Rewarding volunteers

Published on Friday, 9th June 2017

The City Council is actively pushing volunteering as a means of strengthening society. The Portsmouth Together programme has been running for three years now, with a focus on making it easy for people to find voluntary activities for their spare time. Some areas of the council have for many years benefited from large numbers of volunteer helpers, particularly libraries and museums, but the emphasis isn’t just (or mainly) on helping the council but rather it is on encouraging people to give time to projects of all kinds.

With this in mind, the council has teamed up with ValueYou to provide rewards to people who put in a hundred hours of voluntary effort. A ValueYou card gives discounts in participating local businesses – in Portsmouth, 22 have signed up, ranging from coffee shops, to a florist and a shoe repairer; six are in Albert Road. Typically a card holder receives 10% off as a thank you for their efforts, while the business owner hopefully engenders greater loyalty from their customers.

The ValueYou model originated in London, where some hundreds of independent traders support the scheme. Officers at the City Council have spoken to scores of local businesses, seeking their support. To register for a card, go to http://www.valueyou.org

Tags: Volunteering

The causes of delayed discharges from hospital

Published on Friday, 9th June 2017

A lot has been written lately both about delays in discharging patients from hospitals. Part of this heightened profile is simply the General Election campaign, but there is a real issue here too and it is true that across the country the system’s performance is slowly worsening.

The biggest cause of delays is hospital processes, but the domiciliary care market also plays a role. Providing personal care has always been a low paying job and is one that is difficult to find people to do. Locally, there was a noticeable tightening in the market when the new Tesco store opened by Fratton Park, as more than a few care providers decided they would rather have a job there than spending long hours helping get people out of bed, keeping them feed and clean and ensuring they take medication.

Arranging a domiciliary care package often takes time and this can create some delays. In recognition of this, the City Council is increasing its reimbursement rate to care agencies by 7.5% to near £16 per hour. Taking into account central office costs, travelling time and holidays this still implies a fairly low take home rate of pay, but it still significantly more than last year and is more than the council can really afford: the early indications are that social care will struggle to stay in budget and that making further savings next year will be challenging.

The other part of the system over which the council has some control and influence is the hospital-based discharge team. This consists of just 9 people (by way of comparison, Portsmouth Hospitals Trust has 7000) and they work as part of an integrated service led by the NHS. This new integrated structure has not been working as well as it might and the council is seeking changes.

Most of what happens in any hospital is controlled by the hospital itself and that is the case in Portsmouth. Local authority social services are a factor in delays in getting people out of hospital, but they are not the main one. A shortage of capacity in the Spinnaker and Victory step-down wards, both run by Solent NHS, is a major problem, as is the processes within the hospital itself. The council is, however, trying to influence things where it can. 

Tags: Adult Social Care, Hospital

Public access to the pier and licensing hours

Published on Thursday, 20th April 2017

The pier is open again, which has to be good news. Two other updates: the council has put together a public access agreement, which will ensure members of the public are able to walk on the pier; once the details are finalised it will be made public. 

Secondly, there has been a licensing application for music and for regulated entertainment (which includes live music, recorded music and boxing). The proposed terminal time for alcohol sales is 2am (12:30 am on Sundays) and 3am for regulated entertainment on Fridays and Saturdays, 12:30 on Sundays and 2am on other days of the week.

The deadline for comments is 26th April. Contact This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. with your views.

Tags: Pier, Licensing

Marks and Spencer closure

Published on Thursday, 20th April 2017

It was very disappointing to hear today that Marks and Spencer’s is to close its Commercial Road store. The council had no advance warning of this decision and so as things stand details on what will happen next are scant, although press reports suggest a food-only store will open in Ocean Park. 

Debenham’s has announced that it will close ten stores across the country and with the chain having branches in both Commercial Road and Palmerston Road, there is a real chance that one or the other will be on the hit list.

The fragility of Commercial Road as a retail centre is a direct result of the failure to get the Northern Quarter scheme built before the shift to online and out-of-town shopping became as embedded as it now has. High Street retailing in the 2020s and beyond will have to be tied in with leisure activities and in future shop spaces will increasingly be shop window units, with customer orders being placed online. This requires a new approach.

The council’s ability to influence events is limited: all the units in the city centre are privately owned and so decisions on rents do not rest with the council; the same applies to the two main car parks at the Cascades and the Tricorn. As ever, the council just doesn’t have millions of pounds to spend. It can however try and secure funding for the new city centre road, which is the key to getting development moving.

It’s taken three years to do it, but enough money has now been saved up (an extra £11m) to be able to make a serious bid to government for the remaining cash. If approved, a mixed use regeneration scheme becomes viable. That will still take five years to plan and build though; what happens in the meantime is an open question.

Tags: City Centre, Planning

Cumberland House museum reopens

Published on Monday, 10th April 2017

(Image: councillors Luke Stubbs, Linda Symes and David Tompkins)

The Natural History museum by Canoe Lake has reopened after works to remove the old butterfly house and to make other repairs to the building. The appearance of the rear of the building is much improved without the old, wooden structure attached to it.  A new and improved butterfly house will be constructed over the next few months.

Tags: Canoe Lake, Cumberland House, Museums

University launches new nursing training centre

Published on Wednesday, 5th April 2017

Bucking the national trend, Portsmouth University has launched a new nursing degree. 120 students are now enrolled in the first year, with more to come in September. All are following a very practical course that teaches them the skills needed to practice either in a hospital or in a community setting. The new department will be based in a new £4m facility situated within St Andrew’s Court - the former Land Registry building in the gyratory.

The facilities really are impressive, with training spaces that feel like real wards or doctors’ surgeries and with some clever IT to allow not just the sharing of notes, but also the recording of practice sessions; the IT also lets students practice on mock-up patients that are much more than just shop dummies (although they still look a bit like them) and which can display real symptoms and which can react to treatment.

As a country we need our education system to focus more on supplying the skills employers actually need and this facility is a great example of that.

Tags: University

Broadcasting council meetings

Published on Tuesday, 21st March 2017

Full Council meetings have been broadcast live for approaching two years now and they have attracted more viewers than might have been expected: typically the video is downloaded 400 to 500 times and on one occasion fully 2500 people tuned in.

The number of unique viewers will, of course, be lower, but even so, there does seem to be a niche market for this and with the equipment now so cheap, there is little reason not to extend it to other types of meetings.

At Full Council today, I put forward a motion to broadcast all council committee meetings and I am glad to see that it received universal support.

While I doubt many people will watch scrutiny panel meeting, it is important that people have the option and the planning committee will, I suspect, attract genuine interest.

Tags: Transparency

Another new hotel in the pipeline

Published on Monday, 20th March 2017

Another planning application has been lodged with the council for a new hotel: the second in two weeks. If approved, this latest scheme will see Travelodge build 152 bedrooms and a restaurant on a currently unused site just to the north of the former Zurich building.

The application is for a twelve storey building and the submitted images suggest the design would fit in nicely with the neighbouring reclad Zurich (since rebranded as Catherine House). 51 parking spaces would be included, partly below ground.

The area around Portsmouth and Southsea station is changing dramatically, with over 3000 student rooms in the pipeline in five high-rise buildings. Part of the rationale for allowing these developments was as a means of kick-starting the wider regeneration of the southern end of the city centre; the hope being that other types of use would appear in later phases. This hotel proposal is an example of that happening; proposals for a second hotel on the other side of Catherine House will be another if they result in a planning submission, as is expected.

Over time, we're likely to see some general residential schemes and possibly a modest amount of office space coming forward in this general area. The overall effect should be to create a busy and prosperous new community in the centre of the city.

Full details of the application are available by searching for planning application 17/00228/FUL on the council's website.

Tags: Planning, City Centre

Eastern Road improvements move forward

Published on Monday, 20th March 2017

Plans to increase the capacity of the Eastern Road are a little nearer coming to fruition after the half a million pounds made available by the council was formally allocated to the scheme. Work will now start on developing a set of deliverable options.

Meanwhile, structural maintenance on the water bridge started on Monday. This scheme is part of a £1.3m package to extend the life of the stretch of road between Anchorage Park and the A27 roundabout and involves sealing the underside of the bridge and painting all of the metalwork with a corrosion resistant paint.

Work will last until the autumn and there will be a few lane closures, but they should be few and far between. Without these repairs, the road may have had to be permanently reduced to single carriageway operation in the not too distant future.

Tags: Transport