Agenda for Environment & Climate Action Scrutiny Panel on Wednesday, 10th March, 2021, 7.00 pm

Agenda and minutes

Venue: Virtual Meeting- Please use the links on the Agenda Front Sheet to join the meeting

Contact: Andy Ellis Email: (andy.ellis@enfield.gov.uk 0208 132 1111) 

Items
No. Item

1.

WELCOME AND APOLOGIES

Minutes:

Councillor Hass Yusuf (Chair) welcomed everyone to the meeting and invited Panel Members to introduce themselves.

2.

DECLARATIONS OF INTEREST

Members of the Council are invited to identify any disclosable pecuniary, other pecuniary, or non-pecuniary interests relevant to the items on the agenda.

Minutes:

Noted that there were no declarations of interest in respect of any items listed on the agenda.

3.

MINUTES OF THE MEETING HELD ON 9 FEBRUARY 2021 pdf icon PDF 91 KB

To receive and agree the minutes from the meeting held on 9 February 2021.

Minutes:

AGREED that the minutes of the previous Scrutiny Panel meeting held on the 9th February 2021 be confirmed as a correct record.

4.

LOW TRAFFIC NEIGHBOURHOOD SCHEMES

To receive a presentation relating to Low Traffic Neighbourhood Schemes.

Minutes:

Cllr Hass Yusuf (Chair) advised that the following item is held for the benefit of the watching public and has never been on the work schedule until recently.

 

Since then LTN has become a big issue and this Committee rightly arranged an extra date and he would like to thank the governance team and audio offices for making this happen.

 

As the following comments were very detailed, the minutes were taken verbatim in order to capture the whole conversation for transparency and correctness

 

Cllr Yusuf : I tried to get this meeting delayed until after April 30th so that the lead figure of the LTN project could attend, however due to purdah restrictions, this was not possible. As chair given a choice to either go ahead or cancel debate and chose to keep this date.  Cleared for members of the Committee. I have received emails from many residents you thought that the meeting tonight was about taking a vote on LTN’s and I explained that as the LTN scheme was discussed earlier this year at full Council and by democratic vote and it was decided to go ahead, however that does not mean the door is shut on this debate so that is why we can scrutinise schemes like this on this Committee. Before that Council meeting, all Councillors received many emails from residents with the pro and con about the Scheme. After reading some responses that some of their criticisms had been ignored, I wrote to each resident who previous wrote, telling them about this meeting and that their concerns had been noted. However, I did not write back to any residents who were critical and insulting to officers or members of the council. Discussions will concentrate only on policy and no personal statements will be allowed.  Tonight’s structure will be as follows:

 

All panel members to initially ask two questions each and each debate will open up for more questions.

 

At 8.30pm the debate with officers will conclude. The panel will have a chat amongst themselves and agree their recommendations to the officers.  Our report will include all the findings.

 

A presentation was received from Richard Eason (Healthy Streets Programme Director) who leads on number of schemes based around increasing active travel and some town centre regeneration projects which includes the LTN scheme which fall under the ‘Quieter Neighbourhoods’ umbrella. The presentation can be viewed as an attachment to these minutes.

 

In response the following questions were received:

 

Councillor Maria Alexandrou, Conservative Councillor for Winchmore Hill Ward:

 

1.  There is support for school street restrictions which is a great way for parents and children to walk to school to avoid congestion before and after school hours and improve air quality.  The LTN scheme has done the opposite and created more traffic and more pollution. In other Boroughs the LTN’s have been removed for this reason as they have used pollution monitors to register and track pollutions where levels were seen to rise.  Enfield has failed to use  ...  view the full minutes text for item 4.

5.

WORK PROGRAMME 2020/21 pdf icon PDF 20 KB

To note the work programme for 2020/21

Minutes:

The Panel agreed the work programme for 2020-2021.

6.

DATES OF FUTURE MEETINGS

To note the date of future meetings as follows:-

 

Thursday 29 April 2021

Minutes:

The Panel agreed the date of the next meeting as 29th April 2021.