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Agenda item

Infrastructure Funding Statement 2023/24

Purpose:

To note the West Oxfordshire Infrastructure Funding Statement (IFS) for 2023/24.

 

Recommendations:

That the Committee resolves to:

1.    Agree any recommendations it wishes to submit to the Executive on 20 November 2024.

 

Invited:

Councillor Hugo Ashton, Executive Member for Planning

Chris Hargraves, Planning Policy Manager

Jasper Lamoon, Infrastructure Delivery Lead

 

Minutes:

The Executive Member for Planning introduced the Head of Planning and the Infrastructure Delivery Lead. The report provided greater clarity on the receipt and use of developer contributions including Section 106 planning obligations to fund new and enhanced infrastructure in support of planned growth. As such, the IFS helped to support several aims and objectives of the Council Plan.

 

It was to be noted that the Section 106 annual report was not included as details could not be shared due to not being contractually determined; however, £13m was held and £8.9 was unallocated and most were earmarked to specific projects.

 

S106 was to mitigate impacts of development on a locality that was specifically earmarked in a legal agreement to meet a specific identified need and was applied when delivering development once the impact of development could be seen.  There was a very specific process for allocating it for projects needed a request. There was a breakdown in table 7 and there was evidence that sports play and leisure were very good at proving need and requesting money.

 

It was to be noted that the 2006 scheme became unviable and needed further funding and money was received much later on. There were no spend deadlines, however; it was used on long-term projects. Monies were being received from 2014-2021 and all instalments were needed before it could be spent.  The council were actively working on projects for 2025 to 2026 and nothing would be lost.

 

The following points and suggestions were noted by the Committee:

·         CIL money was not always index linked and the Council did not sit on the money for long.

·         S106 money was project specific and if it could not go to a specific project the it would go to a department and work would be done with the local community on how to allocate it and legal agreements would be looked at as part of that process.

·         CIL would be introduced and submitted to an examiner before Christmas. CIL could be more flexible and capture smaller developments. West Oxford District Council (WODC) could define how it was spent and as part of the IFS which would be used to set out priorities and a list of schemes would be drawn out of it.

·         Any contribution to a community needed to be evidence based and would need to requested at the application stage internally. Once the money was received the Parish Council would be informed and the council would work with them on delivering it to a specific project or area on infrastructure which could be flexible on needs.

·         There would be a review of if CIL could be used for sustainable transport etc. if proper evidence base that were defendable at appeal could be set up.  There will be aim to ensure no money was lost by working with internal teams, tracking and chasing and ensure good accountancy procedures to actively manage it. However, it could not be guaranteed that schemes would not fail to unviability.

 

·         CIL and S106 were intended to coexist. However, this became unclear when there were larger schemes involved. For example, with Salt Cross there was  £90m of S106 towards top end and then no room to charge CIL beyond that.

·         A more proactive approach was required working with Town and Parish Councils in regards to S106/CIL as information would be contained on the website and a spending plan would be shared to Members.

·         Officers would look back to how much CIL was given back in the last five years.

 

RESOLVED that the Committee noted the report and it was agreed that there were no recommendations to the Executive on 20 November 2024.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Supporting documents:

 

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