My Parish Council earmarked £170k S106 for a new Bowls Pavilion in 2020. New Chair wants to stop this?

Question

Minuted October 2020 12 for 2 abstentions earmark £170k for the Bowls Pavilion S106 Funding.

Minuted November 2020 set up Working Parties.

In 2022 Post Covid and still with 1 Million Pounds of S106 Funding the Parish Working Party asked the Bowls Club to  the Bowls Club to manage the Pavilion as a community building for four days a week and offered Indoor Community Funding to bridge the financial gap.

The Bowls Club were requested to provide a financial contribution minuted in April / May 2020 which eventually we were able to offer in November 2022 as a 20% contribution towards the whole project. Since then requests in writing to the clerk and at Public Forums for letters to be sent to the Grant Provider have been ignored totally by the Parish Clerk and Chairman?  We have now lost the grant.  and so it goes on.

We have written to our MP and also complained to the Monitoring Officer who of course has supported the council or when the evidence is overpowering has decided it was too long ago to make a judgement.  We can go to the Ombudsman but probably will not get past the first stage!

Answer 1

Insufficent information to provide a meaningful response. Ultimately depends on source (and conditions) of the £170,000. In the absense of any clear conditions a compelling case could be made that the required financial assistance (if wasnt forthcoming for two years) simply wasnt forthcoming. Perhaps they simply lost confidence in the organisation as time passed. A resolution/motion to earmark money to a specific project does not bind a future council to spent it for that purpose.. Some absolutely barking projects were earmarked by predeccessors (from a steam train rerfurb! to rather bizarre planning "fightin fund") which once established thankfully no conditions or restraints (i.e someone donated for specific purpose money etc) we moved it back into sensible areas

Comments

Agree but would also add that the Chair alone cannot make a decision one way or another.  Personally I'd expect any decision taken in 2020 and not completed to be brought back for reconsideration after all this time if only to confirm that it is still the wish of the council to proceed.

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Thank you for your comments. I am the Chair of the Bowls Club. My Parish Council have S106 funding approaching  £1million.  As late as November 2022 a new Parish Council Working Party was formed to move things along.  The joint Working Parties submitted a proposal to Council with a concept design specification and a suggestion to put forward an S73 Planning Variation. Prior to this £10k has already been spent on a Feasibility study and Planning Application Transport and Environmental survey. Following the proposal reply by the Working Party lead at a full Council meeting the Chair went on to say that the Bowls Club had a dwindling membership and he had calculated that on 8 to 9 years time there would not be a Bowls Club!! Totally not true but with Standing Orders not able to interrupt this discriminatory comment
 Since this December 2022 Meeting the situation has deteriorated!

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David - I assume that the council did not approve the proposal put forwards by the Working Party?  I note the comments by the chair, but they are just one person as noted by Dellboy.  if the councillors voted against the motion, there is some work to do to convince them otherwise.   BTW what does it say on the 106 agreement?  Does that agreement specify it is for the Bowls Pavilion of just general use in the village.

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Thanks for your comment. The Agenda item for that Meeting was for the Council Working Party to report. The Chair made his comments after the report was complete. No vote it was agreed that a spec and drawing for the proposal should be included in the next Meeting Agenda. This was forthcoming a concept drawing full technical spec and also a proposal from the Bowls Club. At this meeting there was a resolution for the spec supplier to present a budget figure and also make a presentation to full Council at the next month's meeting. I should say the Vice Chair took this meeting.  At the next Meeting the Clerk did not website the previous minutes until the day of the Meeting and the presentation did not take place instead at the meeting the Chair said that the presentation CEO was "just a salesman" and instead arranged an extraordinary meeting for the near future which had an Agenda to carry out another feasibility and S106 assessment etc. The Meeting was not posted adequately by the Clerk four Councillors turned up plus the three councillors from the Working Party who were there to protest that the Meeting had not been called properly they left after five minutes and the Chair declared the Meeting inquorate! No mention in the minutes about protest. Since then two meetings have been called one was cancelled and the other was only to approve Accounts No other Agenda. This is a shameful situation Ishould add that the S106 £170k was Sports Funding for the Pavilion in March 2022 less £10k already spent on a Planning Application and other surveys.

Answer 2

David   I assume you are from the Bowls Club?