Agenda and minutes

via Teams, Lead Member for Strategic Management and Economic Development - Tuesday, 15th December, 2020 10.30 am

Venue: Committee Room, County Hall, Lewes. View directions

Contact: Simon Bailey Democratic Services Officer

Note: ++ The Lead Member will not be present in person, but will take the decisions remotely ++

Items

No.

Item

25.

Decisions made by the Lead Cabinet Member on 4 December 2020 PDF 102 KB

Minutes:

25.1 The Lead Member confirmed as a correct record the minutes of the meeting held on 4 December 2020.

26.

Disclosure of Interests

Disclosure by all Members present of personal interests in matters on the agenda, the nature of any interest and whether the Members regard the interest as prejudicial under the terms of the Code of Conduct.

Minutes:

26.1 Councillor Rupert Simmons declared a personal interest in Item 4, in that he is a Director of Sea Change Sussex, but he did not consider this to be prejudicial.

27.

Reports

Minutes:

27.1 Reports referred to in the minutes below are contained in the minute book.

28.

Local Growth Fund, Growing Places Fund and Getting Building Fund financial statement - confirmed spend for 2019/20 and forecast for 2020/21 PDF 492 KB

Report by the Director of Communities, Economy and Transport

Minutes:

28.1 The Lead Member considered a report by the Director of Communities, Economy and Transport, together an amended Appendix 1, set out below.

Scheme	Total LGF Allocation all Years	19/20 Final spend	LGF Carried forward from 18/19	Grant Drawn Down in 19/20	Transfer to ESCC Capital Programme (mitigation option 4)	Unused funds slipped without mitigation (as mitigated in previous financial years)
North Bexhill Access Road	£18,600,000	£0	£0	£0	£0	£0
Queensway Gateway Road	£10,000,000	£1,066,000	£1,066,000	£0	£0	£500,000
East Sussex Strategic Growth Package	£8,200,000	£350,000	£350,000	£0	£0	£0
Hastings Bexhill Movement & Access Package	12,000,000	£1,316,349	£0	£1,345,000	£28,651	£0
Eastbourne/South Wealden Walking and Cycling Package	£6,600,000	£450,841	£0	£577,000	£126,159	£347,000
Hailsham/Polegate/Eastbourne Movement and Access Corridor	£2,100,000	£472,987	£0	£601,000	£128,013	£0
Eastbourne Town Centre Movement and Access Package	£8,000,000	£749,000	£0	£749,000	£0	£0
Plumpton College – Rural Skills for Business Post Brexit	£2,918,000	£228,906	£0	£384,000	£155,094	£0
Sidney Little Road Business Incubator Hub, Hastings	£500,000	£65,315	£0	£192,000	£126,685	£0
Bexhill Creative Workspace	£960,000	£13,949	£0	£700,000	£686,051	£0
Bexhill Enterprise Park North	£1,940,000	£0	£0	£440,000	£440,000	£0
TOTALS	£65,500,000	£4,713,347	£1,416,000	£4,988,000	£1,690,653	£847,000

DECISIONS

28.2 The Lead Member RESOLVED to (1) Note the final 2019/20 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 2019/20 spend for the Growing Places Fund programme and the amount of funds re-profiled into the East Sussex County Council Capital Programme;

(3) Agree the confirmed scheme spend profiles for the Local Growth Fund programme for the 2020/21 financial year;

(4) Agree the confirmed scheme spend profiles for the Growing Places Fund programme for the 2020/21 financial year; and

(5) Agree the confirmed scheme spend profiles for the Getting Building Fund programme for the 2020/21 financial year.

Reasons

28.3 East Sussex have been successfully delivering across both the Local Growth Fund and Growing Places Fund projects, with some slippage in spend in 2019/20. In most cases this slippage was anticipated to be of a short-term nature with spend occurring in the early quarters of the 2020/21 financial year. However, since, the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic and the ensuing restrictions put in place in March 2020, this has had a major impact on the delivery of LGF schemes across the SELEP area.

28.4 Mitigation has been put in place including utilising the SELEP Assurance Framework ‘Option 4’ provision to swap out Local Growth Fund monies 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 Growing Places Fund loans.

28.5 Through the Getting Building Fund programme, East Sussex has also been successful in securing much needed investment to the area across eight new projects delivering a diverse array of outputs supporting a much needed boost to the local economic recovery over the next 18 months in particular the creation of ... view the full minutes text for item 28.