Members of the public may ask questions or make statements at this meeting if they have given notice to Melanie Carr of Democratic and Scrutiny Services and supplied the text (contact details below) by midday on Wednesday 3 May 2023, three working days before the day of the meeting. Each speaker should limit themselves to 3 minutes on any item. Members of the public who have given notice will be invited to speak:
· at this point in the meeting if their questions/statements relate to matters which are not otherwise on the Agenda (subject to an overall time limit of 30 minutes);
· when the relevant Agenda item is being considered if they wish to speak on a matter which is on the Agenda for this meeting.
If you are exercising your right to speak at this meeting, but do not wish to be recorded, please inform the Leader who will instruct anyone who may be taking a recording to cease while you speak.
Minutes:
There were no public questions or statements.
Addressing the meeting, Councillor George Jabbour asked:
A number of North Yorkshire-based organisations within and outside the Helmsley and Sinnington division, which I have the privilege of representing, have contacted me about the Community Infrastructure Levy Grant Scheme that Ryedale District Council had run before it ceased to exist a few weeks ago.
I have already highlighted this matter to the appropriate Members of the Executive and Officers. However, it is also important to raise it at this meeting given the significant impact that it has on several organisations within Ryedale.
I will start by setting out the full background:
Following the decision to implement local government reform in North Yorkshire, the Secretary of State issued a Direction under Section 24 of the Local Government Act 2007 to require a number of local councils in North Yorkshire, and also in Cumbria and Somerset which too were going through reorganisation, to obtain the consent of a specified authority before entering into certain types of transactions.
In the case of Ryedale District Council, the appropriate entity was North Yorkshire County Council.
This is a standard process that has been prescribed by law for a long time and has been applied to other local authorities outside North Yorkshire.
After the Direction of the Secretary of State had been issued, Ryedale District Council decided to launch the Community Infrastructure Levy Grant Scheme to fund local projects. However, they did so without receiving Section 24 consent from the appropriate local authority.
The process of the CIL Grant Scheme and associated decisions received significant amount of publicity, including from the local paper, the Gazette & Herald, which thoroughly and diligently reported the facts.
Despite this, a number of organisations applied to the CIL Grant Scheme while incorrectly believing that Ryedale District Council had the authority to award the CIL money. As a result, some of these entities had spent substantial time and resources without realising that their proposals would have to be considered by the new North Yorkshire Council after 31st March 2023.
North Yorkshire Council has a duty to consider each decision that involves spending taxpayer money according to the priorities and needs of the local community. This is what I expect the Council to be meticulously doing with respect to this matter too. This may or may not lead to the same decision that Ryedale District Councillors reached.
Therefore, I do have a great deal of sympathy for the entities that had applied to the Grant Scheme without fully understanding the process or the timeframe and uncertainty involved.
I think that everyone now agrees that Ryedale District Council should have been clearer about the process or should not have proceeded with this scheme in the first instance.
Having looked at the individual projects that the various organisations applied to fund, I believe that these are all excellent. I also believe that Members of the Executive would agree with me that they too would support these projects should there be enough financial resources.
It appears from some of the conversations that I have had and the communications that I have received that some of the applicants to the CIL Grant Scheme are still not fully aware of the process. Therefore, I wonder if it is possible for the Council to write to them to explain and clarify the situation.
Can you also reassure us all that each application will be considered on its own merits based on the priorities and needs of the local community?
In response, Councillor Gareth Dadd, Executive Member for Finance & Resources, thanked Councillor Jabbour for his question and setting out the background to the issue he raised.
He advised the Executive that a report will be brought to it on this matter in due course. It will be considering in detail the merits of each individual case and try to put these into context within the priorities for CIL spending within the whole area, but in particular the Ryedale area. Once the views of officers have been sought in regards to each application, the North Yorkshire Council will be writing to all of the organisations involved, highlighting to them when the report is due to be considered. He felt that the collective priorities with regards to CIL spending should have been taken more into account by Ryedale District Council at the time that the grant scheme was launched.