Agenda item

A report was considered which provided the Board with current performance information on Housing and Infrastructure programmes being delivered on behalf of the MCA.

Members were informed that the SYMCA currently had 21 live capital projects which fell within the remit of the Housing and Infrastructure Board.  The projects were funded by four funding streams:

·       Brownfield Housing Fund (BHF)

·       Getting Britain Building Fund (GBF)

·       Gainshare Funding

·       Legacy Local Growth Fund (LGF)

The report gave an overview of the performance of programmes and the projects within them and highlighted management actions being taken to mitigate risks.

S Sykes informed the Board that latest forecasts were predicting an underspend of £43.35m.  Of this, £24.51m related to Gainshare funded activity which could be re-profiled into future years.  The remaining £19.2m was funded through conditional grants from government and consent would be required to roll forward the funding to future periods.

The graph at 2.1 of the report highlighted the forecast full year expenditure profiles set against the baseline targets.

The GBF and Brownfield baseline target were set by government and required in-year allocations to be fully defrayed within the financial year.

Concerns had been growing over the pace of some areas of the expenditure. 

The issue was systemic across partners, largely reflecting pressures arising from the volume of activity and supply chain issues.  Despite those issues good progress was being made to ensure that the full allocation of GBF funding was defrayed and projects delivered by March 2022.

A graph at 2.4 of the report showed the milestone status of the projects.  Members noted that ideally at this stage of the year the weight of projects would be in FBC processes, or in contract negotiation or delivery.

The graphic indicated a healthy pipeline of projects but the weight of projects at early stage development highlighted the increasing likelihood that expenditure targets would be missed.

The pace of delivery was being affected by a number of issues including supply chain pressures which were creating cost inflation and time delays.  This was across all partners and areas.

The main concern at the moment was the BHF fund programme where government had set a £20m spend target for 2021/22.  The graph at 2.7 of the report highlighted the status of projects within that programme which showed that most of the projects were still in the development stage.

Close engagement with partners had given early warning of these issues and work was ongoing to accelerate schemes through process where possible and mitigate risks.

Proposals had been developed for the deployment of the residual £0.25m of Brownfield housing revenue funding to support the acquisition of skills and capacity to help accelerate activity.

It was understood that pressures within the Brownfield programme were being replicated across MCAs nationally; in that context the MCA were engaging with government seeking flexibilities where they may be available.

Cllr Wood queried whether there was any possibility that the underspend could be reallocated to existing projects.

S Sykes replied that it would be possible for Brownfield housing but the project would have to meet the criteria for that funding.

Cllr Fox expressed concerns around the slippage and asked when it would be decided that a project was not going to be delivered which would give the opportunity for other schemes to be put forward, in other words where and when would projects be re-evaluated.

It was felt that this should be looked at in the near future.  The Brownfield project was a 5-year project and the pipeline could be looked at and prioritised.  Gainshare projects could also be looked at to see if they could fit into the fund.

Cllr Fox would raise the matter with the other Leaders to gauge their opinions.  If there were projects that were causing a blockage it would have to be decided how to address this, which could be through a formal Board meeting.

It was decided that a report should be brought to the next meeting to highlight all the problem areas and the cause of the delays.

RESOLVED – That the Board:

i)      Note the report.

ii)        Request that a further report be brought to the next meeting of the Board to highlight the current status of schemes, problem areas and the cause of delays.