At the Surrey Heath Borough Council Executive meeting held last week on Tuesday 23rd June, several important decisions were taken to help the Borough recover as lockdown restrictions ease.
One of the main decisions made was to support people coming back to Camberley town centre, by maintaining free parking for up to four hours.
Commenting, Cllr Robin Perry said:
"I attended two interesting meetings last week. First the Executive, which discussed a proposal to re-introduce charges to Camberley Town centre car parks. After a lively debate between those who wanted the income to pay for other services and those who felt that free parking would help revitalise the Town centre, it was decided to maintain free parking for the first 4 hours, for at least three months. The right decision I think.
"Another initiative agreed was to change the requirements of a scheme designed to help smaller shopkeepers throughout the Borough. Matched funding grants are now available to support a much wider range of projects that businesses wished to implement to get their operations going again after the Cronavirus shut down. Originally the scheme was limited to supporting the installation of a new shop front. Now a much wider range of initiatives will be considered for support, including marketing campaigns and installation of screens etc to comply with COVID-19 regulations.
"The second meeting concerned our new Climate Change initiative. As a Council we have committed to drastically reducing our carbon footprint. The new committee of which I am a member, has been charged with agreeing the actions to be taken and timetable to be followed. A basic initial review of the situation has been completed by Officers. This has defined all the main areas to be considered and the % of our total carbon footprint represented by each. These target areas include - heat and light of buildings, vehicle fuel both by Borough and Staff and carbon usage by our outside suppliers.
"We are now collating a list of what are perceived to be the "easy wins", and we will agree the acting points and KPIs for these at our next meeting."
The full agenda can be found here, and the Notification of Executive decisions can be found in the attached file.