Issue - meetings

Central Morecambe Regeneration - Towards Engagement of a Developer Partner and Delivery

Meeting: 11/02/2014 - Cabinet (Item 86)

86 Central Morecambe Regeneration – Delivering the Morecambe Area Action Plan PDF 124 KB

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Hanson)

Report of the Chief Officer (Regeneration & Planning)

Additional documents:

Minutes:

(Cabinet Member with Special Responsibility Councillor Hanson)

Cabinet received a report from the Chief Officer (Regeneration & Planning) to consider how the City Council could implement the Morecambe Area Action Plan as one element in delivering the Council’s priorities for economic growth.

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

	Option 1:Do Nothing – progress with ad hoc reactive approach	Option 2:Undertake a new preferred developer competition	Option 3:Engage with Carillion(PREFERRED OPTION)
Advantages	Minimum officer input “up-front” Maintains flexibility and ability to be opportunistic Allows market to dictate pace of development	Provides opportunity to promote comprehensive development and maximise the contribution of public assets Widest range ideas/proposals	Provides opportunity to promote comprehensive development and maximise the contribution of public assets Simpler process taking advantage of county procurement exercise Known developer with good track record and access to necessary resources Ability to undertake feasibility, demand work “up-front” at risk (although this may need under-writing by the public sector
Disadvantages	Reactive piecemeal approach less attractive to major developers Less opportunity to integrate and maximise benefits of public assets	Relatively complicated and time consuming process Requires more “up-front” council involvement	Still areas to address in terms of procurement and state aid Narrows field to one developer
Risks	Competing sites come forward sooner and undermine viability of central sites	No guarantee that necessary quality of developer will be secured	Carillion decide that this is not a proposal they wish to pursue and council has to revert to one of the other options

There are 3 main options to how the City Council might respond to the commercial opportunities and interests currently expressed for central Morecambe:

Option 1 - Adopt anad hoc reactive approach and treat with potential developers on a reactive and opportunist basis (subject to property disposal rules).

Option 2 - The City Council could seek engagement with a major developer partner to bring forward commercial ideas and partnership interest in a formal way. Given the extent of publicly owned assets in the central area there is potential to explore a range of delivery arrangements/approaches. Securing a developer partner to the stage where a proposal is on the table which covers all council objectives, requirements and legal/procurement issues points to the need for a ‘complex’ OJEU (European Union) compliant procurement process, such as Competitive Dialogue (CD). CD is a non-standard procurement approach to ensure that, to the best of its ability, the council ensures its objectives and statutory obligations can be met efficiently, effectively and legally. The procurement process would need to be highly structured, resource intensive and include for specialist advice to reduce the risk of legal challenge associated with undertaking complex procurements.

Option 3 (Preferred Option) - the County Council has already undertaken an OJEU compliant exercise to appoint Carillion as its strategic partner for the delivery of a range of regeneration and property services for East and North Lancashire. It is suggested that ... view the full minutes text for item 86