4.1	Update on the Windsor Guildhall access audit and public meetings at the Guildhall.	TBC
4.2	AAF and Planning Applications	Lisa Hughes
4.3	Maidenhead Town Centre Regeneration	Barbara Richardson
4.4	St Marks/Courthouse Road Junction	Ben Smith Councillors Hollingsworth and Love
4.5	Raising the profile of AAF	Shilpa Manek
4.6	Taxi Licensing Update	Greg Nelson
4.7	Leisure Centres Update: Braywick/Oaks	Lisa Hughes

 

4.1 Maidenhead Town Centre Regeneration

 

Barbara Richardson, Managing Director, RBWM Property Company Ltd, updated the Forum on the Maidenhead Town Centre Regeneration. Barbara Richardson informed the Forum of the following points:

 

·         Several surface car parks would be removed and re-provided as permanent car parking somewhere else. The existing car parking would increase.

 

·         The four key sites included York Road, West Street, St Clouds Way and Reform Road. The order of work had changed and the York Road application had been submitted at the end of May 2018 and was due to be heard at the 26 September 2018 planning committee. The town hall car park would be lost early on but there would be several temporary car parks. The staff parking would be moved to another temporary car park and the team were also trying to move season ticket holders from the Hines Meadow car park to Stafferton Way car park to make more parking close to the town centre for shoppers and visitors to Maidenhead. This would all begin next month if the planning consent was given at the September planning committee. There would be eleven hundred more car parking spaces than now on completion of the project. Five percent spaces were allocated for blue badge spaces and this had been included in the planning application. The Nicolson’s car park currently had 734 spaces but on being demolished and rebuilt, there would be 1333 spaces. This report was due to be presented to Cabinet in September 2018, once it had been approved, an application would be submitted and tender would go out for a contractor.

 

·         Discussions had taken place with ShopMobility and it had been agreed that it would move to West Street before any demolition began, this was council controlled land so there would be no changes. There would be a disabled WC on the new ShopMobility site. The visitor/disabled car parking around the town hall would remain for now and blue badge parking would be moved to the Members car park. Barbara Richardson was asked if the toilet at ShopMobility would be a Changing Places toilet and she agreed to check and report back to the Forum.

 

ACTION: Barbara Richardson to check if toilet at ShopMobility would be a Changing Places facility.

 

The Vice Chairman, Lisa Hughes asked if there would be any blue badge parking at West St and was informed that there were currently 59 spaces at West Street car park and after all amendments had been made for ShopMobility, it would most probably be a blue badge car park only. The Forum highlighted that the route from West Street car park to the High Street had no dropped kerbs, has a steep gradient near the pedestrian underpass and the lighting was very poor making people feel vulnerable. Peter Haley informed the Forum that a site visit of West Street car park had been carried out and agreed that the kerbs were not dropped and the pavements were not wide enough. ShopMobility would direct people to the top of West Street or through Marks and Spencer. Peter Haley was still awaiting the plans. Barbara Richardson was also concerned about the delivery lorries parking on the pavements but was in consultation with the current businesses.

 

·         Lisa Hughes inquired about St Clouds Way and the medical centre on that site. Angela Clark and Lisa Hughes had visited the medical centre and had been informed that it was a vast medical centre with two GP practices serving 24,000 patients, a dentist and a pharmacy on site. It had 60 staff on site, call 3 or 4 ambulances to site per day and would see an average of a hundred patients per half hour. There was a concern about disruption to staff and patients during the Magnet redevelopment. The centre was expecting an increase of 6,000 patients and further staff in future years. Patients at the centre often needed to use the public Magnet Centre car park as the medical centre parking was insufficient. There was a concern that after redeveloping the Magnet site this overspill parking would be lost. Also the existing medical practices do not have capacity, in their current buildings, to take on 6,000 additional patients. Barbara Richardson informed the Forum that discussions were already ongoing with the medical centre practice managers and the CCG. One issue was that the NHS plans on current population figures and not on future growth. There was also an issue with different ownership structures at the two GP practices and this was now down to them to resolve. A lot of guidance had been provided to the GP Practice Managers for their discussions. Suggestions have also been made for staff to park in Hines Meadow car park so that the current staff car park could be used for patients.

 

·         Dominic Manley requested a schedule summary of all the works going on in the town centre. Barbara Richardson would provide a car parking schedule to all.

 

ACTION: Barbara Richardson to provide a public parking schedule to Forum Members Quarterly.

 

Councillor Love invited Forum Members to the Maidenhead Town Forum Meeting in October. The date would be circulated to all Forum Members.

 

ACTION: Clerk to circulate Maidenhead Town Forum date of next meeting to all Forum Members.

 

Barbara Richardson informed Forum Members about the public exhibition, on 21^st and 22^nd  September, for the new Broadway car park in the Nicholson’s centre.

 

Liz Kelsall inquired about accessible / supported housing, it had raised a lot in social media. There was some projection of figures of young people coming through who would like to be able to have independent living in the borough. Barbara Richardson informed the Forum that there was a level of 30 per cent across all sites of affordable housing. In addition, other council land was being looked at as well as three small projects for affordable housing. Barbara Richardson informed the Forum that if the borough needed assisted living accommodation, she would find it. The Forum agreed that it needed to lobby the lead members.

 

ACTION: Forum to lobby Lead Members for assisted living accommodation

 

4.2 Windsor Guildhall access & public meetings there

 

Barbara Richardson informed the Forum that to make physical changes to the Guildhall would be difficult due to the heritage of the building and because it was a listed building. The redevelopment of York House was currently ongoing, on completion, it would be accessible  and public meetings could be held there. The completion of York House was due December 2018 and was on track, this would only be the shell and then it would take until March 2019 to fully fit-out ready for use.

 

Lisa Hughes read out the update on the Guildhall Public Meetings from RBWM. It read that the Interim Head of Law and Governance attended the last meeting of the forum in June 2018 to discuss the issue of access in relation to Council Meetings.

 

Since that time, the council’s position remained that council meetings would continue to be held at various venues across the borough, including the Guildhall, Windsor.

 

Access issues would be addressed, including potentially changing a meeting venue, when the council was notified that a public speaker or attendee had access issues that would not be accommodated by the meeting venue in question. Since the last update in June 2018 no such issues had arisen in relation to access at council meetings.

 

The Forum felt that it was an unacceptable response and would write to the Cabinet and the Managing Director. They felt it did not satisfy the Equality Act, Public Sector Equality Duty, Council Constitution or the Inclusion Charter, which the Cabinet were due to sign at Cabinet in September 2018. This was proposed by Lisa Hughes and seconded by Liz Kelsall.

 

ACTION: Forum to write to Cabinet about inaccessibility to the Guildhall for public meetings.

 

Tim Clare highlighted that access to weddings and other functions is also an issue. The venue was not fit for purpose and could be improved. Lisa Hughes added that an access audit by expert consultants had been carried out already which concluded with recommendations for Guildhall improvements. The Forum felt that it would be advantageous for the borough to have access to the Guildhall for all.

 

4.3 AAF and Planning Applications

 

Lisa Hughes informed the Forum that between June and August 2018, she had scrutinised 139 planning applications in detail and responses were sent to RBWM Planning regarding 18 of those applications. Lisa Hughes informed the Forum that discussions with Alzheimer Dementia Support and RNIB were to help in a better understanding of the inclusive design features in the built environment that benefit people with visual or cognitive impairments so that when planning applications are scrutinised, we can bear those features in mind.

 

4.4 St Marks/Courthouse Road Junction

 

Lisa Hughes read out the update on the St Marks/Courthouse Road Junction. The update was as follows:

 

Dear All

I have been asked to progress the proposal to install traffic signals at the junction of St Mark's Road with Courthouse Road in Maidenhead. I have been passed a preliminary site layout drawing which was completed by a consultant. I will be working this up into a more detailed design for further approval.

I will also be overseeing traffic modelling of the proposal. We will undertake traffic counts at the junction to provide data for the assessment. We have to complete these surveys during school term time to ensure the data is robust. I have scheduled these counts to take place from 6th September until 11th September. The data will then need to be analysed which will take approximately a week. We can then use the data to complete the traffic modelling and produce a summary report which will take a further two weeks.

The modelling will involve an assessment of the existing junction's operation (with no traffic signals) and the proposed junction's operation (with traffic signals). The summary report will provide an assessment of the detailed design and the results of the traffic modelling. The traffic modelling will provide a good indication of the impact of installing traffic signals. The process will assess the level of queuing and overall capacity of the existing and proposed junctions. The report will also include details of estimated costs and timescales for implementation of the scheme. I will have the detailed design and report complete and will circulate it for consideration during the first week of October. If possible I will get this completed sooner however I am somewhat limited by the requirement for term time traffic surveys and the length of time the necessary work will take to complete once the count data has been gathered. In the meantime if you require any further information please do not hesitate to contact me.

 

The Forum were very pleased to finally see some progress.

 

4.5 Raising the profile of AAF

 

The clerk informed the Forum that the leaflet that had been handed out had finally been agreed with the Communications Team. If Forum members were content, it would be sent for print. The Forum suggested that further icons be added, especially one for mental health. It was also suggested that the wording be amended.

 

ACTION: Clerk and Rachel Kinniburgh to liaise with RBWM Marketing over the suggested Forum amendments and circulate for comment the final version before sending for print.

 

The Forum also had a discussion about the emails that were being sent to democratic services from residents with concerns about access issues. The concerns were around GDPR and sharing sensitive personal information. It was agreed with the Forum that respondents be advised that their personal information sent to democratic services would be shared with council staff and the Access Advisory Forum. It was agreed that the statistics relating to types of enquiries be a standard agenda item at each meeting to inform the Forum of what concerns residents have. Further work needed to be done for getting consent from the resident to share their information.

 

ACTION: Rachel Kinniburgh & Shilpa Manek to look into this further and report back at the next Forum.

 

4.6 Taxi Licensing Update

 

Lisa Hughes read out Greg Nelson’s email. The timetable of completing all actions by February 2019 was at risk due to staff sickness. The Forum were disappointed that it was taking so long but were very happy that RBWM had adopted the clauses of the Equality Act.

 

ACTION: Lisa Hughes to contact Greg Nelson outside the meeting to discuss this issue further.

 

4.7 Leisure Centres Update: Braywick/Oaks

 

Lisa Hughes informed the Forum of the update that Kevin Mist had provided for both of the leisure centres. They were as follows:

 

Braywick Leisure Centre

There would be a three month delay due to the archaeology and asbestos finds. The expected completion date was now around Easter 2020. There would be no scaling back in budget or cost as an additional budget had been allocated for the additional work.

 

Oaks Leisure Centre

The design features of Oaks Leisure Centre would be similar to the Braywick Leisure Centre with pool lifts and stairs as well as a Changing Places. The team were using all the lessons learnt from Braywick Leisure Centre at the Oaks Leisure Centre. The team were hoping to submit a planning application for Oaks Leisure Centre in winter 2018/2019 and start building work at Easter/early summer 2019 dependent on the planning application success and budget approval. Robin Pemberton asked if there was an access statement for the leisure centres and if the Forum had seen these. Lisa Hughes reassured the Forum that she had had several meetings with Kevin Mist and she was content with the Design & Access Statement.