a)    Question submitted by Councillor Jones to Councillor Bicknell, Lead Member for Highways and Transport:

Cabinet has taken the decision to allow the spending of an additional £140,000, for a safer route to school, of which Holyport School is utilizing £83,000 assigned by a planning condition for a possible future junction upgrade.

Can the Lead Member explain where the budget of £83,000 will be sourced from should that junction need to be upgraded?

b)   Question submitted by Councillor E. Wilson to Councillor Rankin, Lead Member for Economic Development and Property:

 Will the Lead Member advise what marketing materials his department has in place to promote investment in areas outside of our town centres such as Dedworth?

c)    Question submitted by Councillor E. Wilson to Councillor S. Rayner, Lead Member for Culture and Communities:

Will the Lead Member show her support for the Big Draw Festival by creating a borough wide drawing competition in 2017?

d)   Question submitted by Councillor Beer to Councillor D. Wilson, Lead Member for Planning

The decision to discontinue notification of neighbours of planning applications relating to work to TPO'd trees is causing unnecessary distress to our residents.  In the spirit of openness and transparency please could this optional procedure be reinstated as a core part of the planning service to residents?

(The Member responding has up to 5 minutes to address Council. The Member asking the question has up to 1 minute to submit a supplementary question. The Member responding then has a further 2 minutes to respond.)

Question submitted by Councillor Jones to Councillor Bicknell, Lead Member for Highways and Transport, asked by Councillor Beer:

Cabinet has taken the decision to allow the spending of an additional £140,000, for a safer route to school, of which Holyport School is utilizing £83,000 assigned by a planning condition for a possible future junction upgrade.

Can the Lead Member explain where the budget of £83,000 will be sourced from should that junction need to be upgraded?

Councillor Bicknell highlighted that the £83,000 could be used for the safer route but the legal agreement would need to be varied by the school and the council because it was assigned  to a planning condition for possible future junction upgrades. Proper budgeting approvals would apply for spending capital monies going forward.

Councillor Beer, on behalf of Councillor Jones, confirmed there was no supplementary question.

b) Question submitted by Councillor E. Wilson to Councillor Rankin, Lead Member for Economic Development and Property:

Will the Lead Member advise what marketing materials his department has in

place to promote investment in areas outside of our town centres such as Dedworth?

Councillor Rankin responded that it was important to support all businesses. He encourage councillors to signpost them to the support services offered via the investwindsorandmaidenhead.co.uk website, which included links to Berkshire Business Hub and Grow Our Own. He highlighted that the annual Good Business neighbour award that was now in its second year in Dedworth provided good press coverage. He would be happy to work with ward councillors to look into potential opportunities to increase the provision of support and increase investment in areas outside the town centres.

By way of a supplementary question Councillor E. Wilson asked if the Lead Member would be willing to meet with Dedworth councillors to discuss marketing in the short and long term.

Councillor Rankin responded that he would be happy to attend a meeting.

c) Question submitted by Councillor E. Wilson to Councillor S. Rayner, Lead Member for Culture and Communities:

Will the Lead Member show her support for the Big Draw Festival by creating a borough wide drawing competition in 2017?

Councillor S Rayner responded that it was important that the council encouraged creative opportunities for residents and the council had run or supported many competitions in the past such as the Magna Carta 800 art and creative writing competitions last year, the En Plein Air event and working with the Windsor Festival who ran an annual arts competition, which received entries from every school in the Borough.

RBWM had in the past, in the museum and libraries, staged low key events around the national theme proposed by The Big Draw Festival.  There would be a similar one at the Museum during the October half term.  Entitled ‘Full Steam Ahead’ the activity tied into local railway engineering and technology history and covered a drawing opportunity within a fun learning framework promoting STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art and Maths).  It would provide opportunities for children and young people to draw some of the museum objects and create ‘track art’ to take home for their walls.

Now that The Big Draw scheme had grown considerably, she would be happy to meet with Councillor E. Wilson and the Head of Culture, Libraries & Registration to find a suitable partner to run a Borough wide drawing competition in 2017 and would seek an opportunity early in October to discuss this.

Councillor E. Wilson confirmed he did not have a supplementary question.

d) Question submitted by Councillor Beer to Councillor D. Wilson, Lead Member for Planning

The decision to discontinue notification of neighbours of planning applications

relating to work to TPO'd trees is causing unnecessary distress to our residents. In the spirit of openness and transparency please could this optional procedure be reinstated as a core part of the planning service to residents?

Councillor D. Wilson responded that applications seeking consent for works to TPO trees were not planning applications and were not handled by the planning service.  Although planning support registered the applications they were then passed to professional Arboricultural Officers to assess and determine.  Neighbour notification was undertaken through the display of a site notice, which had not been changed.  Details of the application were held on the council website for information. If the Arboricultural Team received objections as a result of a notice, neighbour notifications would be sent out to immediately affected residents and the item would appear on the relevant Development Control agenda.

By way of a supplementary question Councillor Beer stated that residents valued trees and they contributed to the character of the borough. He referred to a row of trees in a school grounds in Old Windsor that had been planted to give shade for pupils, but the shadow actually went across a row or houses, dominating their gardens. The policy of a written notice somewhere on the site caused distress.

Councillor D. Wilson responded this was not a planning service issue and it would take a large amount of resource to issue neighbour notification. People did wander down streets and see the notices. The council received comments about cutting and lopping of trees from all wards in the borough.