Agenda item - Questions from citizens

Agenda item

Questions from citizens

Minutes:

Clifton Bridge

 

JC asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Adult Care and Local Transport:

 

Can the Portfolio Holder declare what action they have taken in relation to the recent closure of parts of the A52 Clifton Bridge, what contact they have had with Highways England regarding the repair of said bridge and can they provide an estimate of the damage that is likely to be done to the City of Nottingham’s GDP as a result of the closure.  Finally does the Portfolio Holder see the merits now of a third bridge for vehicles between Clifton and Trent Bridge?

 

Councillor Adele Williams replied as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor.

 

So I want to start by thanking our officers and the questioner for their question.  It’s obviously a very important issue and I’d like to thank our officers and partners for their willingness to work countless extra hours, using all of their expertise on an incredibly difficult situation that’s affecting lots of our citizens.

 

Every day that the bridge isn’t fully open is costing our citizens, our families, public services and businesses in our City time and money.  When Highways England put in the unannounced southbound closure of the A52 at Clifton Bridge on 6 February 2020, we began putting in a range of measures to mitigate the impact on Nottingham and our citizens.  It’s the busiest section of the road in our City, carrying 80,000 vehicles each day two-way, and in the first week after the closure 15,000 extra southbound vehicles were going over the two remaining crossings – Trent Bridge and Lady Bay Bridge.  So obviously that’s going to place enormous pressure on our road infrastructure and we’ve been using all the tools at our disposal to deal with that and make things better for Nottingham.

 

So we have our colleagues in the Traffic Room Network Management in Loxley House, who have been monitoring the situation visually and making adjustments to signal timings across the City to keep traffic flowing as much as possible. We worked with Nottinghamshire Police on the ground to keep traffic flowing in the early stages, particularly around trams and buses, and introduced some selective closure points that were really effective in discouraging ‘rat-running’ and also in freeing up public transport so that it remained a good choice for people to take.  A key point of our strategy was, as always, encouraging people to use public transport when they can, including Park and Ride for journeys when possible.  I think the closure of Clifton Bridge really showed our strategy on public transport coming into its own. We had a 21% increase in tram journeys during that period, and I hope that those people will have found that a really positive experience and that people will realise it is economical, convenient and a better way to travel, as well as being sustainable.

 

In the early stages, to deal with the immediate situation as it was, we suspended all but emergency roadworks in the City, but given the fact that we now know Highways England work will continue to the end of the year, before the bridge is fully fixed, that’s not sustainable going forward. So we are allowing work on roads on a case by case basis.

 

In addition, we have also put together a request to Highways England for a comprehensive package of measures that will enable us to encourage additional use of sustainable transport and further ease congestion around the City caused by these roadworks. This package of measures comes to around £1million.  Within that there are temporary Park and Ride options, extra signs we can use including smart motorway boards on the M1 and major approach routes advising people of better routes to take through the City and also, importantly, public transport options that they can take in the City as they approach.  We also are asking them to support special offers to encourage people to use public transport, additional travel planning (we already do lots of travel planning with employers around special events, but we would like to put in more support around that), also funding for an ongoing Police presence to keep our junctions free across the City, as well as putting in some additional yellow box markings to free up particular junctions.

 

The questioner also asked about contact made with Highways England and how we were working with them. So at an officer level, that’s been facilitated through the Corporate Director for Development and Growth.  We’ve had weekly engagement meetings with them and used that to hold Highways England to account and to work collaboratively to mitigate the impact of the works on the City.  I’ve written to Jim O’Sullivan, Chief Executive of Highways England, and to the Secretary of State for Transport around this matter, and included in that our request for them to support our ask for funding to mitigate and to support a modal shift in terms of people’s transport behaviour, getting them onto public transport and also to help sustain that.  We are also working on a monitoring framework with Highways England.  We’d like to agree that with them as that will allow us to assure citizens in Nottingham that Highways England are pouring every possible resource into fixing the bridge day and night. So we want to know what the maximum capacity of workers is that can be working directly on the bridge and we would like to see to what extent they are using every possible resource 24 hours per day.  A senior representative from Highways England has also been asked to attend the Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 8 April 2020 to answer questions around the issue.

 

We were also asked about the estimated damage to the productivity – GDP if you like – of Nottingham. It is too early really to say what the impact will be, however, the potential impact is being looked at very seriously.  In recognition of the very large impact that it will make on the movement of goods, services and people around the City that is costing people on a daily basis, we’ve been working hard to minimise the impact. Key amongst these measures has been promoting public transport, cycling and walking.  These measures are all central to the package that I’ve mentioned that we’ve put to Highways England, and I hope that you’ll join us in supporting that.

 

As citizens and Councillors for Nottingham, we’re really ambitious for our City. We’ve got an ambitious pledge of 15,000 new jobs for Nottingham, and development is one of the key springboards of that pledge.  There are very exciting plans to develop the City that you can see in cranes and buildings going up across Nottingham, with £2billion of investment in Southside, and whilst the short term impact of the recent closures has been very difficult for Nottingham, we can promise Nottingham that every day we are working to hold Highways England to account, whilst also planning for sustainable transport that will help us to meet our challenging, but absolutely necessary, climate pledges, and importantly, to get our citizens to work economically, quickly and sustainably.

 

Now we were asked about a road crossing, and I’m picking that up in the answer to another question.  However, on the additional road crossing, the County Council has looked into this issue and it would be outside the City, so it would need their support to make that happen.  I’ll pick up some of the issues raised by the question again in a later question, I’ll try not to repeat myself, but where I will repeat myself is to say thank you so much on behalf of everyone in the City and all of us here I’m sure to the officers and partners who have worked so hard to keep our City moving in very difficult circumstances.

 

 

Coronavirus

 

JC asked the following question of the Portfolio Holder for Energy, Environment and Democratic Services:

 

Will the Portfolio Holder please elaborate upon what steps the City Council is taking to prevent the spread of Coronavirus, and are they aware of any instances of Coronavirus in the City thus far?

 

Councillor Sally Longford replied as follows:

 

Thank you Lord Mayor, and thank you to the citizen for the very topical question.

 

We are observing an increasing number of Covid-19 cases in the UK and in the next few months large numbers of the population will almost certainly be affected.  So far, the City has seen two cases: a person who had recently visited South Korea and a close relative. The County has, this week, reported three cases of residents who had all recently returned from Italy.  The Government’s Reasonable Worst Case Scenarios suggests up to 80% of the population will contract the virus, with the peak of infection being 2-3 months after sustained human to human transmission, resulting in up to 20% staff absences in the peak weeks. Most cases will be mild, with roughly up to 4% of infected people requiring hospital care and an estimated 1% mortality rate.

 

The City Council’s response to the Covid-19 virus is guided by a number of relevant national, regional, local and Council Emergency Plans and I would like to reassure citizens that we are well placed to respond to the issues arising from this virus.  We are working with the NHS, Public Health England, and the Local Resilience Forum for national and regional updates and advice. Locally, we have been liaising with both universities, Nottingham College and the community in Nottingham to monitor the situation in the City. 

 

The Council is heavily engaged in cross organisational county-wide preparations through the Local Resilience Forum on a daily basis. Internally, each Department has nominated a senior member of staff to be the Coronavirus Department Lead and who will attend regular meetings. The Leader and I are receiving regular briefings which we will share with our colleagues and much preparation work will be needed to respond to the effects of the virus, and much of that preparation has already started or has taken place.

 

Citizens can find out more from the regular messages on both the Council’s website and the internet, with specific links to Public Health England advice.  Guidance from the Government has been circulated to all customer-facing staff to help them assist with enquiries from the public. If they are concerned about their own symptoms, citizens are asked to call the NHS 111 line for advice. 

 

In line with pandemic planning, a series of policies will be activated if and as necessary. These include the management of sickness absence, working from home and redeployment of colleagues. Risk assessments are being carried out appropriately and our facilities cleansing teams have increased cleaning of hand tactile surfaces, and colleagues have been encouraged to maintain good desk hygiene.  If the virus causes significant staff absences, Business Continuity Plans will be implemented in order to maintain the smooth running of essential services. The Council will seek to prioritise the most critical services, but this may result in reduced services elsewhere within the Council. We will inform our citizens of any changes to services if and when it becomes necessary.

 

One of the aims of the Government’s Coronavirus Action Plan is to ensure health and social care services will work together to support early discharge from hospital, and to look after people in their own home. Work is ongoing in this important area.

 

The City Council has prepared well to address the issues arising from Covid-19 and has its structures and policies in place to respond as the outbreak grows. However, good hygiene remains the best prevention, and the key message to all of us is to wash our hands regularly and thoroughly.

 

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