Agenda item

Report back on the Highways Subgroup – draft minutes attached

4.1  Devolved Funding Update – Spreadsheet attached

Key:

RED - Likely to require further work, cannot be delivered before the 31 March and or potentially fall into specific Highways responsibility areas (BAU), and therefore have been earmarked for further discussion.

AMBER – Some aspects of the scheme are deliverable but may not be achieved in the remainder of the financial year OR further evaluation is required before approval can be given/denied

GREEN – These works can be delivered quickly, within budget and will provide maximum benefit to the road using public. These projects do not sit within the existing BAU operations of SCC.

WHITE – These are jetting requests and will be taken collectively.

Recommendations to be made as follows: -

1.     Projects marked Green are delivered as quickly as possible to ensure that the relevant parishes are winter-ready.

2.     The jetting requests to be taken collectively, as part of the devolved funding revenue budget, and a local contractor is employed to carry out this work. Agreed that prior to the work being commissioned, Highways team are consulted to ensure that any potential challenges are identified.         

3.     The Highways Sub-group is given delegated responsibility to follow up on amber schemes, to ensure that the devolved funding budget is spent by the end of the financial year.

4.2  Highway Steward Update

         4.3Asset Information – Parish Online – Sam Murrell

LCN Public Consultation

The LCN Consultation had now ended. Due to the high number of responses, the final report has been postponed until the SCC Executive meeting in January 2023. This is when the outcomes and boundaries will be made known. The LCN team was gratified with the good level of engagement from parishes, but there was no clear winner with regard to the suggested boundary plans.  More time is needed to evaluate the results. Further information about Local Community Networks can be found on the New Somerset Council website.

4.1 Devolved Funding

The devolved budget is specifically for discretionary expenditure, and not items that have already been identified as SCC responsibility.

A list of schemes and proposals put forward by parishes before the 1 November had been circulated with the agenda pack. These schemes had been individually assessed and given the following RAG status.

Key:

RED - Likely to require further work, cannot be delivered before the 31 March and or potentially fall into specific Highways responsibility areas (BAU), and therefore have been earmarked for further discussion.

AMBER – Some aspects of the scheme are deliverable but may not be achieved in the remainder of the financial year OR further evaluation is required before approval can be given/denied

GREEN – These works can be delivered quickly, within budget and will provide maximum benefit to the road using public. These projects do not sit within the existing BAU operations of SCC.

WHITE – These are jetting requests and will be taken collectively.

The following recommendations were put to the Exmoor Area Panel and were unanimously approved.

1.     Projects marked Green are delivered as quickly as possible to ensure that the relevant parishes are winter-ready.

2.     The jetting requests to be taken collectively, as part of the devolved funding revenue budget, and a local contractor is employed to carry out this work. Agreed that prior to the work being commissioned, Highways team are consulted to ensure that any potential challenges are identified.      

3.     The Highways Sub-group is given delegated responsibility to follow up on amber schemes, to ensure that the devolved funding budget is spent by the end of the financial year,

It was also suggested that parishes continue to submit requests as and when required and the spreadsheet would be constantly updated. If a budget is found for the 2022/23 financial year these projects could be considered.

4.2Highway Steward Update

     Richard Gay, the Highway Steward has tendered his resignation and will be leaving Milestone on Friday 2^nd December. He is currently on annual leave before taking up employment with the SCC Highways Team.

     Interviews for his replacement will be taking place during the week commencing 28 November 2022, and it is hoped that the new employee will be able to start work early in the New Year. It has been requested that Sam Murrell is part of the interview panel, to represent the parishes and provide local input.

     During this interim period, the parishes are requested to continue to report non-urgent work via the job request form, as these will be picked up by the new steward. There is no need to re-log any cyclical or repeat work requests, as these will automatically carry forward.

Please click here to access the Exmoor LCN – Highway Steward Job Request.

     Urgent works such as blocked drains should be reported via the defects portal to ensure a swift response. General repairs such as potholes, road damage and other problems outside of your parish boundary should continue to be reported via the SCC online portal. www.somerset.gov.uk/roads-and-transport/report-a-problem-on-the-road/

4.3Asset Information – Parish Online

Most of the Exmoor parishes had now subscribed to parish online, which was free for the duration of the trial. The following parishes had yet to subscribe and would be invited to participate again: Huish Champflower, Selworthy and Minehead Without, Skilgate, Treborough, Upton and Wootton Courtenay. In order to sign up please use the following link:-

1.               Go towww.parish-online.co.uk/signup

2.               Type your parish name into the box, select your parish as the search box find it.

3.               Click Next

4.               Click the Subscribe Now option

5.               Enter the discount code “sccgroup” and click Apply

6.               Follow the rest of the steps in the sign-up form.

This will then send you details for how to log in.

The Parish Online User Group runs a free banter session by Zoom every Friday afternoon at 3pm - a group of parish councillors and clerks - all experts in the use of Parish Online - volunteer their time for an hour, for anyone to drop in and ask a question on anything; answers are usually provided online in an instant! This is facilitated by Graham Stoddart-Stones who is himself a parish councillor from Somerset.

Parishes may find this helpful, as well as being a source of humour and friendliness.  It can be booked here, (last item in the list), and users will be very welcome.

Tristram Carey from Geoxphere has also set up a hedgerow layer so that parishes can add information about cutting and maintenance requirements. Tristram has offered to help parishes with the mapping requirements with this.

He did suggest a one-off training session, and Sam has received some expressions of interest but it may be difficult to find a time to suit everyone. He can be contacted via Tristram.cary@geoxphere.com.