Issue - meetings

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The Chair provided the Panel with a recap of what had been considered at the adjourned meeting and asked the Panel to consider taking a request to Cabinet to transfer some of the CIL funds from the Strategic pot to the Community pot which would allow more Community Projects to be awarded funding.  It was noted that no Strategic projects were being considered in this funding round.  This would allow the Panel to re-look at the schedule of applications and would allow all projects with a score of 16+ to be funded either in part or in full.  The Chair explained the funds that would need to be transferred between the two CIL pots in order to fully fund all of the 16+ projects.

The Chair brought the Panel’s attention to some of the applications that they had considered at the adjourned meeting as he felt that they justified funding.  The first one was the West Norfolk Community Transport Project, which was at a disadvantage as it could not obtain Parish match funding due to being in an unparished area.

He also reminded the Panel that applications submitted by the Borough Council should be considered in the same way as other applications and reminded the Panel of the Governance arrangements that the Panel had to work to and the regard they should have to the scoring criteria.  The CIL Officer provided detail of the scoring criteria and it was also noted that applications had to be scored in the category they were applied for – Community or Strategic.

Councillor de Whalley commented that the funding of smaller projects should not be to the detriment of larger projects.

Councillor Bone commented that applications from King’s Lynn would always be at a disadvantage in relation to the match funding criteria.

Councillor Parish felt that the larger bids from funding for the Borough Council should be refused and CIL funding should be for the benefit of areas that had been affected by development. 

Councillor Moriarty addressed the Panel under Standing Order 34 and raised concern about revisiting decisions which had been made at the adjourned meeting.  The Chair clarified that no decisions had been made at this time and at the adjourned meeting it had been made clear that decisions on application were draft and would need to be revisited depending on how much funding had been allocated across the board.

The Panel discussed specific applications on the schedule and noted that in the future they would also benefit from information on how much CIL had been spent in Parishes to date and that this should also be considered in the scoring criteria.

The Panel considered approving all applications which scored higher than 16 and discussed if they should be 60% or 100% funded and the additional funds they would need to be transferred across from the Strategic pot to do so.  The Panel then discussed the applications which had scored  ...  view the full minutes text for item 15

The CIL Officer gave a presentation that showed that 73 applications had been received for this round of funding.  There was £1,088,367.52 (£435,437 – Local/Community Projects and £653,020.51 – Strategic projects) available to be allocated.  There had been a total of £1,494,298.62 requests, which meant that a large proportion of requests would not be able to be funded.

Each application had been scored using the agreed criteria and was presented with officer recommendations for the Panel’s consideration.  The panel was presented with some formulas  to use to decide on the grants awarded.  The Panel decided to carry out an initial trawl  of applications and consider each of them, but acknowledged that when it was know how much money was available or overspent, the provisional allocations would need to be re-visited.

The Panel agreed that for their initial consideration round they would allocate full funding for projects less than £10,000.  For projects above that it was agreed that if they were supported most  be allocated 60%, unless there was strong feeling to allocate more. 

A list of 7 applications which were considered to be of commercial business nature were presented with a recommendation of refusal.  The Panel agreed to those recommendations.

The Panel then considered other applications in order of their score total.  The attached document sets out the initial draft decisions subject to further consideration or information received as required when the financial totals were known. 

The Panel adjourned at 1.45pm