Test Valley Borough Council Test Valley Association of Parish and Town Councils Meeting

Councillor Nick Adams-King, Hampshire County Council Executive Lead Member for Universal Services presented details of his portfolio, in particular highway maintenance and waste collection.

Hampshire County Council (HCC) was the third largest shire council in the country and delivered public services to almost 1.4 million residents including services for children, social care and health, household waste and recycling centres, countryside services and road maintenance with a spend of £2.4 billion a year.

In Hampshire, HCC maintains 5,500 miles of carriageway and 4,237 miles of footway. Every day in Hampshire 450,00 people drive to work with 22,500,000 car miles driven daily across the road network.

Extremes in weather conditions over the past 12 months have caused Hampshire’s local road network to deteriorate significantly. Whilst HCC had repaired more than twice the average number of road defects in 22/23, pothole-related enquiries in the current calendar year are significantly higher than those seen in previous years.

It is estimated that 6.8% of the local road network now requires structural treatment, compared with 6.0% two years ago. Each 1% increase costs an estimated £19m to repair.

HCC have invested in two additional road patching crews and would be considering additional funding for highway maintenance at its Cabinet meeting in July. It was noted that in some instances the defects were filled temporarily with an infill to make them safe before a permanent repair was undertake later. The type of repair undertaken was determined by the road, the issue itself and the environment.

Councillor Adams-King advised that it was anticipated that the County’s policy on 20mph limits would be published in the Autumn. HCC would be refreshing community funded initiatives as well as parish involvement in hedge/ ditch management and a review of verge management.

Councillor Adams-King provided an overview of changes to waste collection in Test Valley which would be introduced from Summer 2024 which would include the introduction of weekly food collection and a new blue bin for the collection of plastics, tetra-paks and in time glass.

Members of the association asked a number of questions and made comments throughout the presentation. The Chairman thanks Councillor Adams-King for his presentation.

Sam Hall, Housing Manager and Helen Taylor, Housing Development & Standards Manager presented details of the work being undertaken to develop the Test Valley Borough Council (TVBC) Preventing Homelessness and Rough Sleeping Strategy.

The Strategy is a statutory document and will set out a key strategic plan for homelessness across Test Valley that will take the Council forward from 2024. The Strategy sets out the Council’s priorities and how it intends to prevent homelessness and rough sleeping.

Due to a range of factors the service was seeing increasing demand for all forms of affordable housing. The housing service provided a range of services including support for mental health, outreach services, a refugees support team and a resettlement service.

The association engaged in a discussion to understand what representatives felt were the biggest challenges to meeting housing need and preventing homelessness and what might be needed to support those issues identified.

Officer thanked those in attendance for their feedback and noted that this would be incorporated into the development of the new draft strategy.

Clive Ward was confirmed as Chair of the Association for the coming year.

Fiona Collier was confirmed as Vice Chair of the Association for the coming year.

The following representatives were confirmed for the coming year.

Hampshire Association of Local Councils (4)

·  Clive Ward - Charlton

·  Fiona Collier - West Tytherley and Frenchmoor 

·  Luigi Gregori - Andover Town

·  Vacancy

Test Valley Strategic Partnership Steering Group (2)

·  Clive Ward - Charlton 

·  John Parker - Romsey Town

Central Hampshire Road Safety Council (1)

·  Vacancy

The Statement of Accounts for 2022/ 2023 were confirmed.

Members of the Association were asked to considered any topics for future meetings and in particular the annual TVAPTC/ TVBC conference which was due to be held on 30 September 2023.