Agenda item - Deputations from members of the public.

A list of deputations received by the due date of 12noon on the 14 July 2016 will be circulated separately as part of an addendum at the meeting.

17.1    The Mayor reported that two deputations had been received from members of the public and invited Stephen Roke as the spokesperson for the first deputation to come forward and address the Council.

17.2    Stephen Roke thanked the Mayor and stated that: “For the last few years now the traffic issues in Woodingdean have raised many issues mostly exacerbated by the bus lane closures on the Lewes Road. Woodingdean has had increased pressure on its road thoroughfare at peak times in the morning and again from around 2:30pm when the children come home from school to the early evening drivers become very impatient, and have found ways to try and beat the queues this has created pressure points – notably Channel View Road – which for drivers coming from Brighton is a rat run used by 100s of cars coming into the village now. Drivers coming from Flamer on their way to Rottingdean use the Bexhill Road rat run which allows them to bypass the cross roads and rush through the housing estate joining the Falmer Road at the far end of Woodingdean.

It won’t be long now before a serious accident happens at either junction of Bexhill Road or at the school crossing on Warren Road where cars going south cut across the white chevrons in the middle road outside the primary school putting our children and lolly pop lady in danger as they rush to get on to the slip road to turn right to Rottingdean. Whenever there is a major event such as the vintage car or bike race the support vehicles are always routed through Woodingdean by the Council’s yellow signage. It was therefore decided to hold a public meeting. We invited representatives of the Council, the NHS and the construction company Laing O’Rourke to discuss the traffic problems. 167 residents turned out to hear the speakers to learn how the city managers were going to manage the traffic flow through the village in the light of the additional 80+ heavy trucks, support vans and light commercial vehicles and staff cars which would be passing twice a day now through the village.

They also turned out to find out way the decision to change the agreed routes of the A23 and A270 was made without any consultation, we never received an answer to that question. There will now be 200 extra-large and polluting vehicle trips though Woodingdean, which is worse than on a race meeting day, causing pollution and damage to our main single lane road, and between 10 and 2 this will turn existing hours of congestion into and all day event.

It will delay the hospital building so much that lorries are likely to run through the village overnight even when we have been told they will only operate during the day. These are piece work drivers they won’t care when they operate, there is no delivery – no pay. Brighton & Hove Council have said some of the issues were not known or detail formalised when the planning application was considered and determined in 2012. This is because the planning agreement originally stated that lorries should only approach and leave the site on main A roads and that Wilson Avenue should not be used. In other words the Council guessed the transport issues in the planning application in 2012, and has since told Laing O’Rourke in 2015 that Woodingdean should now be used.

Woodingdean is already severe overload is due to get much worse when the Preston Barracks and Marina building traffic comes through as well. We doubt the hospital plan will be able to keep to its construction schedule if it chooses this change in routes through Woodingdean and it should be aware of the risk and additional running cost that will be added when things start to go wrong. I quote the Council again ‘Woodingdean congestion will not be sever before the year 2030’ and yet Brighton & Hove City Council’s authority said that by 2019 congestion will already be above the predicted 2030 levels. Following a recent public meeting in Woodingdean a Council official said they would take on board what was requested.

Recently a survey made from the residents of Channel View Road found that the majority of residents wanted 1 end of Channel View Road closed to stop the rat run. However they were told there was no Council money available to make this happen and now they are not even being considered in the figures the council are now using to retrospectively justify its case. In fact the traffic flow measures in Woodingdean are rubber strips which go across the road to court the vehicles using the road. Fine in principle but where have they been placed? 40 metres after the Downing Road turning and there are enough set of rubber measures 40 metres before the turning out of Channel View Road. Thus every vehicle which uses the rat run of Downing Road and Channel View Road will not be included in the Council’s figures. In 2016 a monitoring report prepared by the Council did confirm an additional figure of 812 vehicles using Woodingdean a day but it is noted an ‘insignificant figure’. We would like independent arbiters for the above statistics namely Google typical travel traffic statistics where you can collate traffic flow figures over six months and prove the points made by the residents of Woodingdean.

We would like answers to the following questions: Why was the decision made to re-route all construction traffic for the hospital construction project through Woodingdean when planning has been specifically given to use the A23 and A270 roads? Why was the change to the original plan not re-agreed with the same planning process and passed again by the planners? Why did the Council go ahead in 2015 with revised plans without even the courtesy of consultation with concerned parties? Why haven’t the police been consulted in the new agreement to run traffic through Woodingdean?”

17.3    Councillor Mitchell replied; “You have raised a number of points that I will seek to address but I am hoping that we will be able to follow these up in more detail when the text of your deputation comes to the Environment, Transport & Sustainability Committee in the autumn.

There is no doubt that over a number of year’s traffic levels in Woodingdean Village have increased in the same way as in other neighbourhoods across the city leading to the problems that you describe. This is why the Council for many years has promoted a sustainable transport strategy that seeks to promote and facilitate the use of public transport and other sustainable forms of travel. We have recently commissioned a city wide traffic management plan and are implementing a £2 million intelligent transport system to better coordinate traffic flow. In terms of the works associated with the hospital development I can fully appreciate and share your concerns as the hospital site is within my ward and has been continually redeveloped since I became a Councillor in 1993 and I think we do have to accept as the admirable forbearance of residents of Kemp Town has shown that work on this new regional facility is substantial and long overdue and without it the lives and long-term health and welfare of many, many people within and beyond this city will be affected.

However, I would like to correct two points which I think might be misunderstandings about what has happened. Firstly no plans for vehicle and traffic routes have been changed or altered since the planning permission was granted in 2012. The routes were not fully set at the time of the permission as the site for consolidation centre had not been identified. Any statements made at that time would have been subject to further information and proposals from the hospital trust and its developers and a number of factors have changed between 2012 and now. The most important of these has been the identification and conformation of the development site’s consolidation centre and facility with its location in Marina Way at the Kemp Town Gas Works and this was only confirmed to the council in April this year when the route plans that you are aware of were also put forward.

Secondly the planning process does not always require public consultation on the various obligations placed on developers after permission is granted. Professionally qualified Officers have the responsibility to complete and agree these. On this particular occasion as soon as this new information was received, and because of the scale and importance of it, I personally asked Officers to ensure that the local Councillors in the ward either side of my own were made aware of these proposals. Councillors Simson and Bell immediately took up an invitation to discuss the matter further and it was raised and discussed at your public meeting therefore enabling yourself and others to be involved. I’m pleased that officials and their contractors were able to be at that meeting and so that they could explain to you how they intend to manage that traffic flow. I would really recommend that you and any of your committee members that wish to keep in touch with the progress of this development via the hospital liaison group meetings that have been held regularly for the past 20 years. These are advertised on the 3T’s website.”

17.4    The Mayor thanked Stephen Roke for attending the meeting and speaking on behalf of the deputation. He explained that the points had been noted and the deputation would be referred to the next meeting of the Environment, Transport & Sustainability Committee for consideration. The persons forming the deputation would be invited to attend the meeting and would be informed subsequently of any action to be taken or proposed in relation to the matter set out in the deputation.

17.5    The Mayor then invited Madeleine Dickens, Tony Graham and Ken Kirk as the spokespersons for the second deputation to come forward and address the Council.

17.6    Madeleine Dickens, Tony Graham and Ken Kirk thanked the Mayor and stated that:

            “Firstly I would like to talk about the financing of the NHS generally. The UK currently spends 8.8% of its GDP on health services this compares with an OECD average of 8.9%, France 10.1%, Germany 11% and the US 16.4% so don’t get carried away; we are not big spenders on health. In 2015 the King’s Fund said that the Government has fulfilled its promise by increasing the NHS spend but only by 0.8% and it really needs a 3-4% increase in its budget in order to account for increasing demand. The Sustainability and Transformation Plan (STP) which we must produce locally must show that local services will become sustainable over the next 5 years. It must also plan manage demand, increase provider efficiency, reconfigure services and most important of all balance the budget in its local area. So in other words we must absorb the deficit which we’ve already accumulated because of coalition underfunding. The first tranche of that funding has already been issued that’s the fund that’s called the sustainability and transformation fund. This fund is held by NHS England, but it is ring fenced and it can only be released with agreement from both the department of health and the treasury. So the principles enshrined in the health and social care act that it was now down to local GPs has gone because it’s now under central control. Of this the Chief Economist of the Health Foundation said turning that sort of financial performance around when there are so many other underlying issues is an ’enormous if not impossible task’. The King’s Fund also said that it is inconceivable that the NHS will be able to achieve both financial sustainability and large scale transformation within these financial constraints. So the Government is therefore set to limit the range of services, down grade quality of remaining services more likely provided by private profit seeking companies with staff reductions, even lower moral and resulting industrial disputes. What we are witnessing is the contraction of health service from one driven by patient need and heralded by the Commonwealth fund as the best in the world to one controlled primarily by impossible financial targets.

            STP is being imposed across England. Its imposition has no mandate, no parliamentary oversight, follows no consultation and has no legal status. STP planning guidelines stress consultation some attempt at public engagement has now begun locally but the draft plan submitted on 30 June 2016 were produced behind closed doors. There is a growing equality gap in health and social care here as well as elsewhere where marketisation and privatisation have hit service provision. On Tuesday this week the Conservative Chair of the Commons Health Select Committee Dr Sarah Wollaston referred to the direct damage of public health cuts. Locally our share of cuts is £1 million an 18% cut which is being imposed over the next 3 years. Outsourcing such as with the substance misuse service and currently with the children’s services may give the appearance of achieving the required cut. The actual ongoing costs of outsourcing and the threat of it involved damage to workforce conditions, damage to moral, damage to good practice, damage to effectiveness critically and to sustainability.

            The Local Government Association (LGA) recently challenged the democratic deficit of STP in the strongest terms criticising the pace of implementation undermining local ownership and squeezing out LA and community involvement, lack of democratic accountability, eroding the role of HWPs, footprints override devolution or Local government transformation boundaries. We ask with the greatest urgency that the Council halts the erosion of NHS and social care services and demands the cessation of any further action on STP pending detailed scrutiny. That this submission be referred to the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee. That the Health & Wellbeing Board organise a public consultation meeting on STP at the earliest opportunity and that the Council looks at the best means of soliciting city resident’s opinions on the privatisation of NHS services along the lines of the University of Brighton’s citizen’s health services survey.”

17.7    Councillor Yates replied;

            “The first thing to say is that we as a Council aren’t in a position to stop this. This is something that hasn’t come from the Council, it hasn’t come locally, it’s something that was issued just before Christmas and it’s something that the NHS is undertaking. It’s not something that was decreed by the Local Government Authority, not something that was agreed by local government, it didn’t even come out of the DCLG. We are not in a position to be able to stop it and in fact for a lot of reasons we might want to engage with it. The emerging ideas that are coming out of the STP very much build on the stuff we’ve already agreed within the local health economy are the right things to be doing; working closer together, using more health services out in the community, not making people go to hospital when they don’t need to, ensuring that the community is properly engaged in the delivery of health service that are after all for the benefit of the community. You’re right to make clear 8.8% GDP probably isn’t as much as we could spend on health service and we could get better outcomes with more money again I don’t have control over how much money is given to the NHS.

The important thing is to recognise that there isn’t an established plan. The plan that was submitted at the end of June was very much an interim draft report on how much progress had been made it was not a plan of action it was much more a description of the areas that were being looked at when that plan does emerge and we’re expecting it to emerge sometime in early Autumn. I would expect that the Health Overview and Scrutiny Committee is absolutely the right place, they are the structure within the council whose job is to scrutinise health after all. We want them to be undertaking that. We know that there is work already going on within the Sustainability and Transformation Board looking at how they undertake engagement but we have to engage at the right time. They’ve undertaken two pieces of engagement already bringing together stakeholders from across the footprint and also bringing together stakeholders and the public from across the city so we’ve seen two pieces of engagement. The most important pieces of engagement though is being able to present people with a plan that’s come from the people who after all we all employ through our taxes to determine how our health services are best run and actually then asking the public how should that be done? Is this the right plan? Does this plan deliver as much as we possibly can within the limits that are imposed? I can’t give a better answer than that at the moment as I say the plan isn’t anywhere near developed enough to be able to even to I expect bother showing it to people to be frank.”

17.8    The Mayor thanked Madeleine Dickens, Tony Graham and Ken Kirk for attending the meeting and speaking on behalf of the deputation. He explained that the points had been noted and the deputation would be referred to the next meeting of the Health Overview & Scrutiny Committee for consideration. The persons forming the deputation would be invited to attend the meeting and would be informed subsequently of any action to be taken or proposed in relation to the matter set out in the deputation.

17.9    The Mayor noted there were no other deputations.