Agenda and decisions

Delegated Decisions - Leader - Wednesday, 23rd March, 2016 3.00 pm

Items
No. Item

1.

Landfill Community Fund pdf icon PDF 208 KB

Decision:

Decision Schedule 

Chair of the Cabinet

 

TO ALL MEMBERS OF NEWPORT CITY COUNCIL

 

Decision Schedule published on 23 March 2016

 

The Cabinet Member took the following decision on 23 March 2016. It will take immediate effect,

 

The reasons for this decision to be taken urgently are set out in the report and are as follows:

 

The three requests for funding have been received quite recently during quarter 4.

 

A decision on the funding split couldn’t be made until we had an approximate figure on how much money there would be available by the end of the year as, as per Q3 landfill tax return, there wasn’t enough funding available to cover the three requests, and a reduction in the funds to be awarded puts an additional pressure in these organisation to find external funding as, once the project has been submitted to Entrust for approval, if they are to receive funding they need to implement the project. As such, a reasonable estimate has been only available very recently.

 

The funding will be lost if not allocated and released this financial year. The risk of losing the funding if the funds cannot be released in this financial year means that the approval needs to be granted by 31st March at the latest, thus preventing the report going through the Council’s agreed consultation process.

 

The decision is not subject to the “Call in” Process.

 

In accordance with Standing Order 24 – Urgent Matters, this matter will be forwarded to the Audit Committee.

 

Reports relating to staffing issues/Confidential reports are not circulated to all members of the Council as part of the consultation/call-in processes.

 

 

CoC 01/16

 

Landfill Community Fund 15/16

 

Options considered/Reasons for Decision

 

Under the Landfill Tax Rules the Council is allowed to donate a proportion of the money the Landfill Site would have paid in Landfill Tax to Bodies regulated by the  Landfill Tax Regulator [ENTRUST]. This is the landfill Communities Fund.

 

Entrust’s role is to ensure the proposed activities contribute to the objectives this Fund was created for; they will also monitor that the project is implemented and the funds are correctly spent. Therefore before any funding can be approved and released, any organisation interested in taking part of this scheme needs to register with Entrust and submit the specific project they need funding for to them. Only if approval is granted can the activity go ahead.

 

 

 

 

Only three bids have been received, and it was proposed to award the following (excluding match funding):

 

  • The Friends of Newport's Ornamental Parks-£100,000
  • Maindee Festival Association-£54,000
  • St Woolos Cathedral-up to £54,000 (this project will get the difference between the available funds and the amount requested by the other organisations, up to £54,000, as we do not know what the exact amount of funding available will be yet)

 

Future Opportunities for Bids

 

The Leader of the Council is keen to ensure that the fund is available as widely as possible and that potential applicants are able to formulate an application. To this end  ...  view the full decision text for item 1.