To receive any apologies for absence.

Apologies were received from Councillor Gilmore.

To receive any Declarations of Interest.

Cllr Hunt – Declared a pecuniary interest as she owned a flat in the Maidenhead area and the proposed changes to parking permits could affect the value of her property.

Cllr Sharma -  Declared a personal interest as he was a full time employee of First Group.

To confirm the Part I Minutes of the previous meeting.

RESOLVED: That the Part I minutes of the meeting of the Panel held on 19 September 2016 be approved.

To receive the above report.

The Chairman stated he had requested the extra meeting as there was not a Highways, Transport and Environment Overview and Scrutiny Panel scheduled until December 2016. He added the strategy would last for 20 years so it was a good opportunity to provide feedback to officers and to scrutinise the proposals thoroughly.

Simon Fletcher, Strategic Director of Operations introduced the report and drew the attention of Members to page 24 of the report when the key aims and principles of the proposals could be found.

The Strategic Director of Operations confirmed that the Borough was looking to use temporary parking structures so that when parking was reduced due to regeneration, the temporary parking structures could be used so there was no net loss of parking. The final proposals for temporary parking structures were due to go to Cabinet in December 2016.

The Strategic Director of Operations stated the report acted as a guide and responded to the following issues:

Ø  Long and short stay parking

Ø  Approaches to tariffs

Ø  Enforcement

Ø  The proposals were linked to delivering differently

Ø  The Borough did not have the right skills to deliver everything in house so it would liaise with third party private sector companies

Ø  Consultation took place

Ø  The report did not address the Borough’s parking standards.

The enforcement strategy was to help residents, visitors and businesses know where to park and was a fair but firm approach. The Strategic Director of Operations explained that Waitrose had used temporary parking structures and it had been successful. There were four key development sites in Maidenhead and the Borough recognised that as regeneration of the Town moved on, car parks could be lost. The Strategic Director of Operations job was to map out the loss and provide supplementary parking and that was why he looked at steel frame parking. He added that some of the Town’s car parks were on the old side and one key strand of the strategy was the parking principle and capacity.

The Chairman stated that free parking for visitors in the Borough were non-existent but a recent study published had said that it was essential for prosperous towns. Cllr Hunt stated that a loss of parking spaces were to be replaced with temporary parking but, where would it go? And long term, if Maidenhead was to be successful where would the parking be? Cllr Hunt also wanted to know what was happening with private partnerships and traffic wardens; would they be moved to a new company. The Strategic Director of Operations stated he needed to look at the structure of Maidenhead and needed to look at the increase in housing. At present, he did not know if there would be enough parking to meet demand. He was currently measuring car park use and it was at around 85% capacity. He needed to work with the Regeneration Team to see what would work as and when the Town changed.

The Strategic Director of Operations confirmed he did not  ...  view the full minutes text for item 30.