Issue - meetings

Report by the Director of Communities, Economy and Transport

4.1       The Lead Member considered a report by the Director of Communities, Economy and Transport.

DECISIONS

4.2       The Lead Member RESOLVED to (1)  Note the final 2020/21 spend for the Local Growth Fund programme and the amount of funds re-profiled into the East Sussex County Council Capital Programme;

(2)  Note the final 2020/21 spend for the Getting Building Fund programme and the amount of funds re-profiled into the East Sussex County Council Capital Programme;

(3)        Note the final 2020/21 spend for the Growing Places Fund programme and the amount of funds re-profiled into the East Sussex County Council Capital Programme;

(4)  Agree the confirmed scheme spend profiles for the Local Growth Fund programme for the 2021/22 financial year;

(5)   Agree the confirmed scheme spend profiles for the Getting Building Fund programme for the 2021/22 financial year; and

(6)  Agree the confirmed scheme spend profiles for the Growing Places Fund programme for the 2021/22 financial year.

Reasons

4.3       Taking into consideration the severe impact of Covid on the delivery of capital infrastructure programmes, East Sussex has continued to be successful in delivering across the Local Growth Fund (LGF), Getting Building Fund (GBF) and Growing Places Fund (GPF) projects, with some slippage in spend in 2020/21 as referred to in section 2 of the report.

4.4       In most cases this slippage was initially anticipated to be short-term in nature with spend occurring in the early quarters of the 2021/22 financial year. However, the Covid-19 pandemic and the ensuing restrictions put in place since March 2020, has had a major impact on the delivery of LGF and GBF schemes across East Sussex and the wider South East Local Enterprise Partnership (SELEP) area, resulting in further slippage across the board on many of the schemes.

4.5       Mitigation has been put in place including: utilising the capital swap option in the SELEP Accountability and Assurance Framework to swap out LGF spend for local authority capital programmes; seeking approval to extend spend and delivery beyond the original Growth Deal deadline of March 2021; and providing interest free flexibility on the repayments of the GPF loans.