Issue - meetings

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Thomas)

Report of the Corporate Director (Regeneration). 

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Thomas)

(It was noted that Councillors Archer, Ashworth and Kerr had previously declared a personal interest in the following item.)

The Corporate Director (Regeneration) submitted a report regarding the future of Morecambe’s Meteorological Station. 

The options, options analysis, including risk assessment and officer preferred option and comments, were set out in the report as follows:

Option 1 - Maintain the Existing Service

Maintaining the existing service will allow the continued collection of data from the morning readings taken throughout the year. Information could still be supplied to the Met Office and The Visitor. Information could also be supplied to internal services and members of the public on request. 

This option would provide a further opportunity in the future for the Met Office’s roll-out of automated stations. This would potentially automate the carrying out of the morning readings and might also allow the automation of the afternoon readings to reintroduce the ‘weather slot’ but this would all be subject to detailed discussions with the Met Office. 

This would require the ongoing budget of £1,500 p.a. in Planning Services and ongoing access to the staffing resources required to undertake the manual readings.  The City Council would have to finance the provision of an electrical supply for the automated equipment at a cost of approximately £800 p.a. although automation might reduce some of the ongoing staffing costs required for manual readings. It is possible therefore, that the cost for electrical supply will be contained within the existing budget. 

Option 2 – Extend the Existing Service

This option is to extend the service to reintroduce the afternoon readings in order to try to secure the ‘weather slot’ through Meteogroup. As previously mentioned there is no guarantee that the information supplied to Meteogroup would be used by any national newspapers. There is also the view that the value of the ‘weather slot’ is limited and that destination choices are based on more up to date information about local weather conditions. 

This would require an additional budget of £1,500 p.a. (over and above the existing provision) and assumes that additional staffing resources would be available to carry out the afternoon readings every day of the year. The staff providing the extended service would find this very onerous as this would require them to undertake readings twice per day including weekends and bank holidays. A review would be required of the number of staff needed to deliver this service and the indications are that volunteers would be very difficult to recruit. 

Option 3 – Discontinue the Existing Service

This option is to implement the decision previously approved by Cabinet and terminate the provision of the whole meteorological service. This would result in information no longer being provided to the Met Office, The Visitor, other services and members of the public. 

Information is currently available from the following web sites that provide information on local weather conditions: -

http://www.morecambe-weather.info/index.asp

http://www.wunderground.com/weatherstation/WXDailyHistory.asp?ID=ILANCASH5

There is also a link on the tourism website www.citycoastcountryside.co.uk to  ...  view the full minutes text for item 125