Decisions about where money raised by new developments should be spent should not be made behind closed doors, it has been claimed.
Shropshire Council’s cabinet discussed how it spends Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) money at a meeting yesterday.
And Lib Dem group leader Roger Evans said he was not in favour of council officers making the decisions behind closed doors.
CIL money is raised when developers are asked to pay a contribution to community schemes when they are given planning permission.
It was revealed earlier this month that there is insufficient money in the pot to pay for all identified infrastructure priorities in the county.
But the cabinet passed a motion that the current arrangements remain unchanged and a meeting will be called to identify priority projects.
But Councillor Evans said a number of people he had spoken to were not happy with the way the scheme is being run.
He said: “People in a number of parishes I have spoken to are not happy with the arrangements and the decisions should not be taken behind closed doors.
“People can apply for the money to be spent on certain community projects but decisions are being taken in secret behind closed doors.
“It is not good to have these decisions taken by delegated powers and I do not agree with that.”
But council leader Peter Nutting said he did not believe that people were unhappy with how it worked.
“I have spoken with the Shropshire Association of Local Councils and they are perfectly happy with how the decisions are taken and how the process works.”
In her report to councillors, Gemma Davies, assistant director of economic growth at the council, said: “CIL is a charge on new development to help fund supporting infrastructure across Shropshire.
“It is accepted that there are insufficient CIL funds to support all identified infrastructure priorities for the county.
“In addition, the allocation of CIL is relatively complex: Shropshire Council is the only CIL charging authority that splits CIL into local and strategic, as all others have a single pot.
“Further, CIL local is currently administered on the basis of expressions of interest from towns and parishes for projects, which effectively means it operates as a sort of ‘grant’ application process, although this was never the intention for the fund; the original intention was to allocate funds in a more strategic and planned way.”
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