Agenda item

S Jayasinghe presented.

S Jayasinghe said that that this year 17/18 was really good and income exceeded expectation.

Cllr Birnie asked if the CIL division that was highlighted was a statutory decision and S Jayasinghe confirmed that it was. In view of this Cllr Birnie enquired why the task group would be taking suggestions for CIL expenditure if everything was already pre-determined. J Doe explained that the current report was about known priorities in connection with the local plan. A new business plan will be produced which would give us a clearer position on the amount of infrastructure needed to match the amount of growth anticipated through to 2036. Once we are in receipt of that it may be that the priorities have to change. In terms of the task and finish arrangements they are not there to determine expenditure on CIL as we already have a mechanism to do this.  Cabinet approved it in the form of a working group to look at this with representation from other bodies including the County Council and other infrastructure providers sitting on that to make recommendations back to Cabinet then Council about spend. There will be more information once we have the result of this work.

Cllr Anderson asked if it was known how much we hadn’t received in relation to CIL receipts – when we first started we did struggle to collect quite a large amount.

S Jayasinghe replied that a lot of work tightening up on this has been done our debt recovery and payments to date have been good. There are some outstanding debits but nothing older than 6 months

Cllr Anderson asked if the only one that was outstanding was the Beacon Development in Apsley.   J Doe explained that development has not yet started so it is not yet due.

Cllr Anderson said that on the point of expenditure he was slightly concerned with an issue in Berkhamsted which a letter in the local paper suggested that a major improvement that was necessary was being held back because no CIL funding was being released to make it happen, and he thought it may have involved the surgery although he cannot remember. He added that although he knows we are not going to get the amount of money through CIL that we need he wonders whether he wonders if we could take a tiny proportion of it to get some big wins and whether there was any opportunity to do that.

James Doe made the point that the issue mentioned was thoroughly debated internally and it was about re-organising provision in Berkhamsted. He said that in terms of ongoing spend the process for the infrastructure advisory group takes place in Spring and that would be the time for further debate. There will be letters going out to seek bids into the process. CIL is a very small proportion of spend and the gap is really huge so we have to be careful how we spend the money.

Cllr Matthews asked that with regard to the new timetable when will the letters be going out and who is going to get them.

S Jayasinghe answered that they had not gone out yet, but previously we have had 3 expressions of interest all for projects of around 6 million pounds and at the time we had not even received a million pounds. We need to run in in parallel with the infrastructure delivery plan and the local plan to ensure that we are targeting the right ones.  The letters will go out to all those who have expressed an interest previously, stakeholders in the area through the Parish Councils and we will publicise it widely through the website and other places.

Cllr Matthews asked if these expressions of interest could be broken down and reviewed so that we can look at individual items that may have significant effect on a particular part of Dacorum but are not going to cost the entire CIL fund.

J Doe explained that expressions of interest have not been accepted at the moment as the decision was taken not to spend any of the CIL so it will be what is put forward next year.

Cllr Birnie asked the meaning of the paragraph (9.4 Page 188) regarding exceptional circumstances. .

S Jayasinghe replied that if someone comes with a really good case in terms of viability or any exceptional circumstance why they should not pay a CIL we can choose to apply that policy.

Cllr Birnie went on to ask about the last paragraph which on page 189 S106 allocations and asked for assurance that members will be asked to approve this.

J Doe replied that a lot collected under S106 goes to County because a lot of it is transport or education related etc., there is a proportion for things in the S106 agreement which are the responsibility of different departments and services throughout the Borough Council. It would be the responsibility of each managing officer to liaise with their portfolio holder about the expenditure. The level of expenditure will determine whether it needs member approval. A lot of the decisions are taken at the planning application stage, a lot of the spend is prescribed within the S106 agreement. Members have a role in that through the Development Management Committee.  The Government plans to bring in derestriction on pooling which the Government is planning to bring in which is intended to be operational by the start of the new business year in 2019. This will enable us to group together lots of very small contributions we have taken all over the place. We will then need to review the process of S106 spend.

Cllr Anderson said that his understanding was that we were going to apply S106 to Affordable Housing only and that would limit the scope of members getting involved in decisions.

S Jayasinghe replied that it largely applies to Affordable Housing and there is no policy restriction around that if it is listed on our regulation 123 list and not listed as an exception we can’t collect S106 for that item.

Cllr Anderson asked about neighbourhood plans and the local community getting 25% off CIL rather than 15%, could we make it clear that you cannot use neighbourhood plans in the villages to try and get out of the Green Belt pressures that we are all under.

J Doe confirmed that this is the case.

Cllr Hicks said that on Appendix 3 there is a list of monies allocated to the different areas and he asked if there was a breakdown of where the money was allocated to and where it came from.

S Jayasinghe confirmed that she could provide that information.

Cllr Anderson proposed that the report was approved and welcomed the work that had been put into it.

The Committee agreed.