Agenda item

GRANTS AND COMMUNITY UPDATE

Meeting of Letchworth Committee, Wednesday, 7th March, 2018 7.30 pm (Item 43.)

REPORT OF THE COMMUNITIES OFFICER

To update the Committee on the activities and actions of the Communities Officer, to advise on the current expenditure and balances of the delegated budgets and to consider applications for grant funding.

Decision:

RESOLVED:

(1) That the budgetary expenditure, balances and carry forwards from the Development and Visioning Budgets be noted;

(2) That the actions taken by the Communities Officer to promote greater community capacity and well-being for Letchworth Garden City be endorsed;

(3) That, subject to any decisions of Council, any unspent funds remaining in the 2017/18 Discretionary Budget be carried forward to 2018/19;

(4) That the Communities Officer be requested to present the list of potential sites for placement of cycle racks in Letchworth Town Centre to this Committee before a final decision is made.

REASON FOR DECISION:To keep Members of the Committee apprised of the latest developments in community activities in Letchworth Garden City.

Minutes:

The Communities Officer presented the report of the Communities Manager entitled Grants and Community Update and drew attention to the following:

Communities Team

The Communities Manager had been on sick leave for a number of months and his role had been covered by the Communities Officer and during that time a temporary Communities Officer had been in post. The Team had engaged on a 1 year contract a Communities Assistant and the part time Communities Assistant was retiring.

Youth Engagement Project

Work was continuing on this project to liaise with community organisations that provided youth provision in Letchworth. The next step would be to bring all of these organisations together to help them provide best quality service by working together, networking and sharing resources where necessary.

Cycle Rack Project

This project had been funded by Section 106 funding. Due to the regulations attached to this type of funding, it was sometimes difficult to find projects that Section 106 funds could be spent on resulting in many small sums being unspent for several years.

One of the ways that projects were identified was that the Communities Team were informed of a need by a community group.

The Communities Team held regular meeting with the Planning Department to discuss potential projects and identify any Section 106 funding that may be available.

In this case Transition Towns Letchworth and a number of schools had approached the Communities Team and advised that there was a need for more cycle racks around the Town.

This was discussed with the Planning Department, who identified several sums of Section 106 funding allocated to sustainable transport. The total of these funds was not sufficient to fund a large-scale project such as a cycle lane and the provision of cycle racks was considered a suitable project to utilise the funding.

This project supported sustainable transport in Letchworth by encouraging people to cycle on shorter journeys, which would lead to less traffic on the roads, and less parking issues.

The project was well underway with a two-tier cycle rack at the Leisure Centre, and several schools with cycle stands already provided.

The outstanding racks needed new bases, but these could not be completed until the weather improved.

Lordship Farm School should be added to the list of outstanding jobs.

They were continuing to work with Letchworth Garden City Heritage foundation and the County Council to identify sites around the Town Centre where cycle racks could be placed.

There would also be a cycle rack in the rear car park of the Council Offices and cycle hoops at the front of the building for public use.

Members were very concerned that there were no plans to discuss the locations for cycle rack around the Town Centre with this Committee.

Members were extremely concerned that the process followed of community groups talking to the Communities Team, who then discussed it with the Planning Department resulted in £100,000 being spent on this project.

It was suggested that, if Members and the community had been advised of the amount of money available, other projects may have been identified.

Members acknowledged that this was money received from developers and that the Letchworth Committee technically had no role to play in decisions regarding spending of the funds, but there was no evidence that any other options for spending of this money had been considered.

Members suggested that consideration should have been given to the provision of electric car charging points.

The Chairman advised that an email had been sent to Members of this Committee asking whether there were any schools needing cycle racks, although no mention had been made of the total amount available.

The Development and Conservation Manager advised that the monies used for this project had been unspent for many years, with the first amount used being £15,000, which had been received in January 2002 and some of the funds had a payback clause. There had been a long period of time for other projects to be identified.

Year on year the most difficult category of funding to identify projects for had been sustainable transport, therefore, when a deliverable project that would provide a significant amount of infrastructure and would meet all of the criteria was presented, it was a logical outcome.

A Member commented that Section 106 reports had been presented to the Committee in the past and Councillors should interrogate those reports and make suggestions for projects that this money could be spent on.

A Member stated that the schools and North Herts Homes should provide cycle racks themselves rather than use Section 106 funding.

Members noted that there was currently approximately £2.5 million in Section 106 funding.

The Development and Conservation Manager advised that most of the Section 106 funding was not discretionary and that the discretionary element of the funding was reducing each year.

Some Members remained concerned that there was no democratic accountability or input in the spending of Section 106 funding and felt that Members should have the opportunity to comment on proposed schemes.

The Development and Conservation Manager directed attention to Recommendation 1.3 of the repot entitled Section 106 and Unilateral Undertakings, which had been agreed by this Committee each and every year.

There was some discussion regarding what evidence had been supplied as to the contribution that cycle racks would make to sustainable transport and the decision process used for identifying projects and allocating Section 106 funding.

Budgets

Section 10 of the report detailed how much money was in the Committee budgets.

The 2016/17 budget had now been spent together with a small amount of the 2017/18 budget. The Council had set the 2018/19 budget at £13,500

In respect of the 2017/18 budget, the Communities Officer suggested that Members may wish to consider allocating any unspent funds to Community Initiatives.

Members noted that they had previously agreed that the £1,000 allocated to Impact Youth Club be placed back into the base budget.

Councillor Cunningham, Executive Member for Finance and IT advised that he did not agree with the suggestion to allocate funds to an unspecified project and queried whether it would be constitutional.

There was a provision to write off unallocated amounts and, in the past, the Executive Member for Finance and IT had taken the decision not to enact that provision.

The situation was different this year in that there were large sums of unspent funds in Area Committee budgets, having said that, a decision regarding this would not be taken until the end if the financial year.