Agenda item

Councillor Mark Cherry had given notice of the following question to Councillor Liam Walker:

Will the Cabinet member for Highways Delivery and Operations Cllr Liam Walker be able to give a timescale for the relining work at the end of Boxhedge Road, Banbury.

Highways Officers have informed me that the work will be done but cannot gives me a timescale due to skanska contractors schedule lining work for active travel in Oxfordshire ie cycling lanes. I have had complaints from residents as cars have parked close to a pull through for neighbouring houses and Thames Valley police cannot enforce parking because the lines are faded there; a clear health and safety concern. 

Councillor Walker replied:

As the Activity Travel cycle markings are now complete, we have added the lining work (mentioned) to the programme of works. We are expecting the work to be carried out during 18/19 August.

Councillor Judy Roberts had given notice of the following question to Councillor Steve Harrod:

It is very worrying that only £25k of the £200k budgeted for youth service development this year is now regarded as necessary expenditure, and that proposals agreed to unanimously by council at February's budget meeting are to be abandoned.  During Covid our young people have suffered greatly with disruption to their education. Many of the most vulnerable young people with mental health issues have been unable to access services. We know that the impact of the 2008 recession hit young people the hardest economically and that 14-24 year olds need this council's support now more than ever.   Given that this £200k budget was intended to develop a proposal for an Oxfordshire youth service to be included in the budget for 2021/2, how else do the administration plan to provide these desperately needed professional youth services?

Councillor Harrod replied:

The £200k allocated in this financial year’s budget to develop an up to date assessment of what young people want and need form youth services, which was always considered a generous budget, has not been removed, just reduced to £25k. A specification for this work has been prepared within this new financial envelope under the following timeline, which has obviously been affected by the pandemic:

• Request for quotation issued: July 2020 
• Deadline for quotes: September 2020 
• Supplier appointed: October 2020 

The appointed consultants will be supported by officers in their on-going ‘business as usual’ assessment of provision. Furthermore, there is a lot of good existing information available about numbers and needs. There are strong ‘umbrella’ groups within the Voluntary sector that can provide insight on what is currently available and there is some great national work on what good youth provision would look like. The gap is probably around what young people want and therefore the need for consultation is significant as there is a lack of up to date information in this regard. 

We anticipate most of the consultation with young people will be conducted online because of the pandemic, which is less costly, and our expectation is that we will receive initial feedback before Christmas 2020, with the final report by March 2021. Whilst this detail will clearly not be available in time to incorporate it into the 2021/22 budget, we will endeavour to make some provision for it, but this will be within the constrained financial position for the council overall. 

Contrary to some speculation, this project has not been kicked into the long grass, but merely delayed by the impact of Covid-19.

Councillor Richard Webber had given notice of the following question to Councillor Yvonne Constance:

Given that the Active Travel pots are very small for what they are trying to achieve, and the time for any consultation was short, it is hardly surprising that the whole process has caused much consternation. Leaving aside that no clear explanation of what criteria were used to determine which projects should go ahead and how any criteria were applied, does the Cabinet accept that the whole exercise has taken up an inordinate amount of Highway officer time to the detriment and delaying many other projects?

Councillor Constance replied:

As a result of COVID, It has been necessary to reprioritise our activities to ensure that the council is doing everything it can to enable our residents to travel safely as lockdown restrictions are eased. This includes the Active Travel programme, which comprises a wide range of initiatives and not just the Emergency Active Travel fund from the Department for Transport.

Some lower priority activities have been paused or delayed, however we will still deliver all of our planned activities this year. I am not aware of any complaints we have received as a result of this reprioritisation, however please contact your area highways team if you have any concerns.

Councillor Liz Leffman had given notice of the following question to Councillor Yvonne Constance:

The proposed revisions to the 2020/21 budget includes the postponement of schemes such as the LCWIPS, which would help residents to reduce their carbon footprint by using their cars less, and improving their health walking and cycling more.  Given the government’s commitment to both reversing climate change and improving health by encouraging walking and cycling, would this Cabinet consider approaching the government to ask for support so that the LCWIPS can go ahead immediately rather than having to wait indefinitely?

Councillor Constance replied:

LCWIPS are still going ahead with plans to develop more following the approval of the Plan for Oxford in March and the scheme for Bicester going to Cabinet next month. Implementation of agreed Plans is dependent on funding coming forward to put the schemes and measures in and we have already approached the Government with proposals for Tranche 2 of their Emergency Active Travel funding.

Supplementary Question:

If the Council does not receive the money it expects to get in Tranche 2 from the Government, what will happen with the LCWIPs?  Will they be postponed?  Because it seems as if we are very dependent on that money coming from the Government to make sure that they go forward.

Reply:

We are most certainly dependent on the Government money for the schemes to go forward.  In October last year, we submitted a bid to Government for £300m, which is the estimated cost to install just the LCWIPs around Oxford itself.  We have gone on to develop bids for LCWIPs around Bicester and Witney and work has started on an LCWIP for Didcot.  This is in order to have properly planned schemes for when funding does become available.

Currently the Tranche 2 bid has relied on the LCWIP work within Oxford City to get the most ‘spade-ready’ schemes because deliverability was such a test.  If we do not get all of the funding, anything that does not meet a priority test, which will be based on the Benefit Cost Ratio, will simply wait for the next round of funding.  This applies to all of the schemes that have been generated with this great interest in the Active Travel Fund - a maximum of £2.38m against £20m that we are spending on cycleways in Oxfordshire already.

Councillor Tim Bearder had given notice of the following question to Councillor Judith Heathcoat:

How many vacancies were advertised on the Oxfordshire County Council Job board between 1st April and 31st July in 2019 and 2020?

Councillor Heathcoat replied:

The figures requested are as follows:

This takes into account any Advert that had a start or end date between these dates.

External adverts may have also had an internal advert running concurrently. This would be counted twice in the grand total.