Agenda item

The Leader presented the extensive Capital Programme, investing across the authority in areas such as schools, heritage assets, energy efficiency schemes, invest to save programmes and investing in the regeneration of the city centre. 

This report built on the investment already approved by Capital with a request to add an additional £3.915 million to the programme to further enable the delivery of the Councils Corporate Plan priorities, the majority of which was in relation to the acceleration of the Cardiff Capital Region City Deal (“City Deal”).  It also provided the latest forecasts on expenditure on this year’s schemes and slippage of budget spend into future years, which was identified.

Cabinet was asked to approve an additional £3.915 million to the overall programme, mainly for accelerated spending by the Cardiff City Deal Region.  As a member of the city deal, we were required to both provide capital funds to it as well as fund any cash-flow funding if spent in advance of Treasury funding. The latest business plan was reviewed and approved by the city deal Cabinet recently and approved the acceleration of spend.  Whilst overall spending would remain within the agreed overall funding envelope, all Councils in the city region would need to fund this sooner than was originally planned.  The original plan for city deal spending was being incurred each year up until 2026/27 but the new plan would see this expenditure bought forward to end in 2022/23.  The revenue impact would therefore span many years and whereas this was steadily increasing up until 2026/27, it would accelerate and increase up until 2023/24, which would need to be factored into our budget planning for the next two financial years within our MTFP.  Clearly, this was an ambitious acceleration of spending, in difficult circumstances and would be carefully monitored.  The table showing the capital programme reflected this addition and the resulting budget this year was just under £32 million with an overall programme of nearly £211 million.

In terms of monitoring spend, the report confirmed a relatively low spending of just over £11 million on a budget of just under £32 million. This pattern was not uncommon but clearly, the challenging context for progressing schemes and resulting unavoidable slippage this year was understood.  As part of the review of forecasts, budget/project managers identified nearly £4.6m of budget slippage which was requested to be carried forward now into future year budgets.  The table showing the capital programme reflected this and the resulting budget this year was just under £32 million.

Comments from Cabinet:

Councillor Giles highlighted that the schools tied in with the comments on investment proposals in particular 21st Century Schools and Band B were match funded by Welsh Government and although this was not enough, the Council was doing the best we could considering all the improvements and developments taking place within Education.  This was a good representation of our commitment to Newport residents.

Agreed:

That Cabinet

1.     Approved the additions and amendments to the Capital Programme requested in the report (Appendix A)

2.     Approved slippage of £4,568k into future years

3.     Noted the update on the remaining capital resources (‘headroom’) up to and including 2022/23

4.     Noted the capital expenditure forecast position as at November 2020

5.     Noted the balance of and approve the allocation of in-year capital receipts