Portsmouth City Borough Council Cabinet Member for Transport Meeting

Apologies were received from Councillor Brian Madgwick.

There were no declarations of interest.

Kirsty Routledge, Principal Transport Planner presented her report and advised the purpose of the report was to provide an update on the Traffic Regulation Order (TRO) consultation for the introduction of designated car club parking bays within four wards in Portsmouth; Central Southsea, Eastney & Craneswater, St Jude and St Thomas.  Also, to seek approval for the proposed car club bay locations to be introduced in the first phase of the Portsmouth Car Club scheme following the TRO consultation.

Deputations

Clare Seek made a deputation in favour of this item.  Deputations are not minuted but can be viewed here:

Agenda for Cabinet Member for Transport on Friday, 7th July, 2023, 10.00 am Portsmouth City Council

Members' Questions

In response to Members' questions, officers clarified:

·         Another meeting would be needed to approve the additional deferred parking bays named in the report, if they are taken forwards in the future, or any new parking bays.

·         The two cars in the scheme that is running at Wimbledon Park sports centre are parked off road.

·         In addition to the £6.70 per hour hire charge, there is a nominal feed per mile driven.  A fuel card is provided in the vehicle and members will be responsible for ensuring there is a minimum amount of fuel in the vehicle for the subsequent hirer. 

·         The first 8 vehicles will be Euro 6 petrol cars with the 2 at Lakeside proposed to be battery electric vehicles.  This is purely down to the current charging infrastructure in the city and it is hoped that all car club vehicles will become battery electric vehicles in the future. 

·         The 6-month report will include utilisation data from Enterprise and we will also request high level data about where the users of each vehicle are located to ascertain the distance to use a vehicle.  An organisation called CoMo also runs an annual survey on combined and collective transport. 

Members' Comments

Members were very supportive of the scheme overall and considered that it may help ease parking problems in the city over time.  They were pleased that a report would be bought back for consideration after 6 months of operation.

Members considered using the reduction in emissions solely as a basis for approval of the car club scheme was not viable, considering that the vehicles being proposed initially, would be petrol and not electric.

Members also highlighted that for many residents, taxis are a viable alternative to owning a car particularly when visiting the supermarket for example as they are a door-to-door service.

The Chair observed that the number of privately owned vehicles in the city keeps rising so this may provide a solution and alternative for residents.  On the basis of a report being bought back in 6 months, the Chair approved the recommendations in the report.

 Decision

1.    The Cabinet Member agreed formal consent for a Traffic Regulation Order to be made to introduce car club parking bays in the following locations:

·         Talbot Road, east side, adjacent to No 92 Manners Road (in place of a permit holder parking place);

·         Devonshire Square (southern section), north side, outside the Co-op store (in place of a permit holder parking space);

·         Festing Road, east side, outside No 7 (in place of a permit holder parking space);

·         Craneswater Park, south side, opposite No 34, (in place of a permit holder parking space);

·         Clarence Road, east side, opposite "High Mead";

·         Victoria Road South, east side, outside No 79a (in place of a permit holder parking space);

·         Kings Road, north side, from a point 12 metres west of its junction with South Stree westwards for 5.5 metres (in place of a permit holder/Pay & Display parking space);

·         Cottage Grove, north side, opposite No 50 Green Road (in place of a time limited/permit holder parking space).

2.    Deferred a decision on the proposed Car Club parking bays in Francis Avenue, Kimberley Road, Kent Road and High street.

3.    Noted that an information report will be brought back to the Cabinet Member for Transport after six months of operation to update on scheme progress.

Bethan Mose, presented her information only report and advised the purpose of the report was to provide an update on the first year operation of Portsmouth's Clean Air Zone, between 29^th November 2021 and 29^th November 2022.  She noted the report did not include air quality outcomes due to Government data not being available until at least Autumn 2023.

Members' questions

In response to a member question, the Chair advised he considered the money for this scheme to achieve the Clean Air Zone, may have been better allocated directly to the council and could have been spent on significantly reducing the price of buses so more people could choose to leave their cars at home.  The money could have funded a scrappage scheme to remove some of the worst offending, oldest and most polluting vehicles in the area.  More support could have been provided to taxi drivers, particularly those with wheelchair accessible vehicles and more could have been done help families to use bikes where they couldn't currently afford to purchase them.

Members considered the car scrappage scheme would have had some impact as well as helping taxi drivers.  The one-off funding would not have been available to continue the reduction in bus fares in the long term and that would have had revenue implications into the future.

Decision

The Cabinet Member noted the information only report.

Decision:

The meeting was in formal exempt session in relation to appendix C of agenda item 6 (Supported Bus Services) but would remain open until such time as any reference was made to the aforementioned appendix.

Simon Bell, Principal Public Transport Officer presented his report and advised the purpose of the report was to seek approval for the award of contracts for supported bus services and referred to the recommendations.

Cllr Darren Sanders made a deputation in favour of this item.  Deputations are not minuted but can be viewed here:

Agenda for Cabinet Member for Transport on Friday, 7th July, 2023, 10.00 am Portsmouth City Council

Members' questions

In response to Members' questions, officers clarified:

·         Service 22 had been supported by the council for many years and previously as service 24.  Service 12 was picked up by the council pre-Covid. The pandemic had a big impact on some of the less frequent services and service 25 was introduced to cover other services (15,16 & 6) which were merged into one.  The ridership is increasing but the way residents travel, work and shop has an impact and numbers have not returned sufficiently for the operators to run them commercially.

·         The contract has a 3-month clause to terminate if required or to make revisions.  If the Council does not step in and support these essential services, they would no longer operate

Members' comments

The chair stated it was really important to maintain a good bus service across the city and it was the right thing to do to support these services.

Members considered that decisions should be made on a whole city basis rather than on individual routes as bus companies are making money on other routes and not using the surplus profits to subsidise the less profitable routes.  Good reliable services are essential so they were in support of the report.

The meeting moved into closed session at 10:42 to discuss the exempt appendix C.

The meeting recommenced in public session at 10:52.

The Chair noted there is no money in the Council budget specifically for supporting bus services so it is funded from underspends elsewhere in the transport portfolio.    The Chair approved the recommendations in the report.

Decision

The Cabinet Member:

1.    Approved the award of the contracts (approved funding for the 12, 13, 14, 18, 22 and 25 bus services from 3^rd September 2023 to 5^th September 2026) as detailed in section 9 of the report;

2.    Agreed to the award of contracts (as set out in Exempt Appendix C) and delegated authority to the Assistant Director of Transport in consultation with Cabinet Member for Transport and Section 151 Officer, to finalise the required contracts;

3.    Noted that the Cabinet Member for Transport and opposition spokespersons will be consulted on any proposed future changes.