Category: City Council

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20s plenty City Council County Council COVID19 Cycling Walking Winchester

COVID-19 and our local streets

I’ve been thinking a lot about the challenges and opportunities that COVID-19 offers to the way we use our streets and roads here in Winchester.

The lower level of traffic is causing some immediate problems, such as increased speeding; revealing other problems, particularly in places where our pavements are too narrow for the number of people who want to use them; and also showing great opportunities, with a big increase in walking and cycling, particularly on our rural roads.

As we move into the recovery phase, we also need to do more to make our centres “social distancing” friendly. This means wider pavements and, learning from other countries, more opportunities for businesses to have widely spaced outdoor seating areas. People need to feel confident and safe coming back to our towns and villages knowing that they can easily move around in a socially distanced way.

What sort of measures would this give us?

  • We need to tackle the heavily walked and queuing areas where the pavements are too narrow and the roads are too wide. An obvious place to start is the one-way system. I’d like to see if we could cone the whole one-way system down to a single lane with the rest reserved for walkers and cyclists – single lane in North Walls – single lane in St George’s St – narrowed single lane in Jewry St – narrowed single lane in the upper section of the High Street. If possible, we also need to do something for pedestrians on City Bridge and Romsey Road bridge too (although given both are heavily used by buses, this will be harder).
  • We need to cut cars and lock in the change on roads where we have seen a dramatic increase in leisure usage. In my own area the road where this is most visible is Sarum Road. I’m sure there are plenty more. As a minimum, we need signage which shows that this is a road where cars drivers are not the priority users and should expect heavy foot and cycle usage.
  • On speed, we need to finish the job in Winchester and extend the 20 mph zone to residential areas across the whole city. We also need to narrow roads and widen pavements or add cycle lanes where there is a particular risk of people driving too fast. I would love to see up an uphill cycle lane on Chilbolton Avenue, for example.
  • We need to create space for businesses to use the highway for widely spaced outdoor seating. The most obvious option to do this is to fully pedestrianise the Square. We may need a couple of blue badge parking spots for people who need parking near the centre, but we should definitely stop through traffic.
  • Finally, one minor irritant that I know concerns some people. We need to revisit our push button crossings. Can we make them sensor or timer driven – so we don’t all need to push the button?

Make sense? Any streets, roads or priorities I’ve missed?

One of my responsibilities at the council is the City of Winchester Movement Strategy, so I’m already talking a lot with council officers and engineers at the City Council and County Council about how we can improve our streets. I promise to pass on any ideas that people send through!

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City Council Twitter Winchester

Twitter feedback on Winchester City Council’s Information Management strategy

As an experiment, I posted a message about Winchester’s draft Information Management strategy on Twitter to get the input of local information professionals (and anyone else who was interested).

Given that we have an IBM Research Centre in the district – as well as many IT professionals living locally including those involved in groups like WinchesterWeb – it seemed sensible to tap into their expertise.

I had my own concerns about the paper:

  • While it referenced the council’s immediate ‘Transforming Winchester’ organisational development programme, I didn’t see it reflecting Winchester’s strategic priorities (as laid out primarily in the Community Strategy and associated change plans) – particularly the short-term ones of
    • supporting older people,
    • making our services more accessible
    • reducing the District’s carbon footprint;
  • There wasn’t any reference to best practice or benchmarking or, for example, a SWOT analysis
  • I wasn’t able to take a clear set of objectives or priorities from it
  • Important issues such as open data and security weren’t reflected

but before blogging or speaking about these, I wanted to see what other people who know more about these issues than I do had to say.

The response (below) has been critical, but also helpful.  The most helpful aspect is that a group of local residents with expertise in this area are planning to meet in the Hyde Tavern from 8 pm this evening to discuss a fuller response.

There will be a public participation session at tomorrow’s meeting where members of the public will be able to have their say.

Needless to say anyone who wants to contribute to this evening’s meeting (or tomorrow) will be very welcome.

Twitter response to the IM Strategy

Peter Jordan:

The paper doesn’t say very much at all!  – no mention of security. And it’s an IM strategy, *not* IT. it’s wrongly named on the Cabinet agenda.

No mention of cloud/G-Cloud, or open source.

Julian W:

8 pages saying absolutely nothing of use. Or have I missed something in there?

Are the IT Technical Strategy and IT Technical Specification & Plan available (see 1.7a & b)?

Alistair Rae:

Main comment would be that the document isn’t a strategy, it’s a vague statement of aspiration. No reflection of best practice?

Then jumps straight into technology and systems solutions, only passing mention of the business change programme.

IM should be mainly about business activity, rather than constraining the business to suit the technology.

Nothing about interoperability or service delivery integration with other local gov, national gov, third sector etc.

also slightly concerning that at same meeting is a request to release 100k for re-procurement of an IM solution pre strategy

would also disagree with conclusion that Sharepoint is an EDRM, doesn’t comply with National Archives principles for IM

demonstrates that council IT department is disconnected from both the council business and internally

I’d also question assertion that procurement is really below the public contracts threshold. 2k down suspiciously convenient.

would question why “lowest cost, technically compliant” is preferred procurement route, assumes well formed requirement…

in the absence of an IM strategy I’d question the maturity of the requirement. No discussion of business change.

for a business change project like EDRM modernisation Most Economically Advantageous Tender would be more appropriate

Tanya Jane Park

They should “Go Google”! Other UK local authorities have so won’t be trail blazers

Sarah Jones

There are a lot of words there but the doc doesn’t tell me much. Where are the business objectives? What do they want to achieve? I’d expect this doc to explain clearly and concisely how IM will be used to deliver the business strategy…

Fancy a pub meet-up tonight to put feedback together?

 

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Chandlers Ford City Council Elections Winchester

Highest Lib Dem share of the vote in Winchester local elections for 10 years

We’re all stunned by the great results of the elections last Thursday:

  • More votes and more seats in the Winchester District and the new Winchester constituency than the Tories
  • Highest Lib Dem share of the vote in Winchester district or county elections since 1998 
  • Swing from the Conservatives to the Liberal Democrats for the second year running

We knew that our campaign for a greener, fairer and safer Winchester was getting a strong response – and that people were reacting well to the strong record of our candidates – but getting the highest vote for 10 years was more than we expected!

The picture in the new Winchester Constituency was even better: 49% of the vote, vs only 43% for the Conservatives, and 12 out of 17 seats.  Unfortunately we missed winning Hiltingbury West by only 20 votes or it would have been 13 out of 17 seats.

Even if you include the latest results from the wards which weren’t up this year (which are all Conservative), we still beat the Tories by 48% to 44%.

Overall, a very encouraging night.  And a big thank you owed to all the people who worked so incredibly hard and, most of all, to all the people who voted for us on Thursday.

Post-note: I’ve just checked the County Results.  Our results outperformed those as well – so I’ve updated the post accordingly.

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City Council Environment Winchester

Winchester City Council carbon management programme – time for fresh commitment

Back in March 2006, Winchester City Council, then led by the Lib Dems, put forward a carbon management programme which committed the City Council to a 50% reduction in emissions by 2012.

It had clear targets.

It had a clear baseline measurement to compare against.

And it laid out a draft implementation plan to kick off the process of delivering those targets.

The Conservatives took over control of the council a few weeks later.. and since then – silence.

Their recently published strategy paper – Live for the Future: Tackling Climate Change – and the accompanying action plan – make no reference to these previously agreed targets – nor do they set any targets to replace them. Indeed, one of its most disappointing features is that the strategy paper sets almost no targets for anything.

So, while it’s good that the Council is thinking about CO2 levels for the District as a whole, it’s not enough. They need to start by putting their own house in order.

Rather than scrapping, sidelining or ignoring their CO2 target, the Council should be strengthening it.

Lib Dem-led Eastleigh Borough Council is aiming for Carbon Neutrality: I’d love to see Winchester City Council do the same.

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City Council Environment Winchester

City Council Climate Change Plan: an embarrassment to Winchester

Back in February, Keith House set the ambitious goal of making Lib Dem-led Eastleigh Borough Council a zero carbon council by 2012. This builds on Eastleigh’s climate change action plan launched in 2005.

Given the recent coverage of Winchester’s environmental footprint, you’d hope that our City Council would be thinking in similarly ambitious terms.

Last Wednesday, the Conservatives in Winchester agreed their plans for Winchester City Council (‘Live for the Future: Tackling Climate Change‘).

And their target for CO2 reductions by Winchester City Council?

They haven’t set one. There is no target for CO2 reductions by Winchester City Council in the climate change strategy they agreed last Wednesday!

The document is an embarrassment.

It sets one overall target – to reduce CO2 emissions for the overall district by 30% by 2012 (even though much of what needs to be done to achieve this is outside their control and this target is barely more than the Government required minimum).

There are some specific targets on housing – although these are mostly inherited from the Lib Dem administration or mandated by government.

And then… nothing.

The officers have come up with a long list of useful ideas, but there is a complete absence of any serious overall framework and of any political commitment or leadership.

Almost all the feedback they have received has been fobbed off with waffle.

Overall, there is:

  • No target for any City Council activities.
  • No target for Renewable Energy.
  • No target for Transport.
  • No target for Adaptation Planning.
  • No target for community involvement.

The one encouraging decision from the Council was to provide some grant funding to Winchester Action on Climate Change. I’ve been involved with WinACC since the initial meeting back in July and working as part of the Communications team to get the WinACC website ready for launch. (One of my contributions was the abbreviation ‘WinACC’, after it turned out that the WACC web addresses were taken by the World Association for Christian Communication and the Wichita Chamber of Commerce). It’s good to see all the work by WinACC volunteers (from all parties and none), especially the Convenor Robert Hutchison, recognised with some funding.

But, funding WinACC is not a substitute for serious leadership on climate change from the city council. And sadly, that is now proven to be seriously lacking.