Issue - meetings

Graham Palmer (Infrastructure Strategy Commissioning Lead) informed the committee that this statement was required following an amendment to the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) Legislation which was amended in 2019. This amendment required that any local authority that receives developer contributions (S106) to publish the details of that for the previous financial year. The statement will be considered by Cabinet in December and published on the County Council website prior to 2022.  

In response to Councillor Humphreys, Graham Palmer clarified that all S106 money is provided for a specific purpose. For example, where there is a development in North Warwickshire, the council will assess the local capacity in schools and may make a request for the S106 money to go towards education capacity. This money provided could only go towards education capacity in North Warwickshire. They may be instances where they get S106 funding from several developments to go towards one large issue. Following a supplementary from Councillor Humphreys, Graham Palmer said that the council charge indexation for any of their contributions received using the national index which looks at the inflation in terms of the cost of delivering infrastructure. When the S106 is signed, there is a base amount of the contribution plus the indexation up to the point of that the contributions are paid by the developer. Therefore, they account for inflation with the indexation that the council charges developers. 

Mark Ryder added that with extreme price pressures, availability, materials, workforce issues, and driver issues, cost can go up beyond indexation in specific sectors.  

In response to Councillor Chilvers, Graham Palmer stated that the 2019 amendment strengthened the case for county councils to ask for monitoring fees; the amount secured for monitoring depends on what S106 agreements were signed so the amount received monitoring depends on the estimated officer time spent on monitoring that agreement. Variance of the amount would be expected over the years, the amount that should be secured is done by a formula. Following a supplementary from Councillor Chilvers, Graham Palmer stated there it was disputed where some of their projects sat (highways or transport) but more clarification would be done with the transport section for future reports. 

In response to the Chair, Graham Palmer stated that no S106 money was returned in the previous financial year and any fund returns would be included in the report.  

Resolved: 

That the Communities Overview and Scrutiny Committee comment on the Annual Infrastructure Funding Statement attached as Appendix 2 and provide suggestions for improvement for future Statements.