Issue - meetings

Smart Place Programme

Meeting: 15/01/2020 - Cabinet (Item 109)

A Smart City or Place transforms the way that residents can live their lives, through the provision and adoption of digital applications and services.

This report explains how a Smart Place Programme for Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole could enable communities to work with the Council and other organisations to create new applications and services through new business models and better use of data. It also explains how a Smart Place Programme can and is helping the Council to deliver its Corporate Strategy and boost income to help reduce the financial challenges it faces.

Fundamentally, this programme is about seizing/recognising the value that our places offer and using it with the communities in those places to develop new ways of doing things that will transform the way people live their lives.

More intensive work is required to establish an investment plan that will be used to quantify the benefits of the Programme.

Additional documents:

Decision:

RESOLVED that Cabinet endorsed:-

(a) The continuation of work by officers in developing the Smart Place programme including;

(i) The development of a Smart Place Investment Plan (subject to funding from Dorset Local Enterprise Partnership);

(ii) The development of a Smart Place Investment Plan at a future Cabinet meeting;

(iii) The continuing development of Smart Place Programme applications, use cases and associated benefits for residents and businesses; and

(iv) The development of a Smart Place workstream within the Key Cities Programme

Voting: Unanimous

Portfolio Holder: Leader of the Council

Reason

To quantify the benefits of the Smart Place Programme

To show leadership at a national level

To support the delivery of the Corporate Strategy

To encourage the engagement of all Council teams and communities in the development of the Programme

Minutes:

The Leader presented a report, a copy of which had been circulated to each Member and a copy of which appears as Appendix 'A' to these Minutes in the Minute Book.

Cabinet were advised of the intention of the Smart Place Programme, in relation to this Members were informed of the way on which the programme could enable communities to work with the Council and other organisations to create new applications and services through new business models and better use of data. In addition Members were advised of the way in which a Smart Place Programme would help the Council to deliver its Corporate Strategy and boost income.

The Chairman of the Overview and Scrutiny Board advised Cabinet that at their recent meeting the Board had requested that the Chairman write a letter in support of the Smart Place Programme to the LEP.

A Councillor present at the meeting urged the Cabinet to take on board the opinions of everyone who had spoken, and in relation to this stressed the importance of having a baseline to compare the long term monitoring.

Another Councillor present at the meeting thanked so many Members of the public for coming out and engaging with the process.

Cabinet discussed the report and in relation to this were reminded that the pilot for the implementation of 5G had been approved in December and will begin later on in the year, and that this report was about how the Council engages with the Smart Place programme and to approve the progression of the investment plan.