To present to the Committee an update in relation to the Section 106 Audit.

The Committee had before it a report of the Head of Planning Services (Cath Bicknell) (A.1), which provided it with an update in relation to the Section 106 Audit.

The Committee was aware that the 2014/15 audit of Section 106 agreements had concluded that improvement was required.  The high priority actions identified by that audit were in relation to the monitoring fees, monitoring of income and the collection of contributions.

Monitoring fees

The audit had questioned whether monitoring fees should be collected.  A High Court decision had found the collection of monitoring fees to be unlawful but subsequent external legal advice had suggested that the collection of fees for the drafting of agreements and the monitoring of development was lawful.  Currently, fees were collected from developers for both purposes.

Monitoring of income

The audit had identified that there was a backlog in the monitoring of income.  A report generated from the Section106 database was used to identify developments that needed to be checked for commencement.  However, a backlog, resulting from staff changes and absences, existed in this area of work.

Collection of contributions

The audit had identified that the database was not being used to identify which developments needed to be monitored.  However, alternative sources of information (planning permissions and building regulations approvals) were being used.  The completion of Section 106 agreements was not affected, only their monitoring.

It was further reported that the Section 106 database used to monitor Section 106 agreements was now unsupported thereby making its contents vulnerable.  A new system had been purchased to reduce this risk and was being configured for implementation.  It would be ready to use for Section 106 monitoring mid-2017 once backfilling of data had been completed. The new system (Exacom) had been produced by the developers of the previous database but unlike its predecessor, it was compatible with the Council’s back office Planning System (Uniform) and was fully supported. Exacom included a level of reporting capabilities that improved the robustness of the monitoring work.  It was also designed to deal with the Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) and so would be valuable into the future, when CIL was introduced by the Council.

The Committee was reminded that, historically, the Section 106 monitoring activities were undertaken by a Section 106 officer and more recently by various officers alongside other duties.  Unfortunately, under those arrangements some tasks had not been kept up-to-date.  A Planning Technician, dedicated to monitoring of Section 106 agreements and preparing for the monitoring of CIL was being recruited on an initial fixed term basis and was expected to commence duties during March 2017.  Implementation of the new IT system would be followed by a process review.

It was recommended by Officers that a follow-up audit of Section 106 agreement monitoring be undertaken once the new IT system and staffing arrangements had been in place for 9-12 months.  This would allow time for the areas of concern identified in the previous audit to be addressed.

Following discussion and questions by Members, it was:

RESOLVED that

(a)       the progress in relation to the Section 106 audit be noted;

(b)       a follow-up audit be undertaken in March 2018; and

(c)       the Section 106 Audit be added to the Table of Outstanding Issues.