term right which suggests you can turn

you know the contained straight through the there which strikes me that that ought to be that ought to be withdrawn, but I just wonder whether those issues were also ones that you were picking

up, but that that that's been discussed with Kent officers a couple of times and we haven't just ignored the suggestion, but the current view is that

the same is setting out as it's not a 24 7 scheme.

people can quite legitimately turn right along Crescent Road since or after 6 o'clock and up until nine o'clock, so and the other thing is that if you had that, as well as a

cause as straight online, so you'd have the left-hand lane is a left turn into Mount Pleasant Road and then the right-hand lane which is currently a right turn into Mount Pleasant Road and pass War Memorial.

if you had that as a straight online, anything turning right would block the traffic so they

considered it and their traffic engineers, I'm not a traffic engineer and I've got valid arguments, Les safer for not doing that change.

and Crescent Road has got some big signs, with a lot multiple signs.

thanks John, I always worry about experts.

Jane you were going to say something.

I would say, and we did I when we met the KCC officer about 10 days ago, we did do a massive walk around with a whole site and I I think, that you may be a little bit open to that. arrow, but we,

but we will flagged up and we did talk about the signage, and we also talked about the fact that the signage is correct, but is it possible perhaps to move the signage a little bit in terms of making it more visible, because it doesn't take much for a try to to go into leaf, and suddenly you know that you've got a,

you know slightly obscured there's all sorts of issues about where you can put the signs because of utilities and pipe work, and

so everything is really quite complicated,

but we are, you know, have a good working relationship with the officers there and

getting yeah getting a good feeling that they're taking it seriously and we would rather nobody drove through the scheme at all and of course,

so that's what we're working to, but we are we yes, it's a bit frustrating about signs.

so before we move on to the other things that Jane wants to about you, you can just assure me.

that everything on the signs and the road markings

that needs to be done is not in our patch, it all resides with Kent County Council.

right, thank you.

I just now, just I just wanted to know that there was nothing that was our specific responsibility was all Kent County Council.

yeah, I mean,

it strikes me that you could write on the road you could put after 6 pm or something good, but I mean that you got some solace in the in Bromley.

then there's

the best line you can drive in after 10 o'clock, but you can't see the

the sign is really small writing and you drive past it at 40 miles an hour and you don't necessarily, it takes you a while to realise that it's you've driven through it before 10 o'clock and then you'd probably go get a pee see them not just an aside.

Jane back to you,

thank you, I was just going to say that the signage is perfectly adequate to be able to enforce it and that that's really really Claire it is perfectly adequate now that doesn't mean to say that it couldn't be a little bit better and that we've tried.

really engage with KCC in order to get some small enhancements made.

and I think Justin's right, it has, it has been a little bit frustrating, but I don't think it's necessarily kcc's.

fault, I think they've have problems with the people who are making their signage, so I genuinely think that they are, they are trying, but it has been a bit of a frustrating process for us.

I'd echo everything Jane said that good, very positive working relationship, very proactive and,

but, yes, if you read the findings of the tribunal, it is clear that there is enough. signage and everything's compliant, so we press on in that spirit.

thank you, Joan, do you want to talk about done Lorriman MB charging, yes,

so I'll it's getting late so dunlin, 16th of October.

is going to be the go-live date for us.

both the Donal and

both the Pembury Road end and the Hawthorn Road, and will have charges applied at a pound an hour.

there will be a machine at each end.

we will have free parking for disabled people in each car park.

the Cabinet have agreed that there will be permits available for the businesses who

operate from Donal and Park

and there will be permits available for the friends of Dunholme Park who offer their services for free, maintaining maintaining the park.

We have. We have worked with Ringo to make sure that Ringo will be available as a a payment method as well as carded machines.

I'm quite excited because every time we do a little project, I tweet we try to to push the boundaries a little bit and we're putting in our first solar machines so each machine will have a little solar solar cell on the top of it,

and if this works well, then we can try retrospectively and installing those for any parking machine that's on the top floor of any of our car parks, so that's going to be interesting to see how that works

apparently that doesn't trouble them too much, it still works, just fine.

one of the issues that came out from the surveys was that people were very concerned about whether it would push.

people to park on the road downhills Hull, Road or along the Pembury Road, and we have worked quite hard with KCC to make sure that

we have there.

tacit approval to amend the

restrictions down those roads in order to help ameliorate any problems that that may occur from it, and we can do that quite swiftly.

we feel it's very important not to

not to step in too quickly and to actually look and see how people behave rather than try to address something that isn't really an issue,

so we will be watching or monitoring very, very closely to see what the impact is and we're ready to move forward should we need to make any changes in order to make sure that there is an

an adverse effect on the residents that live adjacent to the park or and on the on the parking on the roads adjacent to we've also been in touch with Axa because

it it may have an impact upon them to

so yeah, we've we've informed them as well.

my question.

and Christians do

pull

furniture following David.

on the friends of dental and park permits, I assume that's for active volunteers, rather than all members, because otherwise their 7 pounds a year looks very tempting.

yes, that's absolutely right.

hi, I think, at the briefing you did for us before you said there was only going to be a machine in one of the two car parks, so I just wondered if there's now going to be one in each, what's the extra cost of that

will be

cost implications of that?

you are absolutely right and I was hopeful that we could have one and one car park Ringo, only one a machine in the other one

we are trying, wherever possible, in in the borough, to get people to pay by Ringo because the transaction cost is free to the council.

however, when we have the feedback from

the resident survey.

and the formal consultation.

it was quite clear that residents would prefer having a machine in in both location, we then went back and had a little look at the budget and went and negotiated with the contractor,

and we are instead of buying any new machines we're moving to, so we went through the takings from all of our machines in our existing car parks and we went and found a couple that are very, very little used and were transferring the both of those so really we've just got the cost of moving them, setting them up and the two new solar panels so we can still install those for the same budget that we had set aside.

or originally to set the whole thing up.

thank you Chair, yes, no change to be clear, then there's the Ringo auction and as the cash option in the machine is.

or just called card only, as is, as is the case in all of our car parks, now we don't take cash in any of our car parks, its card and rigour only

lovely, thank you sorry, Freudian, slip

and just to be clear, as I was reading in the cabinet notes,

that I believe it says that there's two free permits being issued for the cafe and the boats, the businesses there now. I'm assuming the older employees will get free permits, not this not just to the sharing between them, is that right.

now each business will get two permits, you can put more than one vehicle onto a permit, however, so they can switch them.

and the agreement is really for the introduction of the scheme, so if, for example,

the boat business was to be sold to a third party in the future, the new purchaser wouldn't become eligible for a permit, it's it's really that.

this was introduced whilst the businesses are in situ, so it will be for these owners owners only.

thank you, Chairman.

surely?

just in the in the notes that we got, the

invented Parkrun would get permits as well, so why do they what justifies them getting permits if that's OK?

so there's a yes, we didn't mention part round, but I've approached centrally part run and I've approached the friends

subsequent to approaching the friends, I went

Peter and Catcher in the parks department because they are actually very plugged into the active gardeners

Parkrun is is quite

an operation on a Saturday

morning and I think there's people coming there's one person who comes every week without fail and that individual

oversees the Duke of Edinburgh

volunteers

so that person is there every.

week

that person also does some other sort of things around the park,

and then you've got volunteers doing the stewarding so they are there

at least two to three hours per time, so we.

are going to weightless their vehicles.

but what I don't see why for the businesses and I see why for the volunteers, but they're using the park in the same way that other users are using the park, so I don't see why popcorn gets an exemption, I appreciate they come every week but

you know the businesses have been established so it's fair that it's not a detriment to their business and the volunteers actually provide for the park as well, but what does awkward provide?

so it was me, it wasn't clear, it is not all the pot runners who get dispensation, it's people who allow a part run to take place.

I mean that's.

yeah, I think it's just something that came up in your consultation and the comments that it was felt that

you know nobody wanted to undermine park runners, it's such a a popular event Kaufman, I think it's around, we might have had 400 people at the weekend and that by charging

the volunteers

who were giving up Saturday mornings to come and help but that might sort of

fatally

damage the viability of the event. so that's the decision that

that be with the autumn on this occasion.

I think we'd be officers here, we're only discussing the mechanics of it, I mean I am wholly against any charges in him

in the

park, I think it's so quite wrong, it's a bit park that's paid for by all residents of the borough.

I find it, you know, you talk about people who live near the park, where they have the great advantage they can walk to it, most of the other people have to drive to it, and I just think that

we've gone down a bad route, but here we just discussing the enforcement of how parking are actually enforcing it.

yeah

thank you, Chair, can I just ask you said it's 1 pound an hour is the limit

for how long parking in a day in the car park?

no, there isn't it's 5 pounds 4 for the day, so it's 1 pound an hour or 5 pounds for the day, but there's no limit, and the charges only are applicable between eight and six.

OK, so it's surface and events in the park as a mellow hall, some other thing, when people can only expect were only people would be expected to pay 5 pounds for the benefit as well.

yeah,

this is so aged six or seven days a week.

correct.

Chase?

the battery on my system is saying it's running low, and so perhaps we could move on now to.

is it EV charging?

it's just come

up with something.

so the Council has a project to install electric vehicle charging in some of its car parks.

the project itself star maybe two and a half years ago. in earnest and we made a bid to government for funding, and at that time the funding was address bid to office of low emission vehicles.

and he dealt solely with car parks when we started talking about it with some members, there was dance and there's event anticipation that we'd be looking at stuff on-street,

but we have car parks we can manage and control the car parks anything that takes place on the street should be something that is dealt with by Kent County Council was our view and that's how we proceeded so we put a grant application in

which was we were awarded just over 100,000 pounds.

and that's

that's the sort of a par, that's the sort of part contribution from the from government, and then we would have to meet the cost of the the rest of the project, so the project itself is about 160,000 pounds as it currently stands and in order to cover the cost of the the additional

contribution we had to go into partnership with.

electric vehicle charging company who would install their charges one way or another and then they would take an income from that over a period, and that was the model.

so the difficult we had was, so you actually went out to tender twice and

the market was very, very

unstable, as we found, so we would get a lot of interest verbally from these companies, various suppliers of electric vehicle charge points, and there's a lot of them out there when it actually came to responding to the tender the response was very poor.

some of the documentation was incomplete,

companies didn't even tender at all, so we decided that we'd have to look for a different model. and the model was that we went to a framework.

framework is attended that's already been, let via

via a procurement organisation, so there's that there's a Crown

procurement organisation that we looked at and also I think, called ESPO, which is the eastern SHA's procurement organisation, and lots of local authorities and other organisations use these.

these services, because what happens is debate the centralised procurement, and then they get a list of suppliers, and you can actually either direct award to one of those suppliers because all the other.

checks and balances have been done already or you can have a mini tender,

so we've been working with a company called BP Pulse, which used to be

charge master, is also charged your car, they've also been swallowed up into BP Pulse and we had to re-evaluate all the car parks from our original tender model

to fit in in a way with BP Pulse's model.

which meant putting more charges in fewer car parks in essence, but there's a lot of challenges around it because this there's actually no infrastructure really to supply the sorts of levels of electricity that you want in Tunbridge Wells that we had, we spent a lot time working with UK Power Networks making sure they could actually get the right amount of power to the to the car parks the grant.

he's only available for.

slower.

charges so fast. Charges which are 7 kilowatts and they tend to be dual charges say 7 kilowatts plus 7 kilowatt, so 14 kilowatts per charger

you, don't you don't get grant funding for a rapid charge as these big things you see at motorway services and we've got one in Mount Pleasant Road, which is a Ken project for tat for taxi charging, so we were only put in a charger that would top up a vehicle

or charge a vehicle overnight resident vehicle, and that's why the grant funding is awarded to us in car parks,

because the expectation is we'd provide a service to visitors to the town during the day, but overnight residents could go to the car parks and charter their vehicles, and that's where

we had a lot of demand from residents.

and there's a lot of confusion around on-street charging Kent didn't seem to want to.

pick that up.

but now there is a different funding stream coming in called Levi.

which can

will start operating in April 2024,

and what I'd like to see from that is hubs charging hubs in areas of the town, so he'd be on street, there'd be areas where you're not necessarily using the highway for anything else, you could put a charging campaign and perhaps have things like coffee outlets.

or fast food outlets there, so it becomes the whole experience and that's that's the sort of model that sort of emerging.

one of the issues around infrastructure is that if you wanted to put charges in some of our car parks, you'd have to build a new substation.

and a new substation is about 100,000 pounds, so when you see that the charge point down in Mount Pleasant Road sort of halfway down towards the

railway station, the reason it's there is there's actually a a substation within about 10 metres, so really when you put it in the charge points you're looking for where you can actually supply them,

so it's been a long project, it's been multifaceted, it's had challenges in all different areas,

with

we're just getting to the final stages of finalised finalising documentation to install these charges, we're using BP puffs.

so, John do I understand from what you say that the only charging point in Tunbridge Wells

is the one down by the taxi rank.

it's it's a rapid charger, it's not the only charge point in time I mean rapid charging.

there are other charges.

Skinner's schools got some charges on site which private.

we've had charges in some of our car parks for a long time, so we had two charges in Great Hall

one blew up and took the other one out about two years ago, and they're obsolete,

so that's encompassed in this project, so we want to replace those we've got charges that work in Cromer Road car park.

and we got charges in Yewtree, but the charges in Yewtree again it is a different story, so the charges will put in as part of the South per hub

and they were sited on

Southborough Town Council land, which has not yet transferred from Southborough Town Council.

and the developer, Crest Nicholson, were part of planning, permission was that they would pay for the maintenance of the charges for five years, which they haven't done so, and neither of those charges work at the moment

and they're not ours.

on paper, they still belong to either Crest Nicholson or Southborough Town Council, but we are working on that as well, but I mean there are electric vehicle charge points

dotted around and a lot developments when they develop, they have to provide these things what we have found and actually talking to other parking matches is,

the demand isn't that great, yeah, strangely,

I was talking to the parking manager in Ashford, whereas I put in multiple charge points, say banks of 10 and they just weren't getting used and they would they that was done through a sort of a partnership with a private company and then they'd had a project to expand that and double it, but they've actually shelved that because there's no demand so

this sort of silo of uncertainty I mean I can't afford an electric vehicle

what if I could I wouldn't be able to for other things.

I, I think it's just a big mix at the moment and

you know things need to settle down a lot, but we we were gonna, try and do what we can as quickly as we can to get these shot points in.

I'm looking round the room for questions, I've got one or no ever hear from Mark, so would take Mark first and then to you all.

thank you, and as we are discussing environmental issues, can I recycle an earlier question.

because certain

here, what we're looking at here is obviously a bundle of I was actually talking to the person who has actually done the P operation for BP Pulse yesterday.

facts and having a good conversation about the challenges and why some of them don't actually work, they, the maintenance stuff, isn't actually, but instruction would in place to actually get them repaired early enough, so but anyway, astonishing points itself sleep how many challenges? where the proposals were deemed fit, the meeting,

and also are we going to

because they had heavier eaves, they'd actually been putting the maintenance improvement, maintenance on the car parks, because obviously it's going to actually have ended up when some of the multi-storey car parks well differently, so that's the first question and okapi hold-ups as well afternoon

fat fat for all your three or four and then we river,

having found them well at a time and getting answers now

and also taught my head, I'm going to have to try and remember where we were going to cite these charge points so Crescent Road, where are we gonna, change out the old charge points, great hall?

Grantham where the

the lower ground floor where the opens

out yeah, that's right.

and we've got time.

close use of the land mines.

and

I think we've got about 28 in total and but they're from double double charges, they will go into the multi-storey car parks, but we've also got

the one in Mount Pleasant, which is a rapid charger one side for the public and taxi the other side, and that's exactly the same in Paddock Wood car park.

in addition to that, we've got the four that are gonna be in Yewtree once they finally get transferred over to us from Southborough Town Council, and we will take responsibility for those as well, so eventually in at this stage there will be 32

and they will ostensibly be in our multi-storey car parks albeit that Yewtree will have one one parent would all have one and Mount Pleasant will have one.

if you want to know exactly where in the car parks they will be, we can give you the maps.

if you'd like me.

and also about the car park

strength improvements as well, because I think that's something which, although it talked about his work,

car park structures.

when we look at the multi-storey is quite right to say that electric vehicles are heavier so it will require user well each car park would need to be surveyed and we'd have to do a calculation on whether the car park can support

100% electric vehicles

at some point,

so there's two ways you could go at it you can actually reinforce where you can knock it down and start again with a car park you could reinforce it. or you could reduce the numbers of cars parking on each level,

so that's the sort of three things that we're looking at and as with looking at refurbishing car parks or doing major works to them, that there are considerations that we have.

I could possibly do not could actually put the town.

so although spreadsheet locations.

he wants to focus.

while this was happening now.

210

yeah the best feedback and tell the reason why some of them don't use particularly well, because, actually talked to were already users. Now I bought secondhand ebooks and distributed a short distance. It's a 24 kilowatt hour battery lauded easiest days of 50 60 70 kilowatt hour punch is what they do is they're quite long range now, apparently, for most local trips they will charge up overnight. They don't need to charge up in town for those particular areas, so it's actually a limitation, what they can do, so that's the reason nothing while you find that the flight loads, a couple of expected rapid charging different experience, but there again I accept the rapid charges with the

they are infrastructure and the cost of actually putting them in is prohibitive, and I get it completely.

and just the other follow-up thing as well is what we put in the the money, integrate our car park, and I just want you to actually don't wider discussion of what investment actually I'm looking to make into that car park as well, because then it will seek and it looks at me to upgrade because there have been some maintenance issues there as well.

yes, the car park, but car park.

is on the capital programme and

was looking how much has been proved, I think it's a to 801.

50,000 in the capital programme

for Great Hall car park.

yes, 850,000

is in the Great Hall car park

and one that will look at the structure

as you quite rightly say, we have to look at the the weights that they can bear when we come to refurbish.

and EV charges will go in lighting, LCD lighting will be put in so that it's

more efficient.

so yes, we are, we are investing in the Great Hall car park.

she mentioned her, we did manage to wonder

just just to say that we we haven't dealt with Meadow Roden RVP because they weren't eligible for grant funding because the car parks, as we open 24 7

because it's raised resident charging and a lot of the information that we got from residents because we did do a survey and engage with residents back in 2021 was it's people who live in terraced houses that don't have off-street parking, they don't have access to charging

and there's a lot questions around how they can actually achieve that.

people think you can just plug into a lamp column, you upgrade the lamp column, but it doesn't really work like that,

training need to cross the footway is dangerous and it's again Keynes against Ken policies, so there's loads of conversations going on around those things.

so yeah, we were looking to provide charging for residents'.

in our car parks as best we can, given the fact that we don't have any money to pay for it and we have to park with other people and the block grant what happens with the levy Grant he's

I don't really know, but it's a it's a lot of money floating around I would say

the 4 million pounds.

or it may be a lot more than that, but I think Ken for making us all constructive bid to get some of it and actually put decent charging in

just wait quite quite a year from the must, what they're they're gonna do, it may be that they'll take that grant funding and they'll be responsible for just distributing at 2000 districts, so this is that this is the list here because the car park,

so some 28 in total, but for 14 of these powers,

I must say I mean we, we've got charges in Crescent Road and

they don't get very much used at all.

and there's loads of things about a range anxiety, which is you know, the older cars, or you can go about 100 miles with them,

there's other things around

happy because habits are, so you don't go to the petrol station every time you go for a drive so people don't know may only need to charge up once every two weeks if that is using the car for short journeys so.

there's a lot of psychology around it as well,

so it's just a lot of things in the mix.

so you are satisfied there will be meeting current demand.

it is difficult gauge what the current demand is, we don't see a lot of business in.

crasbo, for example, we should to functioning electric vehicle charges,

they're not always that busy.

I, I just think that the market will move and we need to move with it to a degree.

but the thought of seeing credit owed with just banks and banks and banks of electric vehicle charge points is babies of five years down the road or 10 years down the road, if Eve Go ever goes away.

they might invent something else, and now the range is increasing every week and the weight of the batteries is decreasing as well the way the batteries are.

manufactured is you know, there's loads of stuff on the BBC and Guardian and use programmes that are saying that it's a very much moving market

thanks to your

Alan and then Paul. thank you very much and yeah, that was what one of my questions was, gonna, be about future technology and how we ensure that.

we're not spending money unnecessarily on different better maxam technology.

because I mean there was this stuff going on all the time, as with battery exchange in the neck in China and Sweden, I know that they're looking at that, which seems to me a far more and far better alternative than charging ecologist driving along get to battery output new one in and drive up again.

and as well.

could we look at it again?

reducing the number of cars on the road because that would help as well, I think,

and look working in concert with other

organisations about improving our public transport.

offer in in the borough.

and working with other car park providers with supermarkets and National Rowe and seeing what they are doing about.

providing

the charging points as well, and my great hope is that we're not listening to

outside influences at the moment and say we've got another five years on this because we haven't.

then we need to do, we need to be working on this as you are

successfully,

thank you.

whether we will be here all night, if we spoke about all of these subjects there, I mean we do what we can with limited resources, limited funding.

I'd play places like Tescos in Pembury has got its own charges,

you know it's it's an attraction for customers, it will be any growing attraction for customers, and supermarkets will invest in it, for that reason.

and it's called destination charging, you know you go somewhere because you're going to charge up and then you go and buy your groceries, so there's a there's lots of things in the mix, I think the leave icing is exciting, I think there's a lot of big money coming in and hopefully Kent will use it wisely. and in a practical way that is attractive to residents and makes them makes them make that switch to an electric vehicle.

thank you Chair.

I think gone on Crescent, Road utilisation I've recently converted and I've tried four times to charge there in each time there's been a different reason it hasn't worked either a petrol cars parked there, it hasn't been working, it won't start a charge and then once I did I got 1% of charge out of it by the time I was done shopping because it was only putting out three and a half kilowatts so I've kind of given up if that helps with the usage.

on the KCC grant smog to your earlier points Spouthouse Parish Council just had two EV charges installed, we said, Can we have three phase, they said No, we don't have the money for it, so we now have two 7 kilometres charges which seems like a waste of time. To me,

my main question, it sounds like we've been a bit hamstrung in the past on maintenance. What's the plan going forward? If we're still contracting out to BP pulses a third party, are we going to have that reliability?

I don't think a unit to inherently unreliable.

there's not too many moving parts to them, although someone managed to run over the charging cables for the one in Mount Pleasant Road.

so it took a while to get that fixed or we we have just to mention, we have a rapid taxi, stroke normal car charging paddock would in one of the car parks which was again another Ken project with a substation within spitting distance.

on him on the maintenance and reliability. I mean it, is it's a commercial model if they are going to make money out of their charges, their charges need to work. I think possibly what's happened is that they put in so many charges that they can't keep pace with them breaking down, and they need to beef up in that area, but it is something we need to discuss with them and we need to have and S L with them to say that they will fix things within a certain period of time, so that will be built into the agreement that we have

otherwise, they will suffer penalties.

it's just a very, very quick follow up Bob festival.

Ashby BP, molestation in the Beaton station. There hasn't worked nine months,

that facts are Cohen alphabets, and they're concentrating at Baines people in there they're not doing, is not repairing it, but anyway, very quickly, extremely the electricity supplied is gonna, be sustainable and is abroad, and also what's the charge is gonna be for the

levies,

the charging rates gonna be for it's like once again got installed

wow how much they've been charging per kilowatt hour for the energy

so that the tariff will be BP, Pulse's national tariff. it's only a website so allies

I don't wanna be quiet on this, but you have to subscribe, I think, 7 pounds a month to get a reduced rate.

but if you look on the BP Pulse website, that there is a tariff table there.

Jane and then a quick question from David.

and then I think we want to wrap up.

to further, that

cabinet made a decision that they are not going to

ask for a surplus to be charged, that the council will benefit from. It will very much be whatever the BP pulse charges will be, will be what what the the resident or customer pays. There's not gonna be a profit element that's taken by the Council, and that was a decision that that Cabinet may to provide a service to to the Borough and to try and incentivise people to to to use them.

The other thing is the question over over there from

Councillor Carey

about

the longevity of of the of the charges.

we had the opportunity to buy into a framework the KCC had set in place that a number of the other borrowers

had have used.

we decided to opt out of it because the term was for 13 years and they had asked for a profit margin to be made as well, so if we'd have gone into it we'd have been in that contract for 13 years and we would have had to have taken the Prophet

we were very concerned that that was just too long in a market that was moving so quickly and we therefore found a framework that is only for seven years which is enough for them to make their capital cost back

and I feel very very comfortable with that decision particularly as over the two years that we've been trying to get this project off the ground, things have moved so much even in a very short period of time. just hope that gives you a bit of reassurance

burden

of thank you, yeah yeah, just very quickly, I just want quick comment and one quick question. I think I got my first lecture vehicle about nine years ago, so I've been driving electric vehicles very long time and I would urge not to rush into any decisions. As John is sort of intimated there about charging and the reason challenging, isn't necessarily, I think if we talked about it most people that you're going to charge at home, that people who can afford them in London, they charge them at home, they're going to tell me, go back again, you don't need to charge, it is on the long motorway journey to the things that you need the fast charges, so I just urge caution, as you really said, second point, if I may, it was reported in the Kent online on the 9th of September that we've got five surplus car parks that were actually going to sell now is that actually chokes, I just lost it a bit on this, I knew we were reviewing our asset base, but have we actually decided to sell by is that true or not please?

no.

thank you.

just to clarify them, Mount Pleasant Road, yes,

and that is on the market, that's the car park, that

it is just over the way actually use it, Monday to Friday, it's open to the public Saturday and Sunday.

it's little used at the weekend

and Great Hall and Crescent

are perfectly acceptable alternatives very, very close by.

the report that you will have seen may well have said that they were they were being reviewed, but a decision has not yet been made on them.

yeah, the reports saying that's wrong, I was questioning it says they are up for sale, is what the report said, and I I didn't think it was right, I just wanted to hear it's OK, thank you Jane very much.

are you gonna say this with the microphone on of basketball?

Justin J, can we have a microphone on?

thankfully.

it wasn't for the public

and I was just

now, it wasn't really, we were just I was again asked if I didn't need to add, when I said no, I didn't have anything

to get, thank

you,

Godfrey.

just to

elucidate on my own.

car parks will say I think there was an punishment wording in the cabinet report, which are said that the all five car parks were surplus

and work and were being considered for.

the sale

they didn't hurt at the wording.

and what they actually meant to say was maybe surplus.

and it could be considered for sale.

it was

unfortunate.

there is a process that the Council goes through for the sale of all assets

and yeah, I may now agree that

there was some wording that

did suggest the process was gonna be rather quicker than the process that we know is always undertaken.

Justin

just as a last word, and that's it we have, we will consider that for the next time that comes around, and I think Councillor Blandy raised it at a previous Full Council, I remember, so we we will take, we've taken that feedback on board to avoid future confusion on it, thank you.

can I draw the parking two to a clue, because my system was now run out of battery completely.

Jane John, thank you very much.

Justin thank you for the.

the presentation beforehand, thank you.

can we just move on now to the work programme?

that's agenda item 8.

navy.

the work programme covers

the approaches that.

Caroline has been making to

cabinet members so far to come and see us.

8 Work Programme

and we will, we will keep trying to flesh out on on that, what we do know is that.

for our next meeting in November,

we have the finance portfolio and the budget setting arrangements for next year. and we have south-east water coming in to explain about their lack of resilience in their system.

what I want to put back on the programme is the task and finish group on contracts, and I just wondered where that was standing.

we had a meeting,

but for weeks nobody actually.

looking to produce a final report, but we're probably

beats midnight storm next meeting next week.

so you you, you, aim to put it on the agenda for end of November yeah, OK right, thank you.

so that is are

then item 9 as urgent business, I can confirm there's no urgent business.

9 Urgent Business

10 Date of the next meeting

and our next meeting is Monday, the 27th November, so thank you very much and I actually I found it a very interesting meeting, I'm sorry, it's gone on perhaps a little bit more than we wanted to, but.

a lot of I mean,

I do think EV charging is a complicated subject and I have to say that

the

the offer from KCC for their 13 year term was was.

well pre COVID and certainly any preachy change of administration.

so thank you all very much.

thank you Chair.

Overview and Scrutiny Committee - Monday 25 September 2023, 6:30pm - Feedback Tab - Start video at 0:39:44 - Tunbridge Wells Borough Council Webcasting

Overview and Scrutiny CommitteeMonday, 25th September 2023 at 6:30pm

Agenda

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Votes

Seat 3 - 0:00:00

1 Apologies for Absence

2 Declarations of Interest and Party Whip

3 Notification of Persons Registered to Speak

4 Minutes of the meeting dated 31 July 2023

5 Items Called- In

6 Presentation from the Cabinet Member for Housing and Planning

7 Presentation from the Cabinet Member for Economic Development

8 Work Programme

9 Urgent Business

10 Date of the next meeting

Overview and Scrutiny Committee
Monday, 25th September 2023 at 6:30pm