Cabinet Member for Planning – Nick Ridley
Minutes:
47.1 Councillor Ridley introduced the report and MOVED the recommendations within it. He informed Council that it had been essential that a detailed expenditure framework was developed and a cross party Panel was set up to develop the proposed scheme. Some of the Panel’s key outcomes were resolving the difference between strategic and local infrastructure and the amount of CIL money to be saved. The Panel had also agreed a communications strategy and timetable for delivery.
47.2 Councillor Ward seconded the report and reserved the right to speak.
47.3 Councillor Arthey stated that as a member of the Panel he had felt that it was an excellent piece of work and thanked the staff involved in the process for their hard work and support of the work of the Panel.
47.4 Councillor Busby welcomed the fact that ward Members would be involved in the process and asked if the 5% that the Council would receive for administration costs could be used to fund feasibility studies and infrastructure work?
47.6 In response the Key Sites and infrastructure Officer stated that the 5% CIL admin costs are already factored in against staff costs so had already been allocated. The Panel had discussed the issue of feasibility studies and had agreed that a feasibility study would not guarantee whether the project would actually come forward for a bid and that would therefore mean that money could therefore be wasted. However, there will be a review of the scheme and that could be revisited when that happens.
47.7 Councillor Bavington queried paragraph 4.2 in the report and asked if the 15% and 25% residual percentage that went to the Council were required by the government or whether it was a choice the Council had made at some point?
47.8 In response Councillor Ridley confirmed that it was part of the CIL regulations.
47.9 Councillor Hinton felt that in appendix A bullet point 2.1 the paragraph was very wordy and asked when applications came before the Planning Committee where an ask of the 1, 2, 3, list, or a potential ask of the 1,2,3, list from the County Council has been £350,000 and the CIL is only going to produce £250,000 so is it a CIL as in Babergh as a whole community or do we have to go back to some of the legal decisions recently and bring the boundaries down a bit? Also please can you clarify that anything over £150k has to be a Cabinet decision?
47.10 In response the Key Site and Infrastructure Officer stated that In connection with the first question in order to make residential development acceptable you need infrastructure in order to mitigate the harm from the development and the Panel were very clear on the fact that they felt that if communities were going to accept the growth then they ought to have the infrastructure to support the growth which would impact on their communities so if that’s a little bit wordy in the document that’s something when we go through the review we can look at and make that more simple and more clear if that would help. In terms of governance in relation to what the Joint Member Panel wanted to see, they felt that officers could make decisions on bids which met the bid criteria providing the spend was no more than £10,000 and so it was under £10,000. If there are any decisions that involve strategic infrastructure spend those will be Cabinet decisions, if its local infrastructure spend then the threshold for Cabinet to make a decision is £150,000. Because this is the first bid round we’re going to produce a CIL business plan and that whole document will go to Cabinet to note the decisions where they need to be noted and then it will be made clear whether decisions need to be made by Cabinet.
47.11 Councillor Hinton asked if this wording could be clarified and simplified as it did not appear to cover that there is potential within the system that sustainable development appears to mean sustainable to the district rather than to the development itself because it means that if all the monies are going to be soaked up by a development at one end of the district there would be nothing left for anywhere else?
47.12 In response the Key Site and Infrastructure Officer stated that to support the CIL expenditure framework going forward, sensitivity testing was carried out to see whether the infrastructure could be provided from the growth projects that were coming forward. That sensitivity testing had captured all the developments of over 10 dwellings plus in both districts. What’s clear is that with the 20% savings for strategic items then it is going to be very tight to provide the infrastructure. But there is a golden thread that runs through the expenditure framework and from the work of the Joint Member Panel it was quite clear that we were looking for collaborative forms of spend in order to land the necessary infrastructure. Officers have already been in touch with some parishes where we know that there will be big pieces of infrastructure that will be required and that is important to the community and it’s important to the Council, we’re very hopeful that we will be able to achieve what we need to achieve in order to get the infrastructure funded. Clearly as you know, there is a review which will be happening at the same time as bid round 2 so anything we learn from bid round 1 and any nuanced changes to any of the documents can be picked up at that point.
47.13 Councillor Busby sought assurance that Overview and Scrutiny would regularly scrutinise the scheme.
47.14 In response Councillor Ridley confirmed that the scheme would be looked at very carefully and if any scrutiny was required of course that would be supported.
47.15 Councillor Ward stated that he was very impressed with the speed and thoroughness that both Members and officers had shown in producing this report and this was one example of where being inclusive and collaborative had produced a piece of work of immense value.
It was Resolved:-
(i) That the detailed CIL Expenditure Framework (including details of implementation and review) forming Appendices A and E to the report and the joint CIL Expenditure Framework Communications Strategy (Appendix B) be approved as recommended by Cabinet.
(Appendices C and D comprise the CIL “Regulation 123 lists” and were approved in January 2016 and accompany the other documents for reference purposes only)
(ii) That the Joint Member Panel (alongside Overview and Scrutiny) inform the Review of the CIL Expenditure Framework within the timescales contained in the Appendix E to this report.
Reason for decision: Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) monies have been collected since the implementation of CIL in April 2016. There is no prescribed way for Councils to decide upon the spend of money collected through CIL so the Council has to agree its own approach.
Supporting documents: