Richard Knight, ROW Team Leader, will be in attendance.

Richard Knight, Rights of Way Team Leader, provided an overview of the position to date with regard to the new ways of working within the Rights of Way Maintenance Team.  The following points were highlighted:

·         He reiterated that the Outdoor Partnerships service was under huge pressure to make savings and do things differently – as was the whole of Shropshire Council;

·         The RoW Team had restructured in 2011/12 as a result of the loss of substantial capital funding which supported both RoW management and site management.  This had resulted in the loss of some staff and a larger revenue budget to be used to try to manage larger structures on the network which had previously been managed and funded through capital funds;

·         The service had been further restructured to reflect the support from Public Health funding;

·         In an attempt to gauge the extent of the structures issue, a biannual survey of larger structures had been undertaken by the Highways bridge inspecting contractor.  The result of this survey (of only the largest 50 structures) had indicated that an estimated cost of £330,000 for repairs/replacement of varying priority was required.  Bridges not included in this survey and other surfacing and draining issues would also incur costs and amounted to possibly double this figure;

·         An agreed Business Plan would now enable the service to extend its income generating work beyond that already needed to support budgets (£16k this financial year).  Skills would now be used to generate income which would be put into reserves and used to tackle some of the bigger issues;

·         Projects completed to date included:

·         The repair of Offa’s Dyke Monument – which had been funded by Natural England and English Heritage;

·         Access improvement work to hill forts, castles and other places of interest for  Shropshire Council Landscape Partnerships Programme; and

·         Various improvements funded by the Sustainable Transport Fund.

·         Upcoming projects included:

·         More SCLPS projects;

·         Work with NE and EH on specialised projects;

·         Access improvements for communities; and

·         Memorial gates (Church Stretton Pilot).

·         The intention would be to build up a reserve of money which could be invested in the repair/replacement of larger high cost items.

Since the commencement of this process a capital allocation of £100k for this year and hopefully for a further two years has been received.  This had been allocated to help to reduce the £330k needed for repairs and Shropshire Council was currently working with Mouchel to implement prioritised repairs. 

It was imperative that this work was carried out without detriment to the team’s core work and so far the team had been able to complete more individual improvements to the RoW network than the previous year and had achieved this alongside the income generating work.  This had been achieved through the investment of new machinery and would be closely monitored to ensure both areas of work continued without any adverse effect on the other.

Members of the Forum congratulated the team on their achievements but raised concerns with regard to the reserved funding and they hoped that the ring-fenced funding would be protected and not lost in the future.