Issue - meetings

Report ES17065

The Committee considered a report confirming that Bromley’s LIP allocation from Transport for London (TfL) for 2018/19 would be £2.432m and  details of Officer proposals as to how the funding for 2018/19 would be allocated and to which particular schemes.  

The Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering Manager highlighted some key issues to the Committee, most importantly the reduction in the  proposed LIP allocation for 2018/19 of £2.432m which was £50,000 less than the 2017/18 settlement, which represented a 2% reduction. 17 of the 33 London Boroughs would receive less funding next year although Bromley compared well with the average reduction of 3.65% across those 17 boroughs, the range of reduction being from 1% to 10%.  Regrettably TfL had also announced that the Local Transport Fund (LTF), which had been used to support local transport priorities and resulted in an additional £100,000 of funding each year is also to  be withdrawn with effect from 2018/19. 

He also described that the Major Projects funding stream was to be replaced with a new funding stream called ‘Liveable Neighbourhoods’, although this would involve a new process whereby schemes were submitted and tested against the new criteria and, if successful, would receive funding. The Chairman asked Officers to circulate the criteria and guidelines to enable Members to consider and put forward suggested uses for the funding.

In response to a question surrounding access issues at Clock House station, the Transport Planning and Traffic Engineering Manager confirmed that all access issues would be reviewed and suggested that it may be helpful to have a dialogue with local Ward Members to enable Officers to be guided on local issues.  The Head of Traffic and Road Safety highlighted that it was likely that a bid would need to be made to Network Rail’s ‘Access for All’ budget to install a lift to the platform and, even if successful, was unlikely to coincide with the improvements funded through the LIP.  The Head of Traffic and Road Safety agreed to follow this up with Network Rail.

In response to a question from Cllr Stevens regarding improvements at Keston Mark in order to improve the Biggin Hill corridor  the Head of Traffic and Road Safety reported that the LIP funding would fall far short of  meeting those costs  Officers had been lobbying TfL for additional funding and there  was  now a design although this needed to be modelled and required further input from TfL, although LIP funding could be used to support that. Unfortunately, this had not been straight forward and there had not been any promise of funding at this stage.  The Chairman suggested that Officers should liaise with Ward Members and that any concerns surrounding funding should be brought back to a future meeting of the Committee if necessary.

Cllr Stevens also requested that the Committee be provided with timescales concerning improvements to the bus stops that will serve the new Biggin Hill Visitor Centre, opening in November 2018, to enable progress to be monitored.  ...  view the full minutes text for item 19