Agenda and draft minutes

Apologies for absence were received from Councillor M de Whalley (sub Councillor A Holmes).

The notes of the previous meeting were agreed as a correct record.

There were no matters arising.

Please indicate if there are any interests which should be declared.  A declaration of an interest should indicate the nature of the interest (if not already declared on the Register of Interests) and the agenda item to which it relates.  If a disclosable pecuniary interest is declared, the Members should withdraw from the room whilst the matter is discussed.

These declarations apply to all Members present, whether the Member is part of the meeting, attending to speak as a local Member on an item or simply observing the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest.

To consider any business which, by reason of special circumstances, the Chairman proposes to accept as urgent under Section 100b(4)(b) of the Local Government Act, 1972.

There was no urgent business.

Members wishing to speak pursuant to Standing Order 34 should inform the Chair of their intention to do so and on what items they wish to be heard before a decision on that item is taken.

There were no Members present pursuant to Standing Order 34.

There was no Chair’s correspondence to report.

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The CIL Monitoring Officer highlighted to the Panel the Terms and Conditions that every applicant had to sign an agreement and return before any funding was allocated.   She drew the Panel’s attention to the Award of Funding, paragraphs 3 and 4 which were particularly relevant, as follows:

3.         The Project must be carried out and completed to the standard and specification stated within the attached application form.

4.         If the applicant fails to comply with any of these terms and conditions, BCKLWN (the Council) may withhold, vary, terminate or require any or all of the CIL award to be repaid.

Within the Communications and Monitoring, it stated that:

30.       In any event the applicant shall within 7 days after written request by the Council provide the Council with such information and documents as the Council may reasonably require, to enable the Council to verify that the applicant has complied with its obligations under these terms and conditions.

31.       The applicant must provide an annual return no later than 01 May each year with information on the progress of the project, within the financial year.  This will ensure the Council is able to fulfil its monitoring requirements under the CIL Regulations 2010 (as amended September 2019).

The CIL Monitoring Officer explained that when the Panel considered the applications in further detail later in the meeting, there were many that officers had chased and received no response from applicants.

The CIL Monitoring Officer also explained that projects must be commenced within one year all within the details of the offer letter. 

The Panel were informed that with regards to Agenda Item D, all of the agreements had been returned prior to the meeting.

Reference was made to the CIL Governance Documents which stated that projects:

·        Must commence within 1 year of being allocated CIL

·        And must be completed within 5 years.

CIL will be payable on completion of the project.

The Panel’s attention was drawn to the Funding Allocation Confirmation letter and that the project should be commenced no later than one year from the date of the approval letter and that if there were any issues then the Council needed to be notified if the project could not be commenced within that time.

This provided some context for the Panel to consider when considering the next part of the agenda.

The Panel was advised that before an award of funding was made, applicants had to sign Terms and Conditions, as these were displayed to the Panel.  As part of the Terms and Conditions, it required applicants to provide an Annual Report to be received for FY21_1. 

a.     FY21_1 – No Annual Report Received

b.    FY21_1 – Not started within 1 year

c.    FY22_1 – Not started by the date on the application

d.    FY22_2 – No Signed Agreement Received

The Panel considered applications where annual reports had not been received within Financial Year 2021 for numbers 20 and 63.

AGREED:       That a strongly worded letter be sent to the Chairman of the Parish Council, copying in the Clerk and Local Councillor requesting a response within 14 days.  If a response was not received within that time, it will be assumed that the project was no longer going ahead, and the funding would be withdrawn.

In relation to No.5 and 13, these were projects which had not commenced within 1 year.

No.5 Northwold

AGREED:       That a 6-month extension of time dated from now be granted subject to an Action Plan and Timetable of Works being sent in by end of February.

No 13 North Runcton

It was explained that an email had been received advising that work had already been carried out, but the project had not been withdrawn.

AGREED:       That as the work had been completed before the funding had been allocated, they had breached the terms of the agreement within the terms of reference and the funding be withdrawn.

The Panel then considered the list of applications for Year 2021_1 which had not commenced within one year. 

The Chair suggested that the applicants should be reminded that the projects had not commenced within the required timescale, and they needed to advise the Council of the reasons why the work had not commenced.

It was explained that this was the first review meeting of the Spending Panel. 

It was noted that update reports had been received from the applicants in relation to the projects. 

With regards to No.32, it was at the consultation stage at the moment with work starting in the second half of 2023.

The Chair asked the Spending Panel to consider whether it was unrealistic to expect projects to commence within one year.

The CIL Governance Officer advised that if the idea of the CIL funding and the Spending Panel were going to prioritise shorter term projects more favourably, if a project was only just out to tender, there were other projects that were ready to commence that the funding could have been allocated to.

The Planning Control Manager asked that with the bigger projects, would the Panel prefer to see a committed timeline in terms of progressing so that the funding was not reallocated.

The Chairman agreed that it was important to have a clear statement, and revised plan to consider whether this was still a valid allocation given that they were outside the funding allocation timeframe.

Councillor Parish added that there were a set of rules to be complied with for a reason and preliminary work should have been carried out prior to applying for the funding. 

The Planning Control Manager suggested that there were a number of projects on the list with allocated funding, and there were some significant projects that an update on with a timeline was needed.  If the timeline was not acceptable, then the funding could be reallocated.

Councillor Nockolds  ...  view the full minutes text for item 9.

To be agreed.

To be arranged at the end of February / early March.