Decision details

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Hanson)

(Councillors Leyshon and Whitehead having both declared pecuniary interests in the following item left the meeting at this point and did not participate in the discussions or vote.)

Cabinet received a report from the Chief Officer (Regeneration & Planning) which sought approval for the governance arrangements for the Bailrigg Garden Village project.

The options, options analysis, including risk assessment and officer preferred option, were set out in the report as follows:

Option 1 is the officer preferred option.  The project is now entering an important stage where significant areas of work need to be commissioned and external funding accounted for and monitored.  Ministers are keen to see progress and the HCA are pressing for formal governance processes to be set up.  Now that the issue of how to treat the university as part of the governance structure has been resolved progress on establishing the structure and putting it into operation needs to occur. 

Councillor Hanson proposed, seconded by Councillor Warriner:-

“That the recommendations, as set out in the report, be approved.”

The Cabinet Members present then voted:-

Resolved unanimously:

(1)             That the Governance Structure for Bailrigg Garden Village illustrated in Appendix C to the report, be approved and put into operation.

(2)             That the Project Plan contained in Appendix B to the report, be noted and the Planning Policy Cabinet Liaison Group be asked to monitor the natural evolution of that plan, with key decisions required against milestones being referred back to Cabinet as appropriate.

(3)             That it be noted that a further £130K bid for top up Capacity Funding was submitted to the Homes and Community Agency in August under delegated authority and that this funding should be accepted by the Council, if successful.

(4)             That delegated authority be given to the Chief Officer (Regeneration and Planning) in agreement with the Chief Officer (Resources) to approve the making and acceptance of further external funding bids as appropriate for project development / capacity purposes only.

(5)             That the General Fund Revenue Budget be updated as appropriate to reflect any additional expenditure and associated funding arising from recommendations 3 and 4, subject to there being a nil impact on the Council’s overall resources.

(6)             That officers report back to Cabinet prior to entering into any commitments beyond those needed to undertake the master planning, infrastructure planning and community consultation alongside the Local Plan process needed to inform the project implementation stage.

Officers responsible for effecting the decision:

Chief Officer (Regeneration & Planning)

Chief Officer (Resources)

Reasons for making the decision:

The Bailrigg Garden Village is the largest single housing land allocation in the Council’s emerging Lancaster District Local Plan, which is due to be recommended for submission to the Secretary of State in December 2017.  The establishment of an appropriate governance process reduces risk to the Council in terms of challenge to its appropriate use of external Government funding, the means by which the Council will use its land assets, and other due diligence requirements for a project of this size. 

Councillors Leyshon and Whitehead returned to the meeting at this point.