Minutes:
The Council had before it a Notice of Motion set out in the agenda papers standing in the names of Mr R C Lunn, Ms C M Stalker, Mr L C R Mallett, Mr P M McDonald, Mr P Denham and Ms P Agar.
The motion was moved by Mr R C Lunn and seconded by Mr P Denham who both spoke in favour of it, and Council agreed to deal with it on the day.
Those speaking in favour of the motion made the following points:
· The Covid-19 outbreak gave the Council an opportunity to look at ways of doing things differently to improve health and the environment with particular focus on cycling. In line with Government legislation, the Council needed to promote cycling in all ways possible to increase take up, remove obstacles and encourage safe participation. The Council should review the work of other councils to ensure best practice was adopted. Areas for scrutiny to look at could include prevention of parking in cycle lanes, member involvement in the creation of cycle lanes and increasing the number of cycling proficiency courses. The health benefits, the need for more storage racks as well as the introduction of more 20 mph speed limits in built up areas could be examined
· The Covid-19 lockdown had provided an indication of the benefits of a reduction in the use of combustion engine driven vehicles leading to a reduction in air pollution and congestion. Every effort should be made to encourage residents to undertake short journeys by foot or bike rather than by car
· The urgency of this matter had heightened by the Covid-19 lockdown and hence the request for cycling to be added to the OSPB work programme. In addition, if there had not been such a poor response to the last cycling scrutiny exercise by the Council, this motion would have been unnecessary
· This motion provided an opportunity to take a fresh, creative and forward-looking approach to active and inter-module travel, seeking views on segregated cycleways and traffic priority systems
· A request by Council was a perfectly legitimate constitutional means of adding an item to the OSPB work programme
· The Chairman of the OSPB commented that due to his role, he had addressed the motion with an open mind. However, he considered that as the motion merely asked OSPB to consider this issue for inclusion in its work programme, it was legitimate. The work programme for OSPB was considerable but if the motion was passed by Council then the Board would give it serious consideration. It should be noted that any member of the Council could present reports to OSPB.
Those speaking against the motion made the following points:
· The use of a motion was not an appropriate method of including items on the OSPB work programme
· The Cabinet Member for Highways commented that Council should respect the carefully considered decisions made by members of OSPB especially given the additional work pressures on the Board during the pandemic. Cycling had already been the subject of detailed report to the Economy and Environment Overview and Scrutiny Panel last year
· The Council had included a significant number of improvements to the cycling infrastructure in the Local Transport Plan 4 in advance of the public transport issues experienced during the pandemic.
The motion was lost.