Issue - meetings

Report of the Director of Planning and Development enclosed.

Decision made

1.     To approve the request to appoint the consultant on the Town Deal Project via a delegated Executive Member Decision to be made by the Leader.

2.     That Cabinet notes the forecast expenditure of up to £200k against the £2.774m capital budget approved at Council on 19 May 2021.

The Leader of the Council presented a report to establish and identify the reasons for appointing the professional design team discipline – quantity surveying (QS) and procurement support via a delegated Executive Member Decision.

Decision made

1.     To approve the request to appoint the consultant on the Town Deal Project via a delegated Executive Member Decision to be made by the Leader.

2.     That Cabinet notes the forecast expenditure of up to £200k against the £2.774m capital budget approved at Council on 19 May 2021.

Reasons for Decision

1.     To ensure the consultant appointment aligns with the business case development.

2.     To support the delivery of the Town Deal – business case development process.

3.     To ensure the project is able to deliver detailed and comprehensive business cases in line with the Town Deal programme and to expedite the release of the capital funding.

4.     To allow for the project team to complete the delivery of Stage 2 business case development process for timely submission to the Town Deal Fund.

Alternative options considered and rejected

The alternative option was to wait until the next Cabinet on 14 July 21 to approve the decision to appoint the consultant. However this has been rejected as the work to be undertaken by the consultant requires feeding into the business development process as soon as possible, to allow the consultant working on developing the 3 business cases to be able to deliver a comprehensively detailed and informative business case for funding by the programme submission date.

The 3 projects taken forward as previously communicated include

                                                    i.     Town Centre Transformation

                                                   ii.     Market Regeneration

                                                 iii.     BASE 2 development

The deadline for development and submission of all 3 business cases is 24^th March 2022 and has been set by the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG).