Agenda item

Please note that questions to Council are received after the agenda

has been published. Questions will be uploaded to this agenda by

5pm on Friday 11 April 2014.

Stonebridge Park Estate

The following question was asked by Mr Richard Pearson to the Portfolio Holder for Planning and Transportation:

The Stonebridge Park Estate is located in St Ann’s Ward where the Regeneration Scheme began in January 2006. Phase one was an £11m scheme partly paid for by the Department for Homes & Communities which was completed in January 2013. With a change of government & problems surrounding the credit crunch, it was extremely difficult to obtain kick start funding to allow Keepmoat Homes Ltd to go ahead, and submit a planning application to begin constructing 111 new homes in Jersey Gardens beginning July 2013. I personally wrote to several government ministers highlighting the Stonebridge Park scheme which urgently needed kick start funding at the time.

I am dismayed that Nottingham City Council, which is a Labour run authority, put the Keepmoat Scheme in peril by demanding £12,000 from the contractor under the Parking Levy program, and made a serious attempt to restrict the number of parking spaces for construction workers to 10. The Regeneration Scheme is already delayed by eight years, and this decision to cream off £12,000 from the contractor will put off future interest from developers wanting to build on the Stonebridge Park estate or other planned housing development projects in the future.

How do you justify your decision to penalise construction companies by making them pay the parking levy, and imposing restrictions on the number of parking spaces they can have for their construction workers, at a time when new social houses are urgently needed to be built here in the city of Nottingham?

Councillor Urquhart replied as follows:

Thank you Lord Mayor and thank you very much to Mr Pearson for this question and for his concern about this important project. Firstly, can I reassure Mr Pearson that the Stonebridge Park scheme is of course a very important regeneration project to us at Nottingham City Council and the Keepmoat development has received very strong support from the Council in terms of provision of the land, support and obtaining external funding and the additional works the Council are completing through Nottingham City Homes to some of the retained properties adjacent to the development site.

The development itself is raising the overall character of the Stonebridge Estate and supporting the desirability of the new homes being built and sold by Keepmoat. Nottingham City Council have spent a large amount of time supporting Keepmoat both in meeting planning application issues and meeting funding deadlines. I can confirm that the Keepmoat development is progressing well and to the timescales that were originally planned. Officers have spoken to Keepmoat only last week and Keepmoat have described sales at Stonebridge as going extremely well. The development commenced in September to October 2013 and there has already been 12 properties completed and sold with the new owners already moved in. A further 22 properties have been reserved by buyers prior to completion.

This development has built on the success of the earlier redevelopment work by ASRA and Lovell and the complimentary development that ASRA are currently completing in the northern part of the site. The scheme has been truly transformational. I have also confirmed that the other sites at Kingsthorpe Close and Lenton are progressing as is expected at this stage. Additionally, across the city interest in residential development is strong and in terms of the house building being done by Nottingham City Homes and ourselves, we have a number of contractors who are eager to compete with one another to win the work we are creating in the building of Council houses. All of this indicates that the construction sector in Nottingham is one where firms are keen to come and work here and help us develop our city.

In terms of the Workplace Parking Levy, this is a congestion charging scheme that applies to both private and public sector employees, including schools, contractors, Nottingham City Council ourselves and those who contract with us. The reason it has been introduced is something that has been well rehearsed in this Chamber, it has been introduced to enable infrastructure investment which will tackle road traffic congestion which cost the £160 million every year off our roads and the majority of that congestion of course, is caused by commuters travelling to and from work.

So, the WPL is tackling congestion by providing funding for important transport projects like the extensions to the tram network, the redevelopment of Nottingham Railway Station, support for the Link bus services and also by encouraging employers to manage and potentially reduce their workplace parking. How people travel to and from work is a choice that people work, often it can be a choice between convenient and cost, owning a car is often more expensive, but can be more convenient for people. The WPL doesn’t change this, but does mean that employers who provide a significant number of workplace parking spaces are required to pay a charge.

All contractors that Nottingham City Council contract with are made aware of their legal obligations under the WPL scheme and the amount of places that an employer licences is entirely a matter for them. Those employers who provide 10 or less workplace parking places are given a 100% discount from the levy, this accounts for around 80% of employers within the Nottingham City Council boundary. In terms of Keepmoat specifically, they first licensed for the WPL on 1 October 2011 for premises on Charles Way in the city and since then they have licensed two further premises, one of those being the St Matthias Road and Jersey Gardens Stonebridge development. A member of the WPL team met with representatives from Keepmoat on 13 January 2014 at their Lenton site. Representatives that our team met were not knowledgeable about the WPL so the team made sure that they fully understood their legal obligations and the exemptions and discounts including the discount for employers providing less than 10 workplace parking places. Following this meeting, Keepmoat decided to licence the Matthias Road premises for 10 places and this was entirely their own decision. The WPL team do not place pressure on any employers in terms of how many spaces they should licence for, the legal obligation is upon employers to ensure that they are correctly licensed and that is the message that the team reinforce. On 27 January this year, Keepmoat increased their licence for this location to 30 spaces, again, that was a decision for them to make.

The WPL team have visited the Stonebridge site, both in December as Keepmoat were then not licensed and therefore not compliant with the scheme and of course, we have an obligation to ensure that all employers within the city boundary are compliant with the scheme. The site was then visited twice more before the date on which Keepmoat obtained a licence, but since they licensed on the 13 January we haven’t visited anymore because now they are compliant with the WPL scheme and in that way Keepmoat have been treated in exactly the same way as every other employer who is non-compliant and those that then become compliant.

Of course, construction work and construction workers contribute to congestion in just the same way as other motorists and other forms of employment and therefore construction companies are not exempt from the scheme. In fact, the major construction partners on the station and the tram also pay the Workplace Parking Levy for the premises they use and occupy as employers and very significant employers within the city.

The WPL has brought massive investment into our city and without it there would be no NET Phase Two, there would be no redeveloped station, and many of you will by now have seen the improvements to the station following the investment we have put in and almost certainly, over the last few years, our Link bus network would have shrunk considerably given the reduction in other Government funding that this Council has suffered. For every £1 the levy raises it brings in £3 of inward investment and deliver £10 worth of economic benefit to the city.

The improvements the levy makes possible and a reduction in congestion will make the city a more attractive place for inward investment. We know within the Council that inward investment enquiries are currently at their highest for the last few years and that several major employers have moved or are moving into the city. We have had the arrival of the ASDA home distribution centre at Bulwell, VR Corporation moving onto NG2 and Bridgeway Consulting moving onto Riverside Way, both of these last two of course, benefiting directly from the new tram lines. Because of our investments, Nottingham is a great place to work and a great place to do business and we are also investing in house building ourselves so that people in Nottingham can benefit from better homes. The WPL is not putting a break on this type of investment, in fact, the development made possible by the Levy is increasing the attractiveness of our city to inward investors.