Agenda item

Recommendations from the Cabinet

To consider the recommendations from the meetings of the Cabinet held on 27^th July and 12^th October 2022.

The recommendations from the Cabinet meeting held on 27^th July 2022 have been attached. The recommendations from the Cabinet meeting held on 12^th October 2022 will follow in a supplementary pack.

Minutes:

The Chairman explained that recommendations had been made at meetings of Cabinet held on 27^th July and 12^th October 2022 respectively.

UK Shared Prosperity Fund

The Leader presented the recommendation that had been made at the meeting of Cabinet held on 27^th July 2022 on the subject of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Members were advised that Bromsgrove had been allocated £2.8 million under the scheme. The funding would be allocated to projects and the Council had agreed criteria against which bids for funding would be assessed. The criteria had been submitted for the Government’s consideration in August 2022. Local organisations would be encouraged to submit bids, which would be assessed by the Bromsgrove Partnership.

The recommendation was proposed by Councillor K. May and seconded by Councillor M. Thompson.

During consideration of this item, an amendment was proposed by Councillor C. Hotham.

The amendment read as follows:

“This fund should be allocated by North Worcestershire Economic Development and Regeneration (NWEDR) after consultation with a politically balanced UK Shared Prosperity Fund Board, who will determine how this funding should be allocated.”

In proposing the amendment, Councillor Hotham expressed concerns about the process for determining whether to approve bids to fund projects under the scheme and he questioned the transparency of the process. Councillor Hotham commented that the Bromsgrove Partnership, which had been allocated this responsibility, had one elected Member representative: the Leader. The suggestion was made that there needed to be a greater level of elected Member oversight, particularly given the amount of money involved.

Consideration was given to this proposed amendment and as part of this process, advice was provided by the Monitoring Officer. Members were informed that the proposed amendment actually related to matters that had already been resolved by Cabinet. The role of the Council meeting was to consider whether to amend the authority’s Medium Term Financial Plan to incorporate the UK Shared Prosperity funding allocation. The Government’s intention for the UK Shared Prosperity Fund had been for there to be community involvement in the process. The governance arrangements required the Council’s Section 151 Officer to sign off any grants. For these reasons, the amendment was not accepted for debate.

Questions were subsequently raised about the membership of the Bromsgrove Partnership and the extent to which this information was available in the public domain. Members also commented on the need for members of the partnership to be transparent in respect of declaring interests, given the amount of money that would be distributed under the scheme. The Leader explained that the Bromsgrove Partnership Manager maintained a list of partner organisations that were represented on the Bromsgrove Partnership. Members of the partnership were required to declare interests at every meeting they attended and any declarations were recorded in the minutes of those meetings. The Bromsgrove Partnership was involved in engagement and enablement and focused on the needs of the local community. Council was advised that most Councils in the country in receipt of funding under the UK Shared Prosperity Fund scheme had adopted a similar approach, whereby either the local partnership or District Collaborative was taking a lead on determining funding allocation.

Consideration was given to the process that would be followed to advertise the funding allocated through the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. Members questioned whether a list of approved projects could be reported for the consideration of Council in due course. The Leader suggested that this might be a more suitable topic for discussion at a future meeting of the Overview and Scrutiny Board.

Members commented on the submission that had been made by the Council to the Government in August 2022, on the subject of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and questions were raised about whether the Council had received a response. The Leader confirmed that the Council had not yet received a response form the Government. However, the authority had been advised to proceed with the plans that were in place.

Following further questioning, the Leader read out an email that had been sent to all elected Members on 4^th October 2022 updating Councillors on the UK Shared Prosperity Fund. This email had the following wording:

“Dear Councillor

I am emailing you as I want to update you on the progress of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund and the next steps that we plan to take. As you are aware, Bromsgrove district has been allocated £2,805,712 from the UK Shared Prosperity Fund covering the 3 years from 1 April 2022 to 31 March 2025. To unlock this funding, we were tasked with preparing an Investment Plan detailing the challenges and opportunities in the district and where we would spend the fund to address these. The Investment Plan was approved by the Cabinet in July and submitted to the Government for approval on 1 August 2022. The Government has stated that they will be issuing approvals from October onwards – we await a decision on our Investment Plan.

One of the first steps taken to prepare the Investment Plan was to put out a call for projects. The purpose of this was to identify the local challenges and opportunities at a more granular level than statistics can provide and also to understand what capacity there was within the community to deliver projects. However, the timescales were incredibly tight and several organisations have indicated that they were unable to engage in the process due to this. Consequently, whilst we have sufficient projects to spend all of the funding, the range of projects is not very balanced and I feel that a second opportunity to submit projects should be extended to our partners and stakeholders.

The Autumn call for projects will be launched this week with a deadline for submissions by 9:00am Monday 14 November 2022. This will give organisations a minimum 5 weeks to submit a project. Officers will be holding a webinar on 18 October, to provide further guidance to those wishing to submit a project and to answer questions. Organisations that submitted projects previously, do not need to re-submit. We will be sending the submission pack to c200 organisations, and promoting the opportunity widely, but I would encourage you to share this information with any groups that you think may have a suitable project. We hope to get a wide range of projects covering as much of the district as possible.

Following the submission deadline, all projects submitted in both calls will be assessed for strategic fit, deliverability and value for money. Bromsgrove Partnership, acting as the Local Partnership Board for the UK SPF, will oversee this process. We hope to be in a position to issue funding agreements by the end of the year, ready to start delivery in January 2023. However, this is dependent upon receiving approval for the Investment Plan from Government as we will be unable to contract with external organisations until this is in place. This will put particular pressure on those organisations looking to deliver projects in Year 1, i.e. before 31/3/23. The allocation is split over the 3 years with set expenditure levels for each year. Failure to spend each year’s allocation could result in forfeiting the funding or delaying receipt of the following year’s funding. As a result, Year 1 projects will be assessed with extra emphasis on deliverability. I would advise any organisations with limited capacity to deliver to consider projects for funding in years 2 or 3 only.

Thank you for your support with this programme. Our aim is to deliver a range of impactful projects that will meet the strategic objective of the fund – building pride in place and increasing life chances.

If you would like any further information about the UK Shared Prosperity Fund, please contact Georgina Harris at georgina.harris@nwedr.org.uk”.

Following further discussion, on being put to the vote the recommendation from the Cabinet on the subject of the UK Shared Prosperity Fund was carried.

RESOLVED that the Medium Term Financial Strategy is amended to include the UK Shared Prosperity Fund Allocation when next reviewed.

Budget Framework Finance and Performance Quarter 1 Monitoring Report

The Leader presented a recommendation from Cabinet arising from the Budget Framework Finance and Performance Quarter 1 Monitoring Report. This recommendation proposed the need to increase the Council’s operational bank limit to £2 million.

During consideration of this item, reference was made to the performance data that had been provided in the report in respect of housing growth. Members commented that this information appeared to indicate that 118 new houses had been built during the period but that none of these properties had constituted affordable housing. In this context, Members requested an update on progress with the development of affordable homes during the year. The Leader explained that an update would be requested in respect of this matter from the Head of Planning, Regeneration and Leisure Services.

Reference was also made to the information provided in the report in respect of the financial performance of the Council, particularly the £477,890 of cross cutting savings and efficiency targets recorded for the 2022/23 financial year. Questions were raised about the extent to which savings from vacant posts would be taken into account when determining whether the Council was meeting this target. The Leader explained that for the first quarter savings from vacant posts had been taken into account where it had been identified that those posts were no longer necessary. Further information would be available on this subject in the Quarter 2 monitoring report.

Consideration was given to the data that had been provided in respect of the length of time that customers waited to get through by phone to the Council and were then subsequently on the phone to staff for revenue calls. Concerns were raised that the length of time appeared to be increasing. However, Members were advised that this data related to the period in which the Council had been managing calls relating to the Energy Payment Scheme.

The recommendation was proposed by Councillor K. May and seconded by Councillor M. Thompson.

RESOLVED that the Operational Bank Account limit is raised to £2m.

Supporting documents: