Agenda item

Report of the Cabinet Member for a Sustainable Camden

The Cabinet Member for a Sustainable Camden will provide the Committee with his annual report for discussion.

Consideration was given to the annual report of the Cabinet Member for a Sustainable Camden.

Members made the following comments:

• It was lovely to see the library of things, it would be nice to have this in West Hampstead Library and good news about the retrofit programme.
• Looking forward to welcoming the grit bins in West End Lane following on from the trial in Belsize Village.
• The Cabinet Member was thanked for the pop-up community skip over the summer and requested that a regular pop-up skip be provided for the West Hampstead ward area.
• It was good to see references in the report to the increased use of fixed penalty notices for fly-tipping and looking forward to seeing more results on this in due course.
• The wildflower and sustainable planting projects in Brunswick Square and St Andrews Gardens in Kings Cross had made a significant difference to the overall perception of these areas with more people enjoying these amenities, this was a credit to the Cabinet Member and officers.
• Officers, the emergency services and the Cabinet Member were thanked for their support in responding to the flooding incident in South Hampstead last weekend.

In response to questions, Councillor Adam Harrison (Cabinet Member for a Sustainable Camden, Richard Bradbury (Director of Environment and Sustainability) and Oliver Jones (Director of Recreation) made the following points:

·       With regards to the West Hampstead Primary School Health School Streets issues residents had in applying for exemptions, the Council’s implementation team was looking into exactly what happened and would share details when the investigation was completed. The Cabinet Member agreed to provide written details to the Committee of this.

ACTION BY Cabinet Member for a Sustainable Camden

·       The Council was in the process of getting communications out to residents to set new start dates for Healthy School Street exemptions which would be shared in more detail as soon as possible.

·       With regards to the deputation about inaccessibility of the borough pavements for disabled residents due to retail related clutter made at the last Council meeting, the Cabinet member informed the Committee that he had gone on a walkabout of the borough with the deputee and Councillor Chung. The walkabout had been insightful and helpful, the Council was looking at the powers it had, it’s current policy, how far it could go to minimise these obstructions and what the policy on this should be in the future.

·       Officers agreed to share the carbon assessments from Lime with the Committee

Action by: Director of Environment and Sustainability

·       The retrofit credits were a positive piece of work. It allowed businesses to open up credit on retrofit work in the borough as part of a wider set of schemes about funding retrofit.

·       The Council was also working with Islington on funding the greening infrastructure through the credit approach. It was also being used as a trial, issues were being looked at to understand how scalable it was and comparing this with many other financial institutions and credit models to determine how well the trial worked.

·       The Fixing Factory, repairing items other than electricals was a good suggestion and was something that the factory was likely to be interested in doing. It could be an issue of funding this suggestion would be taken up and included along with the increasing amount of work that was taking place. This included the staff making themselves available to repair and teaching people the skills to learn to repair themselves at events such as Abbey Green taking place this Saturday.

·       The idea around green spaces was a good suggestion. The Council was looking to open up and create as many new green areas as possible in the borough within the bounds of the funding. For example, the Council was looking at its roads like it did with Alfred Place which was turned into a green space. Over the years some housing land such as the Community Garden was now established as a green space, which was a real community asset, and another project in Highgate Ward, Donnington which the Council was working on to turn into green space.

·       Camden’s Ice Cream Project was governed by the street trading licence between Camden and the Ice Cream provider. Part of that would involve their use of electricity which would only be charged on the amount of electricity used and also charged for the use of the site which was one of the better ways Ice Cream vendors could be regulated.

·       Construction and demolition waste was the largest type of waste in the Country but not something Camden managed alone as a local authority. Developers and their private waste firms were managed by the Planning system and Construction Management Plans.

·       The Council was focusing some of its anti-flood measures on the areas that needed it most, such as South Hampstead and Southend Green, the Council was looking for more sources of funding.

·       With regards to Thames Water, it was disappointing over the weekend to hear about the latest water pipe burst from residents. The agency protocol did function quite well, the Director and officers did respond quickly, visiting and speaking to residents. Councillors were told the reason the information did not reach them was because the emergency services did not think the incident was serious enough although there did seem to be a substantial amount of damage.

·       The Council would again need to remind the emergency services and Thames Water to improve their notifications to Councillors and the Council.

·       The Council had made representations on Thames Waters investment plans particularly, in relation to South Hampstead and Belsize Road to make it safer in the future.

·       The flooding incidents were viewed from two different perspectives, the Council looked at the devastating impact the flooding had on residents whereas from Thames Waters perspective they worked through their engineering issues and viewed it as business as usual. The Council did need to meet with Thames Water to discuss what had happened at the weekend to work through and recognise the impact it had on communities.

·       The Council made very minimal use of pesticides, this issue was on the Committee’s work programme scheduled to be considered at a future Committee meeting after the European Union’s latest assessment.

·       On the Community Green Deal, a lot of information was being revamped and being put on-line. The aim was to enable residents to be able to easily access the information once the project was completed.

·       With regards to mapping of individual food growing projects, the numbers would not be very accurate because the Council mapped and monitored its green spaces based on specifications such as was it grass or hedges and with food growing it was marked as community managed.

·       With regards to the recommendation in the Cabinet Adviser report for a Biodiversity Officer to be employed by the Council, the Council had a partnership with the Greater the Green Infrastructure (GIGL) a London wide organisation which managed green spaces and species monitoring information. The Council through this partnership had been able to complete its Greenspace Officer team.

·       For those residents living on Housing Estates wanting to start a community growing space, they would need to contact their housing neighbourhood officer who would then contact the Green Spaces team.

·        With regards to illegal parking and possible abuse of the Blue Badge scheme that was the sort of thing people would always be encouraged to report to the appropriate authority.

·       There appeared to be a low uptake of blue badges in the borough of those eligible to apply and work was being undertaken to encourage take up.

·       Any new locations for the community skip event were welcomed.

·       The Council could look into the suggestion about approaching Airbnb to dissuade landlords from encouraging their tenants to dispose of their waste in local tree pits.

·       Lime had indicated that they had completed the roll out of GPS on their bikes, an update from Lime was due to be presented to this Committee later in the year.

·       The increased fly tipping fines were part of the Council’s general enhanced approach to enforcement which had been put in place in conjunction with Kingdom contractors and Council officers on patrol.

·       With regards to Euston Road the Council was speaking regularly to TfL about making the area safer and the issues regarding HS2 were not a reason to delay implementing safety measures. In numerous areas along the road there was inadequate provision and infrastructure for pedestrians and cyclists to cross the road. The Council was working with TfL on using Healthy Street projects for which it was hoped there would be short- and medium-term results but also to put in place a longer-term vision for Euston Road and the area.

·       It was also an opportunity during the pausing of the HS2 works to make the area safer.

·       With regards to ‘Keep Britain tidy’ all the wards were listed using the index of multiple deprivation and then sampled across a three-year cycle, every ward would be surveyed. The survey was conducted every four months between April and August, September and December which also provided a seasonal variation and an indication of what cleanliness looked like for a year.

·       With regards to social prescribing the Council had been working with Castlehaven for a couple of years on social prescribing at Elm Village, the upper area. Castlehaven had brought a new energy and a lot of good work including offering therapeutic gardening sessions. With regards to statistics on residents’ feedback and take up of the programme, officers agreed to obtain more information from Castlehaven and provide this to the Committee.

Action By: Director of Recreation

·       With regards to docking bays for the e-bikes, the Council had extended parking bay areas in the past and if it saw the need to relocate bays this would be looked at. Westminster and Islington Councils were now rolling out docking bays similar to what Camden had done which was likely to also reduce the congestion in one area.

The Cabinet Member for a Sustainable Camden and Officers were thanked for their work, time taken to attend the meeting and their responses.

RESOLVED –

THAT the report be noted.