To consider the attached report.

Ben Smith introduced the item and said the report showed the scale of the issue, how to assets were managed and how individual schemes were prioritised under the Capital Programme. As a highway authority, the borough was responsible for all the highway assets, which was managed in accordance to the Highway Asset Management Strategy and the Highway Maintenance Management Plan. Through local transport plan grants, money could be leveraged by central government, which graded authorities based on their asset management. The borough was in the highest banding, which allowed maximum funding and has been implemented to develop the Capital Programme.

Bids were assessed against strategic priorities, and the overall Capital Investment Programme would be agreed by Cabinet and then Council as part of the Budget every February. The Capital Programme would include highway related activity and the Commissioning team would return to Cabinet with a list of detailed schemes to spend funding on by using technical data, programming tools and surveys.

The Vice Chairman asked if the highway had land value or was based on the usage of the highway. The Panel was informed that the highway was valued based on the accounting guidelines by Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy. The Vice Chairman asked if the 17,000 streetlights in RBWM were owned by the authority, which was confirmed.

Councillor Bateson asked why there were no air quality monitors on the A30 and A4 and the Panel was informed there was not a vast network of air quality monitoring across the borough due to cost. There were fixed traffic counters across the highway network that collected annual data for plans such as the Local Transport Plan and traffic volume levels. Air quality monitors were placed where there was poor air quality, high levels of residential population and sensitive locations such as schools and hospitals. Councillor Bateson suggested traffic and air quality monitoring as an item on the agenda.

ACTION: Ben Smith to inform about air quality and traffic monitoring locations offline.

The Chairman asked how traffic flow was predicted and managed when new developments were in progress. The Panel was informed that highway assessments were undertaken using the highway model to assess the potential impacts of development set out in the Borough Local Plan. Data was collected and applied using methodologies set out by the government on predicting the estimated traffic. The model was applied to the road network to assess projected capacity issues and requirement for network improvements, which would then be added to the Infrastructure Delivery Plan. The funding of the scheme would be identified through Community Infrastructure Levy, Section 106 (S106) and external funding. New developments submitted through the Planning were accompanied with a Transport Assessment that identified the impacts of the development to the road networks and improvements required.

The Vice Chairman said the S106 was a small sum for highway improvement and asked how this amount would improve road structures and the Panel was informed that some of S106 was secured for specific improvements. Whilst multiple developments did not require upgrades to the road network, money was secured from them, which would be enough to contribute to road network improvements. The Infrastructure Team was working closely with the Planning team to seek appropriate contributions from developers to maximise funding.

The Vice Chairman asked the amount ALDI UK contributed to the highway improvement to improve the infrastructure for HGV use and Chris Joyce said for the application reference to be shared offline.

The Panel noted the item.