Agenda item

Purpose:  To reshape the priorities that CIL income is used to support. The reports seeks to review CIL income to provide further support for community led schemes as well as reshape support so that it is more closely aligned to the Council Strategy approved last year, which in turn reflects the Adopted Local Plan.

Resolved to:

·         approve the continued focus on the Adopted Local Plan and Infrastructure Delivery Plan and schemes highlighted in the Council Strategy (2019-23) & Recovery Strategy that support this to be included in the Capital Strategy 2021 onwards.

·         approve a continued profiling of CIL funds of 35% education, 35% transport, 10% other services, with 15% to parishes (or 25% if they have a neighbourhood plan) and 5% for administration.

·         approve a one off sum of up to £500k to be used to “ensure sustainable services through innovation and partnerships” by allocating funding for community groups to bid to support the Adopted Local Plan and Infrastructure Delivery Plan Implications and Impact Assessment.

This decision is eligible to be ‘called-in’.  However, if the decision has not been ‘called-in’ by 5.00pm on Friday 23 October 2020, then it will be implemented.

The Executive considered a report (Agenda Item 7) which looked at reshaping the priorities that CIL income was used to support. The report sought to review CIL income to provide further support for community led schemes as well as reshaping support so that it was more closely aligned to the Council Strategy approved in the previous year, which in turn reflected the Adopted Local Plan.

Councillor Ross Mackinnon in introducing the report stated that the paper sought to implement a pilot scheme to allocate half a million pounds from CIL funds to distribution to community groups to use on worthy local infrastructure schemes. A bidding process would be in place where community groups could apply directly to the Council for this top slice of self-funding. The vetting process would be similar to that used for Member bids. The funds would need to be spent on projects which met the definition of infrastructure.

The paper also recommended that the Council was not proposing to change the current percentage allocation of CIL funds. It was a way of getting funds to good projects to help communities prosper.

The report was seconded by Councillor Steve Ardagh-Walter.

Councillor Tony Vickers stated that it was good that the Council was earning money through its developments but it did not explain in the paper why there was such a massive underspend of CIL funds. He was worried that the Council might lose some of this money as he was aware that if it did not at least commit to spend on a particular project, within a certain time, then the money had to be returned to the developer. Councillor Mackinnon responded that the amount of CIL funds spent did not actually reflect what had been included in the Capital Programme. Councillor Hilary Cole clarified that she did not think that CIL money had to be returned to the developer as had been the case with s106 contributions.

Councillor Carolyne Culver noted that up to now 10% had been allocated in table 1.1 and 40% had been profiled in table 1.2. She stated that this was a significant shortfall and she was particularly interested about the money allocated for cycleways and how that compared to the money given for Active Travel. Could some of the CIL funding be used outside of Newbury as a lot of the Active Travel fund had been spent in the Newbury and Thatcham area? Councillor Ross Mackinnon felt that there needed to be a level of prudence here as there were uncertainties over future CIL levels. He hoped that the forecast CIL income levels did materialise in which case they would be allocated towards the capital programme but it was important not to over commit at this stage.

Councillor Adrian Abbs noted that there was a £5m underspend in CIL funding and suggested that more should be spent on environmental projects in order to meet the Environmental Emergency Declaration. He also noted that the percentage profiling was proposed to remain unchanged but they did not implicitly mention anything to do with targeting the emergency declaration. He would like to see a specific percentage of the CIL funding to be spent in this way. Councillor Mackinnon stated that no-one wanted to not spend CIL funding but the focus of this report was about top slicing a sum of £500k for small community projects.

Councillor Lee Dillon stated that the criteria for parish funding was 50%. Newbury and Thatcham would have a healthy precept but there would be some parishes who had very limited precepts and he wanted to be confident that if they could not match fund then they should not lose out on infrastructure money for the whole district. He therefore asked if the report could make clear at 4.10(d) that match funding was an aspiration rather than a necessity. Councillor Mackinnon replied that the schemes would be matched against the criteria set out in paragraph 4.10 but match funding would be an argument in favour but it would not be a hard and fast criteria.

Councillor Jeff Brooks felt that the Council was being too risk adverse as the forecast income was £20m and yet only £8k had been included in the Capital Strategy. It needed to be more ambitious. Councillor Mackinnon agreed that the Council wanted to allocate schemes but it was being cautious as it needed to be careful not to over commit funds – only time would tell.

Councillor Tony Vickers referred to Appendix A and in particular the On Street Electric Charging Points project which seemed to be dependent upon a Government grant bid. Councillor Mackinnon confirmed that he would get back to Councillor Vickers on that.

Councillor Steve Ardagh-Walter concluded that this was a really excellent initiative and the benefit would be around flexibility and responsiveness. This would help a wider range of groups and organisations as well as Town and Parish Councils. There needed to be sound robust governance around the projects to ensure that they were robust. He referred to the point made about match funding and the fact that there were other sources of funding as well and in particular Greenham Common Trust or the Member bid process could also contribute towards making projects happen. 

RESOLVED that:

(1)       the continued focus on the Adopted Local Plan and Infrastructure Delivery Plan and schemes highlighted in the Council Strategy (2019-23) and Recovery Strategy that supported this be approved and would be included in the Capital Strategy 2021 onwards.

(2)       A continued profiling of CIL funds of 35% education, 35% transport, 10% other services, with 15% to parishes (or 25% if they had a neighbourhood plan) and 5% for administration be approved.

(3)       A one off sum of up to £500k be approved to be used to “ensure sustainable services through innovation and partnerships” by allocating funding for community groups to bid to support the Adopted Local Plan and Infrastructure Delivery Plan Implications and Impact Assessment.

Reason for the decision: To ensure that there was a stronger link between CIL expenditure and the Council Strategy and, following the Covid-19 outbreak, the Covid Recovery Strategy.

Other options considered:

The Council could continue as it currently did; this would not have an impact as the CIL forecasts were already included in the financial forecasts. However, it did miss some opportunities as proposed in the paper.

Given uncertainties over future CIL levels, the Council could spread CIL out over an even longer period of time. This had been discounted due to the length of time to deliver schemes the CIL was intended to support.