Nearly £15 million intended to improve Herefordshire’s roads, schools and affordable housing is sitting unspent – and the figure is still going up, according to a city representative.
Liberal Democrat member for College ward Coun Ben Proctor has twice pressed the county chiefs on so-called section 106 funding from developers, intended to pay for “planning gain” works locally as the price for getting larger building schemes approved.
Having first raised the matter in July, he was told by Cabinet member for culture and environment Coun Elissa Swinglehurst that the council was sitting on £5.9 million for education projects, £5.3 million for highways and transport and £3.7 million for leisure and sports – a total of £14.9 million.
But she claimed: “The levels of unspent S106 money will continue to reduce as our work intensifies.”
Coun Proctor challenged this, claiming the backlog had grown from £13 million at the start of the current administration, and that such money still “comes in at a faster rate than it is spent”.
Coun Swinglehurst agreed it was “very important to see these infrastructure and mitigation projects delivered in a timely fashion”.
Then earlier this month, Coun Proctor again pressed leaders on what action was being taken over the unspent S106 cash.
He was told the council had brought in several procedural changes including having its officers attend parish and town council meetings and liaising with local bodies “to ensure priorities are understood and schemes are appropriately scoped at an early stage”.
Coun Proctor pressed on how long it would take the council to bring the outstanding sum down to £7 million – roughly where it had been in 2019.
Coun Swinglehurst said that early indications from the current financial year “are very positive, but clearly we’ll be keeping that under review”.
Coun Proctor said afterwards: “I don’t think the situation has really changed.
“There are many small projects but they are important, not just nice-to-have, and they need managers to deliver them. So it’s about having the right people, and that costs money.”
His party colleague and LibDem group leader Coun Terry James earlier highlighted the case of a promised school road crossing in Kington for which S106 funding had been earmarked 14 years ago but which remains unbuilt.
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