Agenda and minutes

Members may make any declarations of interest at this point but may also make them at any time during the course of the meeting.

There were no declarations of interest made.

Members were asked to give consideration to a report which sought approval to the procurement of a development partner to assist the Council with the implementation of its Regeneration Delivery Plan for Gainsborough and appropriate aspects of the Land Property agenda in the Commercial Plan 2015-20.  The financial implications of such were detailed in an exempt appendix.

Initially, this would include the development of the Council’s assets in Gainsborough town centre and potentially deliver the Starter Home agenda (if the bid dated 13 May 2016 was successful) with the Homes and Communities Agency.

The procurement process would be conducted in accordance with the competitive dialogue procedure for complex projects (pursuant to Regulation 30 of the Public Contracts Regulations 2015) which allowed development and financial solutions to be fully considered and refined with a shortlist of pre-qualified developers. A key benefit of this procedure was the ability to commence the dialogue with a long list of sites/projects and test the cohesiveness and viability of “the preferred solution”.

The procurement of a development partner was considered integral to the delivery of the Council’s corporate regeneration and commercial agendas (approved by the Council in March 2016). Specifically, it would ensure that the Council's objectives to achieve economic and housing growth were realised, maximising the use of the Council’s asset base and enabling funds to create an appropriate financial return to the Council.

The Council was wanting to procure a development partner that: -

(a)     was looking to invest and work in partnership with the Council over a mid-term period (e.g. for an initial term of five years, with the option to extend to ten years) to promote economic and housing growth and the creation of a self-sustainable Gainsborough;

(b)     would allow the Council to deliver various phases of housing and town centre regeneration projects over this period following an agreement on viability, uses and market demand.

The current outline scope for the Procurement of a partner was shared with Members and set out in Section 1.2 of the report.

To support the information contained within the report and to further expand on the rationale for the proposals, the Strategic Lead for Economic Development and Neighbourhoods and Mr Colin Murray of DWF law gave a detailed presentation to the Committee.

The presentation commenced with the Vision for Gainsborough. The scale of growth required was very ambitious but was supported by an economic evidence base and a sustainable spatial plan.   Master plan analysis had been updated in the last 6 months through a variety of mediums, shared with Members in Section 3.2 of the report 

There were a number of challenges which made Gainsborough’s success in attracting development difficult and supported the need to procure a partner.  These were shared with the Committee and included

•       Challenging Viability - the market alone had been unable to develop the strategic brownfield sites

•       The private sector still required the continued support of the public sector to balance development risk

•       The market appeal of Gainsborough was  ...  view the full minutes text for item 22.