The Committee received a presentation from the
Director: Neighbourhood & Enforcement Services that set out the
Council’s Recovery, Reform, and Reset (RRR) agenda.
Members heard that that the RRR was a part of the Council wider
recovery programme. There were monthly meetings of a group of core
officers and Cabinet Members to develop and monitor actions from
the action plan. From an initial nine priorities, the group had now
rationalised the initial nine areas into three key areas –
connectivity, green recovery, and infrastructure.
COVID had changed the way residents worked, lived, and played.
While life had begun to return to a degree of normality,
people’s lives would be different. Home working was one such
difference that would likely remain. There had also been a raised
awareness of space standards, in both homes and gardens. Access to
reliable broadband had also been
highlighted by the pandemic. There was a growing appetite
for green spaces.
Attempts were being made to address
these issues through the planning system. The Local Plan was being
re-examined with the aim of improving inclusivity, resilience, and
sustainability in the Borough. The Local Authority was to examine
how it could negotiate schemes so that they were designed holistically from the outset, looking
at energy, site layouts and related infrastructure, and provision
of electric vehicle charge points, amongst other provisions.
The Council had also engaged with residents. My Wild Telford
was launched on Twitter to engage with
residents and advertise the Borough’s green offer. Rights of
Way in Telford were also promoted, with
a Definitive Map of the area’s Rights of Way due to be
published in December 2020, it had last been published in 1965. The
new map would be available online and was
considered both accessible and timely. The categorisation of
public Rights of Way would also be
examined, with officers looking at how important routes
were, how they could be improved, and how to prioritise
maintenance.
Members were informed that the Council
had conducted a study on the value of its nature reserves. Local
Nature Reserves (LNRs) received 3.6 million visits per year;
2.4 million of these visits were made by active
travel and 1.2 million by car. Of the 3.6 million visits,
1.1 million were made by first time
visitors.
The Council aimed to leave LNRs in a better state than they had
been in the past; the Council had looked at a net gain approach
that assigned a common numerical value to sites. The Borough had a
value of 6819 biodiversity units (bu),
or 12 per hectare. This was effectively £75 million worth of
bu - £135,000 per
hectare. The value of woodlands
had been examined; Telford & Wrekin
had canopy cover over 15% of the Borough, higher than the national
average. In terms of area, 49% of urban areas had canopy cover,
compared to 8% in rural areas. Canopy cover also varied by ward,
with Edgmond having the lowest (8%) and
Ironbridge the highest (55%). The Council protected ...
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