Issue - meetings

Councillors will review the projects received noting that the decisions will be taken by the Executive Councillor for Open Spaces in January 2023.

The Committee received a report from the Public Realm Engineering & Project Delivery Team Leader.

The report provided information on eligibility, funding criteria and funding budgets for the Environmental Improvement Programme (EIP).

The Public Realm Engineering & Project Delivery Team Leader said paragraphs 3.1 and 3.3 appeared to contradict each other. When the EIP was reviewed in 2019 funding would be available from both a central pot and local area pots devolved and divided between the four Area Committees.

The Committee made the following comments in response to the report:

      i.         Supported projects for:

a.    Hanging baskets.

b.    The Royal British Legion.

c.    War memorials.

d.    Drinking fountains.

e.    Nightingale Park Pavilion.

    ii.         Councillors sometimes used their own time and finances to support projects. It was hard to be re-imbursed.

   iii.         Funding could be allocated to individual wards and/or councillors so they did not have to compete with each other and filter out viable projects at an early stage of the process.

  iv.         Ward events to engage residents in EIP did not always fit into program deadlines. Queried how to feed in project ideas if people missed corporate deadlines?

The Public Realm Engineering & Project Delivery Team Leader said the following in response to Members’ questions:

      i.         Details about progress of previous EIP projects were listed in the Officer’s report and on the EIP webpage. Officers were happy to give further details if Councillors contacted them directly.

    ii.         EIP was a capital not a revenue scheme. Projects that applied for grants, but did not meet criteria, would not receive funding. Officers were unable to allocated grants to more hanging basket schemes. Likewise projects who provided insufficient details would not receive funding, this could be rectified if they submitted more information.

   iii.         As EIP was a capital scheme there were limited officer resources to process applications hence one bidding round per year. Revenue schemes may have a different approach. Officers signposted people to alternative funding streams if they did not get EIP grants. For example Nightingale Pavilion was more suitable for s106 funding.

  iv.         The Executive Councillor for Planning Policy and Infrastructure was keen to install drinking fountains near City Council buildings to get infrastructure economies of scale when installing in different wards.

    v.         The Executive Councillor for Open Spaces, Food Justice and Community Development would listen to Area Committees’ comments about their priorities than make an out of cycle decision on how to allocate funding. Councillors could also contact her direct to support schemes. There would be no other public meetings to hear councillor’s views. The purpose of tonight’s meeting (as with other Area Committees in November/December) was for Councillors to discuss the merit of schemes and support ones that Councillors wished to take forward.

  vi.         Other Area Committees had more projects than funding, so chose to support ‘green’ Cost Deliverability Eligible Rated projects, then some ‘yellow’ ones if unallocated funding became available. Only South Area had unallocated EIP funding, so overall the EIP was engaging residents well.

 vii.         Unallocated funding could not be rolled forward as the EIP scheme was coming to an end. Councillors could suggest unallocated funding be returned to the central pot if South Area were unable to identify any reserve schemes where to allocate funding if ‘green’ ones did not come forward.