Chichester District Council
Agenda and minutes

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Committee Rooms, East Pallant House. View directions

Contact: Graham Thrussell on 01243 534653  Email:  gthrussell@chichester.gov.uk

Items
No. Item

256.

Approval of Minutes

The Chairman will welcome everyone present and read the emergency evacuation procedure.

 

There are no minutes for approval at this meeting.

 

The minutes of the ordinary meeting of the Council which took place on Tuesday 19 September 2017 will be presented for approval at the Council’s next scheduled meeting on Tuesday 21 November 2017.

Minutes:

The Chairman, Mrs Hamilton, first of all welcomed everyone present and in particular members of the public to this special meeting of the Council and explained the emergency evacuation procedure.

 

As stated on the agenda, the minutes of the Council’s ordinary meeting on Tuesday 19 September 2017 would, together with the minutes of this special meeting, be presented for approval at the next scheduled ordinary meeting on Tuesday 21 November 2017. There were, therefore, no minutes to be approved on this occasion.  

257.

Late Items

The Chairman will announce any late items which due to special circumstances are to be dealt with under agenda item 7 (Late Items).

Minutes:

Mrs Hamilton stated that there were no late items under agenda item 7 for consideration at this meeting.

 

258.

Declarations of Interests

Members and officers are reminded to make any declarations of disclosable pecuniary, personal and/or prejudicial interests they may have in respect of matters on the agenda for this meeting.

Minutes:

Declarations of personal interests were made in respect of agenda item 6 (A27 Chichester Bypass Improvement Scheme) by Mrs Duncton, Mr Oakley and Mrs Purnell who were members of West Sussex County Council which had been a statutory consultee.

259.

Chairman's Announcements

The Chairman will make any specific announcements.

 

Apologies for absence will be notified at this point.

Minutes:

Mrs Hamilton had no specific announcements to make.

 

She mentioned the following apologies for absence:

 

Mrs Hardwick, Mr Lloyd-Williams, Mrs Keegan and Mr Thomas.

 

The following members of the Council were also absent:

 

Mr Dempster, Mr Hixson, Mr Ransley and Mrs Westacott.

 

All other members of the Council were present.

 

 

[Note Chichester District Council is denoted by CDC in the minute paras which follow]

260.

Public Question Time

In accordance with Chichester District Council’s scheme of public question and with reference to standing order 6 in Part 4 A and section 5.6 in Part 5 of the Chichester District Council Constitution, consideration will be given at this point in the meeting to questions which have been submitted by members of the public in writing by 12:00 on the previous working day. The total time allocated for public question time is 15 minutes but this is subject to the chairman’s discretion to extend that period for each member of the public (five minutes) or the total time for public questions (15 minutes).

Minutes:

Mrs Hamilton said that four public questions had been received (the text of each of which had been circulated immediately prior to the start of this meeting) and she invited each person in turn to come to the designated microphone in order to read out his or her question before a response was given by either Mr Dignum (Leader of the Council) or Mr Connor (Cabinet Member for Environment Services).

 

The questions (with the date of submission shown with [ ] at the end of the text) and the answer given by the relevant Cabinet member were as follows.

 

Question by Mr Nick Reynolds read out his behalf by Mr Michael Tucker

 

Mr Reynolds was unable to attend and his question was, therefore, read out by his nominated representative, Mr Tucker.

 

‘Every single local, regional and national policy is predicated on an online upgrade solution to alleviate the problems of the A27 congestion.

  

In order to properly deliver the Local Plan will the Council confirm they will accept the first option referred to in HE letter addressed to GK dated 06 Sept. This will involve selection of a version of the current proposed on line upgrade scheme and to enter into detailed discussions with HE on mitigation measures and compensating measures to benefit the wider community.

 

Will the council also accept that what is on offer today may never happen in the foreseeable future?’

 

[24 September 2017]

 

Response by Mr Dignum

 

‘Thank you for your e-mail dated 24 September and which appears to raise two questions.

 

1.     In order to properly deliver the Local Plan will the Council confirm they will accept the first option referred to in HE letter addressed to GK dated 06 Sept? and

 

2.     Will the council also accept that what is on offer today may never happen in the foreseeable future?

 

The first point to make is that the Highways England A27 Chichester Improvement Scheme is not being proposed solely to enable the delivery of development identified in the Chichester Local Plan. A separate lower grade improvement scheme within the boundary of the existing A27 highway has been designed (and agreed by Highways England) to accommodate the traffic flows that will be generated by identified growth in the Local Plan. The district council is now collecting developer contributions to help fund these improvement works. The funding is held by Highways England and at an appropriate point they will decide when to implement the scheme.

 

The wider Improvement Scheme for the A27 goes beyond what is necessary to support the Local Plan. Whether Council Members will accept the first approach as set out in the Highways England letter dated 6 September, will only be known following the debate this afternoon.

 

Obviously we cannot say with complete certainty what will happen in the future and so in that respect, yes, there is a possibility that an improvement scheme of some description may not happen in the foreseeable future but, there is clear evidence from Mr O’Sullivan’s  ...  view the full minutes text for item 260.

261.

A27 Chichester Bypass Improvement Scheme pdf icon PDF 78 KB

The Council is requested to consider the agenda report and appendix for this item and to determine the position of the Council in respect of a scheme to improve the A27 at Chichester.

Additional documents:

Minutes:

Mrs Hamilton introduced this item by referring to the agenda report with its appendix, which requested the Council to determine CDC’s position in respect of a scheme to improve the A27 bypass at Chichester.

 

The Council received and duly considered the report as set out below.

 

In response to Mrs Hamilton’s enquiry, Mr Dignum (Leader of the Council) stated that he moved the recommendation in the report and Mr Connor (Cabinet Member for Environment Services) seconded Mr Dignum’s proposal.

 

Mr Dignum presented the issues in the agenda report by making the following statement:

 

‘Well today we are asked to make a choice between RIS1 and RIS2. We have had the community workshop on Monday evening [25 September 2017] and we have all had lots of e-mails from the public. So although I can’t answer them all personally I do thank all those who contacted me for your involvement in this huge issue for all the community.

 

From the 7 July 2017 meeting that Louise Goldsmith and I had with Highways England it is clear to me that Highways England has selected a variation on their Option 2 as their preferred route. Our MP confirms this is her understanding from her own more recent discussions with Highways England.

 

Gillian Keegan has now been advised that there can be no extension of time because of the rules relating to RIS1. With three days left to the Highways England deadline there can therefore be no local input into the preferred route prior to publication.

 

Any changes to secure mitigations would have to be advanced after publication of the route during the statutory consultation period with no guarantee of success. The only certainty is that the funds are definitely there in RIS1.

 

The alternative to the RIS1 choice is to opt for a place in RIS2. This would give time to agree a route with Highways England through working together. But Highways England is also stating that this route would most likely be an online route. In his 7 September 2017 letter Mr O’Sullivan states:

 

Ithink it iswidely acceptedthat themanner in whichthe northernroute wasdiscussedand handledwas notwell communicatedor managed.Sucha (northern) routewouldheavily contravenecurrent planningguidancedueto impactson thenationalpark,incurshighercost reducingthe Benefit to Cost Ratioand, contraryto popularbelief,has hadlimiteddevelopmentand designwork done. Againstall theotherschemes weare lookingat acrossthecountry this idea of (a  ...  view the full minutes text for item 261.

262.

Late Items

Items added to the agenda papers and made available for public inspection.

 

Items which the chairman has agreed should be taken as matters of urgency by reason of special circumstances to be reported at the meeting and recorded in the minutes.

Minutes:

As stated by Mrs Hamilton during agenda item 2, there were no late items for consideration at this special meeting.

263.

Exclusion of the Press and Public

There are no restricted items for consideration at this meeting.

Minutes:

As stated in the agenda, there were no restricted items for consideration at this special meeting.

 

 

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