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One City 2008 includes the following initiatives aimed at improving the built and natural environment:
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Planning
Objective: To improve the quality of design for buildings and spaces across Westminster. The project will re-assess the council’s guidelines, stimulate debate, share best practice and reward excellence in the field of design.
What will it involve? Westminster aims to compare itself and compete with the other great cities across the globe in terms of the quality of its built environment. Excellent design attracts residents, visitors and investment. It also enhances the overall quality of life for those who experience the city. This year’s focus on design will achieve that goal by inviting the leaders in their field to showcase design best practice to Westminster City Council, its partners and all those involved in the future development of Westminster. This series of events is designed to stimulate debate and challenge developers and planners in Westminster to demand the highest possible standards of design. In addition, the council will re-assess and improve its own guidelines in relation to the quality of design it demands from developers. The project will culminate in the development of the Westminster Design Award for outstanding examples of design in the city.
Lead Cabinet Portfolios: Street Environment, Economic Development and Transport
Objective: To provide a new, neighbourhood-based, community-driven approach to the council’s management of highways, footways and street lighting, formally involving communities in deciding local priorities and sharpening the council’s focus on what really matters to people in their local environment.
What will it involve? Following a successful trial scheme in the Church Street ward, known locally as the Red Dot initiative, new partnerships will be put in place with the Director of Transportation and local neighbourhood managers and/or Local Area Renewal Partnerships. This will establish a comprehensive map of all the outstanding problems within the public realm in the local area, identified by residents, traders and other stakeholders. Each problem will be marked by a red dot and it will be the council’s job to turn all of these ‘green’, working hand in hand with the community.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Street Environment
Objective: To achieve an increased domestic recycling rate of 25% in 2008/09; and to reach 30% by 2010. This will demand a step-change in the council’s services and a similar step-change in the public’s ability and willingness to recycle their waste, achieved through targeted and tailored local services. We will also aim to enhance the recycling service we can offer to businesses and private enterprises.
What will it involve? The council will assess recycling performance at the ward level and provide a toolkit of options to boost recycling, adapted to local circumstances. We will work directly with local communities, for example through an expansion of our community-based recycling officers, to boost recycling in ways most appropriate to local needs. As a last resort, if and when the very best efforts of our recycling team, ward members and local community leaders have failed, we will need to consider moves to require that those in defiance of providing recycling services for our residents – typically the managers of some mansion housing blocks – enable their residents to recycle.
With respect to business recycling we will use any spare capacity generated by increasing our domestic operation to provide more opportunities for businesses to contract with the council’s commercial waste service. We will also bid for resources through the Mayor of London’s new Recycling Fund to expand our commercial services even further.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Street Environment
Objective: To reduce the council’s carbon footprint through the use of the latest efficient lighting technology, which allows the council to vary lighting levels to suit particular areas; and which also provide real-time data whenever a street light is out in the city, allowing rapid, direct and more efficient action/repairs.
What will it involve? New Smart Lights will give the council the ability to know exactly what repair works are necessary at any moment, right across the city and reduce our energy consumption. It will also allow problems to be detected before lights go out. Already in place in Harrow Road and Embankment Gardens, Smart Light are currently being installed as part of the Westbourne Green Streetscape project. Cleveland Gardens, Dean Street, Praed Street and Warwick Way are amongst the next streets to have the technology installed. It is intended that Smart Lights will be rolled out right across the city, linked to the current lighting improvement programme.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Economic Development and Transport
Objective: To complete the roll out of this new, innovative service to improve parking convenience for residents, businesses and visitors; as well as to improve security and tackle theft by taking cash off-street. We will also take forward new Common Sense approaches to parking enforcement.
What will it involve? Cashless Parking roll out will be completed and the service will be improved in a number of ways, for example through the introduction of a ‘0207’ number to add clarity to Pay By Phone Parking (PBPP) call charges. We aim to improve PBPP registration, including the ability to speak to an operator/advisor, and to implement more secure chip and pin pay and display machines to maintain choice.
This will all take place at the same time as the roll out of the Common Sense measures which have the express intention of reducing parking tickets and improving conditions for residents and visitors. This will include the provision for residents in their own parking zone to have time to load/unload on single yellow lines, less strict rules for residents parked in suspended bays in their own zone, and piloting an extension of loading/unloading for HGVs, extended from 20 minutes to 40 minutes.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Planning
Objective: To highlight and reward Westminster residents and organisations that have demonstrated an outstanding contribution to Westminster.
What will it involve? Building on the success of the existing Green Plaque scheme, which recognises individuals and organisations with an important historic link to Westminster, the Community Leadership Plaque will honour ‘ordinary’ Westminster residents and organisations that deserve wider public recognition for their work and contribution to their community in a professional, voluntary or personal capacity. These plaques demonstrate the council’s commitment to supporting individuals and organisations whose efforts might not otherwise be properly acknowledged.
Lead Cabinet Portfolio: Planning
Objective: To engage more effectively with traditionally hard to reach groups within the community so that they can better understand and engage with the planning process.
What will it involve? The council will be hosting a seminar aimed specifically at involving and informing the Muslim community about how the planning system works in Westminster. This follows a needs assessment of Muslim community organisations which highlighted this as a specific priority for them. The seminar will not only improve the planning process, but help to enhance dialogue, openness and cohesion with Muslim community organisations, businesses and residents.
Over the year, Westminster City Council will also be improving its IT systems to make the planning process even more accessible to all those in the community who have an interest in it. Specifically, the development of new Q&A software will allow members of the public to receive answers to basic questions immediately. Consultation with residents affected by applications will also be improved by simplifying documentation sent to them as well as allowing applications to be viewed and commented upon online.
2008 Westminster City Council. Contact the Council
