This week Rutland County Council voted to reject the offer of a community centre from
Hawksmead as part of their 106 payments.
The council instead decided to take 1.3 million and use it for sport and other unknown
community projects in consultation with these groups.
The other no sports groups was added to the accepted proposal.
What concerns me is this money is for the benefit of Oakham and was described for that
purpose and the rules of 106 payments are very clear on this. I wonder why Councillor
King kept slipping in Rutland when talking about the expenditure. In the past he has expressed
an interest in diverting some of the cash toward sport at his prison in Ashwell.
So we have now gone from a super sized community venue to a smaller one to nothing.
Cllr King said Oakham has various small halls such as churches and the scout. he pointed
out all these needed investment of course if it were not for the amendment to his proposal
most of them would not fallen into the sports category.
Cllr Gale of the Rutland Anti Corruption Party published the following:
Who negotiated the Section 106 Agreement, CW?
When the Hawksmeade 1,096 house planning application was approved there was a
Section 106 agreement in place to support the development. An agreement can be made
up of a number of components to provide a facility or an amount of money to support the
extra cost of providing services for the increasing population within the new development.
eg. Fire, Police, Library, recreation, affordable homes etc.
The Hawksmeade agreement does provide a very significant seven figured amount of
money for sport and a similar figure for a community Hall. Last night at Full Council we
were debating whether to take £1.338M as a cash receipt rather than the Developer
providing the Hall facility. The portfolio holder that had been involved in negotiation and
overseeing this development, favoured the suggestion that Council takes the money and
spreads it over the county but later said the money could be spent all around Oakham.
The size of the Hawksmeade development is significantly larger than most of Rutland’s villages
and when the S106 agreement was drawn up it had considered that a village Hall type building
was needed in the development and so provided for this. It now seems strange to me that
the suggestion is the money is not spent on the site but a mile away, perhaps further. What
happened to the need ON the site that generated the money?
Of course the underlying worry is that whoever negotiated the agreement with the developer
put greater emphasis on the £millions going to sport / community Hall etc. than Rutland’s
greatest promise to the community of providing c35% affordable homes in residential
developments. This Hawkmeade development currently only provides a meagre 15% that
may rise slightly when the economic climate strengthens.
Unfortunately there is no easy mechanism within the Council that can track and display
all Section 106 money coming in. This is a concern of the RAC Group and Dave has raised
the matter with The Council Leader. The leader talks about an annual declaration where
we would like to see something that can be accessed at any time to see what the current
position is.
