One City

 
 
One City - Strong communities, excellent services

Leader's speech 2006

One City: Strong Communities and Excellent Services

Summary Points

We will renew our purpose to make Westminster the best governed city in the world; an example for united, tolerant and active communities. A centre of opportunity and enterprise; with active citizens and flourishing businesses, supported by a city council which sets a leading edge example in terms of community leadership.

We will work on a package of new responsibilities to devolve to ward councillors on behalf of the council and its partners in the local area agreement.

We will roll out the CivicWatch programme citywide alongside the police Safer Neighbourhoods expansion.  This will bring extra resources and the benefits of the CivicWatch problem solving process to new parts of the City including Bayswater, Little Venice and Maida Vale, Covent Garden, St. John’s Wood and Marylebone.

We will review the impact of growth in the night time economy and consult publicly on extending the boundaries of the stress areas to those parts of the City.

We are setting up a Summer Camp at Sayer’s Croft next summer for Looked After Children living in our care who are by definition some of the most vulnerable children in Westminster.

Opportunities for older people too will also be addressed this year.  Following on From Every Child Matters, we want to launch an Every Older Person Matters approach in Westminster.  This will be based on helping older people achieve better outcomes including improved health and quality of life.

Our Housing Commission will report later this year and together with the new Dolphin Square Housing Charity will start to redress the huge imbalance between demand and supply for new affordable housing. 

We have decided that the windfall grant of £4m under the Local Authority Business Growth Incentive Scheme will be earmarked to fund economic development projects in Westminster.

The new Westminster Small & Minority Business Council will set a target of providing up to 40 commercial contracting opportunities for small businesses in Westminster in the first year with rapid growth thereafter.

We will implement the Edgware Road Action Plan and launch the Soho Action Plan. We will consult on a draft action plan for Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street.

We  will make Respark permits free for electric vehicles and launch central London’s first roadside recharging points for electric vehicles in two pilot locations.

The OneCity programme moves us beyond the Civic Renewal focus on the built environment to a new focus on strong communities.  That means tackling some of the deep-seated problems in some of our most deprived areas.

One City: Strong Communities and Excellent Services

Speech by the Leader of the Council, Sir Simon Milton, to the Annual Budget Council Meeting, Wednesday 8th March 2006

Strong Communities, Excellent Services

Lord Mayor,

Tonight’s speech marks the fifth anniversary of the introduction of the council’s Civic Renewal programme.  

It has been a programme that’s captured the imagination of members, staff, residents and partners.  It has given the council a sense of direction, brought clear focus to our work and delivered real improvement on the ground.

So tonight it’s right to record briefly our achievements as a council. Over 100 improvements to the quality of life for people in this city.

From everyday improvements such as creating the best street cleansing service in Britain, to the cutting edge Wireless City project, Civic Renewal has delivered. The Civic Watch project has been applauded in Downing Street and neighbourhood regeneration appreciated in Church Street. And it will leave a lasting legacy. From the Golden Jubilee Bridges to the work at Westbourne Green and the projects at Paddington; Civic Renewal has literally built bridges, physically, and to link communities, across this city.

Thousands of officers, many community leaders and elected members have played a role in Civic Renewal. It is your achievement and we should all be very proud of the progress we have made.

But more importantly it’s time to look forward. To build on past successes, learn from errors and enter into a new contract with the citizens of this city and the businesses that create the wealth we spend to develop strong communities and excellent council services.

In short we will renew our purpose to make Westminster the best governed city in the world.

An ambitious goal but one that our residents expect, our officers can deliver and as members we should strive to achieve.

Westminster is the historic heart of our nation. But it’s also emblematic of the developing United Kingdom, a country of diverse races and faiths but common purpose. We want Westminster to be central to and an example for united tolerant and active communities.

So we will work to make Westminster a centre of opportunity and enterprise; with active citizens and flourishing businesses, supported by a city council which sets a leading edge example in terms of community leadership.

One City

Our One City programme has been the subject of extensive consultation.  Residents, businesses, BME groups, partners and the voluntary sector have enthusiastically engaged with us.  

One City is based on four themes of a tolerant city, customer focus, neighbourhoods and active citizenship and four delivery programmes: Order, Opportunity, Enterprise and Renewal.

Tonight, I want to highlight the theme of neighbourhoods, improved customer service and a tolerant city, before moving to the delivery programmes.

Neighbourhoods

Westminster is a collection of neighbourhoods or villages each with their own distinctive personalities.  Our vision of world class city management means building upon the traditions and characteristics of our villages whilst ensuring that all parts of the city benefit from efficient and high quality universal services. 

The best way to give greater voice to these local communities, in my opinion, is not to create new layers of governance but to empower existing locally elected representatives – the ward councillors – to act as champions for their area.   To this end, we will work on a package of new responsibilities to devolve to ward councillors on behalf of the council and its partners in the local area agreement.  And we will be debating at the April council meeting a major change in the way overview and scrutiny operates.  Together, these will form a new constitutional settlement to empower frontline ward councillors in Westminster.

This will mean new powers and rights for local representatives, but it will also entail new accountabilities.  You will help directly decide the future of your neighbourhoods. 

Customer Service

We are planning new initiatives in customer service this year.  These include a Welcome to Westminster service that offers a single point of contact for people moving in to the borough and a personal web account for our customers. 

We are also planning to launch a One City Card that will consolidate all existing Westminster cards onto a single smartcard developed with TfL that can be used not just for council services but for making journeys on public transport and paying for parking meters as well.

And on parking, we will continue our drive to make our parking services more customer friendly by allowing residents to renew their Respark permits online, cutting out the hassle of queuing up at One Stop with your documents and we’ll be improving delivery parking arrangements for businesses.

Tolerance

We’ll do this and I hope and expect that we will meet the expectations of our customers. But what will define our success is whether we can together work to build a more tolerant and united city.

This chamber was united after 7th July in grief for the victims, out of respect for the emergency services and in appreciation of the work of our own staff.

We are all determined to continue to work to bring communities together. We are making progress in this area as the Faith Exchange, One City consultation and Westminster Race Equality Partntership have demonstrated.

This is backed by the most recent evidence from the City Survey. Black and Asian residents are more satisfied with the way that Westminster Council is running the city, and more likely to speak highly of the council than white residents. But all ethnic groups think highly, and speak favourably us, so based on our performance to date, the council is a credible and effective community leader, a great tribute to officers and members.

In One City, I wrote about diverse backgrounds but common aspirations.  Surveys and community forums are useful evidence but delivery is what matters to people.  So we will recommit ourselves in the year ahead to work, from the Harrow Road to the Edgware Road through Church Street and Chinatown to build One City by delivering for residents, listening to their views and designing policies that enable them to make the most of their talent and ambition.  

Order

I now want to turn from principles to the details of our delivery programmes.

Cities are unliveable without ordered communities.  Safe and secure neighbourhoods provide the environment where families can grow, business flourish and schools succeed.  So the concept of order is the first duty of the council.  No great city anywhere in the world can survive without meeting this challenge.

Under order, our priority will be the roll out of the CivicWatch programme citywide alongside the police Safer Neighbourhoods expansion.  This will bring extra resources and the benefits of the CivicWatch problem solving process to new parts of the City including Bayswater, Little Venice and Maida Vale, Covent Garden, St. John’s Wood and Marylebone.

And as a further enhancement we will recruit active citizens based on our successful pilot in Pimlico, to work with the CivicWatch teams to report problems.  This will make it much clearer whom best to contact to deal with different types of issue.

Another challenge is that there are now some 50 different housing associations operating in the borough, including many that manage properties on our CityWest estates.  That means different approaches to anti-social behaviour, which makes managing the estates more complex.  So we will invite our RSLs to buy into established Westminster programmes and protocols such as Guardians and CivicWatch and we’ll offer them more training and support to RSLs to tackle ASB more consistently.  We want to make the rules for living on our estates easier to understand and easier to enforce.

Licensing will remain a high priority for the council in the coming year with 300 appeals to work through.  

We must remain constantly vigilant if we are to maintain the difficult balance between residential amenity and economic vitality.  I have received many representations from residents groups in Mayfair and St. James’s about the spill-over effect of late night licensing from the current stress areas.  We will, therefore, during the course of this year review the impact of growth in the night-time economy in those areas and consult publicly on extending the boundaries of the stress areas to those parts of the city.

Opportunity

We’ll have an equally demanding agenda under the Opportunity theme.  And in a city where many are new, many are young and many are underprivileged, this drive to equip people to go as far as their talent and ambition dictates will mark us out as a beacon for other cities in this country and around the world.

Giving young people more opportunity to succeed is central to our ambition for the city.  Better schools including three new City Academies. Schools at the centre of communities offering better vocational training thanks to our BSF programme.  Better life and employment opportunities from our neighbourhood renewal work.  A variety of routes to achieve the same goal.

In One City I talked about building links between the maintained and independent school sector in Westminster as well as about promoting greater opportunities for children to engage in sports and physical activities.  So I am delighted to announce that we are setting up a Summer Camp at Sayer’s Croft next summer for Looked After Children living in our care who are by definition some of the most vulnerable children in Westminster.  This Summer Camp will be facilitated by older pupils from Frances Holland School in Westminster.

Opportunities for older people will also be addressed this year.  Following on from Every Child Matters, we want to launch an Every Older Person Matters approach in Westminster.  This will be based on helping older people achieve better outcomes including improved health and quality of life. More personal choice and control, personal dignity and the chance to make a positive contribution. It will be a whole council approach as well as a partnership with health, police and the voluntary sector. 

We will make a start by expanding activities for older people in our drop-in centres and will begin joint home visits by the Pension Service and community care team so that all entitlements can be handled in one visit. And following on from its excellent inspection report, we are committed to ensuring that our Adult Education Service has buildings that are fit for purpose.

Finally, our blue ribbon Housing Commission will report later this year and together with the new Dolphin Square Housing Charity will start to redress the huge imbalance between demand and supply for new affordable housing.  This housing charity will be one of the largest ever created, offering real hope for people in housing need including overcrowded families, children of Westminster residents and key workers.

Enterprise

Enterprise is the third theme of One City.  There is still a huge democratic deficit at the heart of local government when businesses fund but have little real say in the politics of an authority.

Lord Mayor, we have long been a business-friendly council, and tonight I can announce four new measures that Cllr Chalkley will take forward to make this authority the premier business council in London.

First, we have decided that the windfall grant of £4m under the Local Authority Business Growth Incentive Scheme will be earmarked to fund economic development projects in Westminster and we will involve the business community in determining how that money is spent.

Second, we will build on the launch of South West First this year.  It’s a new service for job seekers and local employers, and we aim with other providers to support 600 local people into employment in the first year and 2000 over the first three years.

Third, the new Westminster Small & Minority Business Council that I announced in this speech last year will be launched formally in May. We will set a target of providing up to 40 commercial contracting opportunities for small businesses in Westminster in the first year with rapid growth thereafter.  I am delighted that London First & the LCC wish to become supporters and to promote the scheme to their members.

And fourth, we plan to launch a Youth Enterprise scheme to prepare young people to develop an interest in self-employment and business.

Renewal

Our fourth programme, Renewal, covers the built and natural environment.  

For the coming year, we’re planning several major infrastructure projects including the renewal of Harrow Road under our Civic Streets project, the improvement of Marble Arch in partnership with TfL, streetscape improvements in Coventry Street and Chinatown and the re-commissioning of the fountain next to St. Paul’s Church in Covent Garden.

We will implement the Edgware Road Action Plan and will shortly be launching the Soho Action Plan.  This will focus on community safety and the opportunities to improve community facilities provided by the major development sites at Ham Yard, Marshall Street and Berwick Street.  Once that is underway, we will consult on a draft action plan for Oxford Street, Regent Street and Bond Street.

We will promote the continued redevelopment of Victoria by publishing planning briefs for individual sites and create a policy framework for seeking Section 106 contributions in Victoria.  And we will publish a planning brief for the major new development opportunity site at Chelsea Barracks, which will need to include a balance of uses including community facilities.

Our priorities for the natural environment were set out in the One City report.  This year, we will progress a number of those initiatives but I want to highlight two in this speech. 

Recognising that Westminster is one of the most densely developed areas of the UK, we will deliver our Open Spaces strategy that will enhance facilities in existing open spaces and improve access to them.  Among the spaces scheduled for works in the first year are Paddington Street Gardens, St. Stephens Gardens playground, St. George’s Square and the new sports facilities at Westbourne Green.

Second, air quality. Air quality in Westminster is some of the poorest in London almost entirely due to the volume and type of vehicles driven through our city.  Electric vehicles produce the lowest emission levels on the road – I should know, I drive one – and so we wish to make it easier for motorists to go electric.  Westminster was the first council in the country to offer free parking on meters for electric vehicles, an initiative promoted by my colleague Cllr. Ian Wilder. We will now go further and make Respark permits free for electric vehicles and launch central London’s first roadside recharging points for electric vehicles in two pilot locations.  We want to make electric a real option for many drivers.

Lord Mayor, this is, I am sure you will agree, a very full and comprehensive programme of improvements for our first year under the One City programme. 

Conclusion

We are a council that fizzes with ideas and energy.  And our promise to the residents of permanent low council tax with four years of below inflation tax increases starting tonight means we offer unbeatable value for money and excellent service.  A new contract with the people.

Many challenges remain.  A serious effort to reduce the council’s costs of doing business through Worksmart is key.  In fact, we will only be able to afford our One City ambitions, if we can generate savings in the way we operate.  This will mean continuous change internally and a restless search for new and better ways of working.  But the prize for staff is being part of a world leading city management council and delivering better public services for all. The competition from the rest of local government and for London’s position as global leader means we cannot be complacent.

I want Westminster to be a model for city management, because we have strong communities and excellent services.

I want to deliver a city where people know what their council does and how they can influence it.  Where anyone can access council services, online at any time. Where people are protected by the seamless work of Police and City Guardians. Where we offer increased housing provision and the opportunity to learn in best in class city academy schools. Where we are still the economic centre of the country but where our environment makes us a beautiful as well as dynamic city.

It’s no easy agenda. We have achieved much and the One City programme moves us beyond the Civic Renewal focus on the built environment to a new focus on strong communities.  That means tackling some of the deep-seated problems in some of our most deprived areas.  

It will need the engaged effort of every member, officer, community leader and committed business in this city.

So Lord Mayor, I am delighted to move the acceptance of One City Year One but I ask that all those who vote for its acceptance to rededicate themselves to protecting, enhancing, and delivering the greatest city environment in the world.