Issue - meetings

Report of the Director of Transition, York and North Yorkshire LEP

Considered –

A report by James Farrar, Interim Director of Transition, York and North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership, regarding the allocation of an initial £9,681,071 of funding to a programme of brownfield housing projects that would help to remove the barriers to the building of new homes across York and North Yorkshire.  Agreement was also sought for reopening the call for further brownfield housing projects to enable the Brownfield Housing Fund to be fully utilised and delivered by 31 March 2025.

James Farrar introduced the report and gave an overview of the key points, as summarised below:

·       The word “Shortlisting” should be removed from the title of the paper

·       £12.7m of funding has been awarded over 2023/24 and 2024/25 to support the building of new homes on brownfield land, to be delivered by March 2025; the Committee were asked to approve £9.68m now

·       700 new homes would be delivered, of which 250 were affordable

·       Approval was also sought for £504k for independent legal and project management costs, 4% of the fund

·       A new call for projects had been proposed for the outstanding £3m.  Since the report was written the Government had confirmed that it would be possible to carry a third of the funding to 2025/26 due to the delays with creating the CA and therefore it was proposed to put on hold re-opening the call for projects and bring back a revised timeline reflecting the new deadline.

City of York Councillor Paula Widdowson attended the meeting and asked a question on behalf of residents and councillors in relation to the Lowfield site.  Councillor Widdowson asked if the funding would be sufficient to deliver the three undeveloped plots on the site, which had been stalled for a couple of years.  James Farrar advised that all the business cases had been independently appraised and the recommendation was that the site was deliverable.  Bryn Roberts advised that the funding would be devolved to CYC, which would be responsible for delivering the project, rather than the CA.

The voting members of the committee indicated their unanimous support for the recommendations in the report.

Resolved –

That     (1) £9,681,071 in principle be allocated (noting that £504,071 is towards programme management costs), subject to the following conditions being met:

1.     Establishment of the MCA,

2.     Further due diligence and contractual agreements with project applicants;

            (2) the Director of Transition be given delegated responsibility to provide final sign-off on the proposed investment (once the above conditions have been met); and the ability to approve any minor adjustments to grant funding amounts to projects; and

            (3) the Director of Resource for the MCA be given delegated responsibility to accept the Brownfield Housing Fund allocation from DLUHC.