Agenda item - Chairs Communications

59.1      The Chair provided the following communications:

“Thank you for attending this our first meeting of the Transport and Sustainability Committee in 2024. It is an honour to Chair. There is much to do.

I firstly want to welcome Cllr Guilmant to our Committee. Cllr Guilmant joins our administration after Labour’s remarkable success in the South Portslade byelection last month. I wish to add my thanks to the residents of South Portslade in continuing to place their trust in and support for this Labour administration running our wonderful city.

It is with particular thanks, too, to Cllr Loughran as she steps from this committee to focus more on her role as Chair of Planning and to the community of Preston Park where she is a highly committed and dedicated ward councillor.

There has been a lot of action since this committee last met and I wish to summarise some highlights on progress over the past two months. 

Last week, our Labour administration has shown leadership and competence in setting out a balanced in-year budget for the 24/25 Financial Year, despite significant challenges. Labour have prioritised protecting essential services. An organisational redesign will see the council streamline management of services to save £2.4million. This sets out to improve service delivery and to deliver more effectively and sustainably. This means the Council will need to become a more agile to deliver more with less and work effectively in partnership to achieve Labour’s bold ambitions.

As a new administration in 2023, we made it a priority to review parking across our city. As well as immediately reversing planned charging hikes last year, we commissioned a comprehensive parking review aimed at making parking in our city simpler, fairer, more accessible and inclusive, so that parking works well for residents, visitors and the prosperity of our city. There is a lot to do to get this right, but we are acting on it. 

May I now take this opportunity to specifically thank the many residents of the five light touch parking zones across the city for giving such a clear and unambiguous response in the recent public consultation for parking in these areas. When we came to office, our Labour administration spotted that there was a presumption built into the February 2023 budget that all light touch parking zones would be changed to 8am to 8am restricted parking; with a plan for a five-year programme of public consultation asking residents in each zone in turn the same question for the remaining duration of our administration. This meant that a major budgetary decision was built on a questionable presumption that residents would choose to move to a new scheme. We found this unacceptable and having pledged to be a listening council, we were very keen to find out what residents actually preferred before proceeding further.

The approval to go ahead with parking consultations in five zones was agreed at this Committee in October and consultation took place in December and January. In all zones, there was good public engagement and a very clear steer from residents that the February 2023 budget presumption under the previous Green administration was plain wrong. Having listened to feedback from residents and small businesses on converting light touch parking schemes to full schemes; I am pleased that as a result, we recommend not to implement the proposed changes in Parking Zones P, L, U, W and S. Furthermore, Labour propose to half the tariff increase as set out in the public consultation for all light touch parking zones. You said, we did. 

At Full Council in December, I responded to a deputation requesting improved accessibility to cross the railway at Hove Station and said I would act on this. I am very pleased that along with Council Leader Cllr Sankey; and our Chair of Planning Cllr Loughran, we held a meeting with Network Rail to instigate the discussion to address this and improve the current arrangements. At this meeting, we also discussed at length, improvements to Preston Park railway station and the accessibly for those using the underpass and crossing the railway, including those with greater accessibility needs and those with bicycles. We also discussed including reliability of rail services to and from our city, Network Rail’s planned capital programme, safety improvements for the Portslade level crossing and planned improvements at other train stations in our city. 

At the start of January, our first Transport Partnership for 2024 met with good engagement by all partners as we considered its terms of reference. These Terms of Reference had not been updated for at least a decade, so it is definitely time to step back consider what this partnership if for and how it can best serve the city by enables good stakeholder engagement on our transport and travel plans. 

Our Local Cycling and Walking Infrastructure Programme or LCWIP is a principal focus of the Transport Partnership, with a keen interest in its delivery from all members. Recent Transport Partnership meetings have had updates on the A23 Phase 1A, Valley Gardens Phase 3, and plans for better safter streets through junction and signage improvements. 

Following our strategic review of the A259 scheme from Brighton Marina to city boundary west, we have learned that, unsurprisingly, disconnected and second-rate active travel schemes are not the best way to encourage residents and visitors to cycle and walk. A more holistic connected active travel is central to our approach to the LCWIP and we plan that following review of options. An update for A259 Fourth Avenue to Wharf Road Hove active travel scheme is expected at the next Transport and Sustainability Committee. 

We are very pleased that following our design review we have recently affirmed support from the Coast to Capital Local Enterprise Partnership for the Valley Gardens Phase 3 project. With affirmed funding, Valley Gardens Phase 3 has now commenced and with a tender process underway. 

In January, I was pleased to meet with representatives from Bricycles, Sustrans and Community Works, to walkover of the North Laine and East Street to assess the permeability for cyclists and other wheelers in this area. During this site visit, we identified a number of ways signage, junctions, road markings, cycle routes and street table and chairs could be improved, enhanced or changed to enable better and safer cycling and wheeling through this part of our city centre. We will take this forward. 

Along with Cllr Sankey, in January, I also met with National Express as part of a wider consideration of Pool Valley following last summer’s devastating fire in the Royal Albion Hotel. We are very keen to work with National Express and other partners to improve accessibility, safety and facilities for coach travellers and consider a range of options as the Royal Albion Hotel and Pool Valley area are improved. 

At the recent Confederation of Passenger Transport (CPT) 50 years Celebration Conference, attended by our city bus operators, Brighton and Hove and Leicester city were celebrated nationally for being exemplars in bus services. I am very proud for our city that this is the case and all credit to all involved. 

It was therefore a great pleasure to chair the Enhanced Bus Partnership last week, where officers gave an update on our ambitious Bus Service Improvement Plan setting out the many projects to improve bus traffic flow through junction and road design. A presentation on bus punctuality and patronage shows significant improvement in both passenger numbers and punctuality over the period we have been in office. This shows the value of partnership between the Council and bus operators; with particular thanks to Brighton and Hove Buses who have undertaken a large recruitment drive over the past 8 months now enabling a full complement of buses. 

Finally, I am pleased to see two important reports come to our committee today, on climate adaptation and managing the strategic risk for delivering our carbon neutral programme.  

The target date for our city to achieve carbon neutrality by 2030 has been well communicated, so we expected that the previous Green administration would have established a strategy and an action plan to get this city there. Yet, when our Labour administration looked under the bonnet of the carbon neutrality vehicle; we found no motor, no battery, no wheels, no steering wheel and no roadmap for the whole city to get there. I appreciate the Greens have a reputation of being the anti-car party, but not having any drive or vehicle to get our city along this important journey is obscene.  It was all green-wash and no substance. 

This Labour administration is now getting a grip on the city’s strategy for achieving net zero and adapting to the impact of climate change. The October Transport and Sustainability Committee meeting agreed to commission our decarbonisation pathways study to get us there and are now building strategy on this. We have since been working urgently to identify the practical steps required decarbonise the city as a whole, and having met yesterday with the council sustainability team and with Buro Happold undertaking this important study I can confirm good progress with the results of our Decarbonisation Pathways Study that are due shortly. 

The council is directly responsible for only less than 2% of the city’s carbon emissions. We urgently need to start working with partners to reduce the 98% of carbon emissions we don’t directly control, and the new Net Zero team will provide the focus we need to prepare and adapt to fully meet the challenge ahead. 

Given the scale of the challenge and the astonishing lack of progress, the council is in the process of forming a new Net Zero team to focus on large projects and strategic partnerships with the city’s biggest emitters, largest employers, our universities and colleges and other key stakeholders. This will provide real drive in moving our whole city to net zero”.