Issue - meetings

Meeting of the Democratic Arrangements Forum 17^th March 2021 – Council Streaming Arrangements

It was moved by Councillor O’Brien and seconded by Councillor Tariq and it was:

Resolved:

Following adoption of the Council Motion in October 2012 in which Members agreed to stream meetings of Full Council, the Group Leaders recommend to Council that streaming of meetings going forward would include in addition to Full Council; meetings of the Council’s Cabinet, the Planning Control Committee as well as meetings of the Overview and Scrutiny Committee, Health Scrutiny Committee and the Children and Young People’s Scrutiny Committee.

Standards Committee Interviews - Appointment of Independent Persons – June 2021

It was moved by Councillor O’Brien and seconded by Councillor Tariq and it was:

RESOLVED:

Council agrees to the appointment of the following Independent Persons to the Council’s Standards Committee: Craig Ainsworth and Stuart Birtwell.

Meeting of Cabinet 21^st July 2021 – Clean Air Plan

It was moved by Councillor Quinn and seconded by Councillor O’Brien following a request from 8 members present at the meeting in accordance with the Council Procedure rules – recorded vote;

On being put, with Councillors C Boles, C Birchmore, N Boroda, S Butler, C Cummins, U Farooq, R Gold, J Grimshaw, S Haroon, M Hayes,  T Holt, K Leach, J Mason, G McGill, C Morris, B Mortenson, E O’Brien, K Peel, T Pilkington, A Quinn, D Quinn, M Powell, T Rafiq, A Simpson, L Smith, M Smith, G Staple-Jones, T Tariq, K Thomas, S Walmsley, C Walsh, M Whitby, S Wright FOR;

AND

Councillors R Brown, R Bernstein, R A Caserta, P Cropper, LJ Dean, I B Gartside, J Harris, S Hurst, K Hussain, N Jones, J Lancaster, J Lewis, L McBriar, T Rydeheard, D Vernon and Y Wright, against

And the Mayor abstaining;

Council agreed to:

1.   Note the progress of the Greater Manchester Clean Air Plan;

2.   Note the progress in the distribution of Bus Retrofit funding;

3.   Note Ministers’ agreement to include the sections of the A628/A57 in Tameside which form part of the Strategic Road Network within the Greater Manchester’s Clean Air Zone (CAZ) and their request for Tameside MBC, TfGM and Highways England to establish the most appropriate solution for the charging mechanism to be applied on this section of the Strategic Road Network (SRN);

4.   Approve the GM Clean Air Plan Policy, at Appendix 1 noting that the policy outlines the boundary, discounts, exemptions, daily charges of the Clean Air Zone as well as the financial support packages offered towards upgrading to a compliant vehicle, including the eligibility criteria to be applied.

5.   Agree the Equalities Impact Assessment, as set out at Appendix 2;

6.   Agree the AECOM Consultation Report, as set out at Appendix 3;

7.   Agree the proposed Response to the Consultation at Appendix 4 which has been prepared by TfGM on behalf of the ten GM local authorities;

8.   Agree the Impacts of COVID-19 Report, as set out at Appendix 5;

9.   Agree the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5

·         A report from Councillor Alan Quinn – Cabinet Member Environment, Climate Change and Operations in respect of Greater Manchester Clean Air Plan is attached.

·         A report from Councillor Alan Quinn – Cabinet Member Environment, Climate Change and Operations in respect of Climate Strategy is attached.

·                     (A) Councillor Alan Quinn, Cabinet Member Environment, Climate Change and Operations provided an overview of the Clean Air Plan, an accompanying report had been circulated to Members in advance of the meeting.

The proposed final GM Clean Air Plan sets out final proposals for:

1. The boundary, hours of operation, management of the scheme, discounts, exemptions and daily charges of a Clean Air Zone;
2. The amount of supporting funds for each vehicle type; and
3. Other supporting measures.

Questions and comments were invited from Members of the Committee and the following issues were raised:

Responding to Councillor Birchmore, Councillor Quinn, Cabinet Member Environment, Climate Change and Operations reported; that air quality monitoring work is overseen by the Government’s Joint Air Quality Unit and their Independent Technical Review Panel.  The air quality modelling has been undertaken following published national best practice guidance. Both bodies have looked in detail at Greater Manchester’s modelling throughout the development of the Plans and endorsed the work, concluding that a clean air zone is required to achieve compliance.

For economic and practical reasons Local Authorities are advised to monitor air quality using both continuous automatic analysers and diffusion tubes. This enables the much wider spread of monitoring using multiple diffusion tube sites, alongside the greater accuracy of the continuous automatic analysers. It is the annual average nitrogen dioxide target that we have an issue with and the diffusion tubes offer a low cost practical means for measuring annual concentrations. 

Alongside our existing network of monitoring sites this year a new automatic real time analyser we will be installed at Bury Bridge, a busy road section predicted to be the last site in Bury to meet the nitrogen dioxide target. This should give a good indication of when the Borough is meeting the objectives.  

The Base Year used for this project was 2016 which was the latest available data. The monitoring data from years 2020/2021 which have been most directly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic have not formed part of the baseline appraisal process.

Responding to Councillor Vernon, the TfGM representative reported that a driver of a non-compliant vehicle would be charged for driving within the Clean Air Zone each day. However, these are the only charges they would face for a 48-hour period, they could make multiple trips in the CAZ.

Councillor Quinn, Cabinet Member Environment, Climate Change and Operations reported that the anticipated cost to small businesses is dependent on their individual circumstances and business model.

In terms of the cost of upgrade, this will depend on the circumstances of the vehicle owner in terms of the value of their existing vehicle and their choice of upgrade.

For market traders, who are likely to own an LGV, there is a temporary exemption to 31 May 2023 to support LGV owners to upgrade.  As well as this, the funding amounts for their financial support has increased for larger LGVs and a retrofit grant is also available for the models eligible for retrofit.

For the taxi trade, there is  ...  view the full minutes text for item 6