Schools, play areas and community facilities have all been lined up to be built in Eden as part of legal agreements entered into by developers — but no database has ever been created to keep track of them.
Urgent work needs to be undertaken to find out the exact nature of these legal agreements — known as Section 106 commitments — a meeting of Eden Council’s overview and scrutiny committee was told.
The committee has made a recommendation to the district council’s cabinet for a fixed-term post to be created and funded at a cost of nearly £33,000. “It would allow for a temporary posting to come in and get started on the work of actually finding out what the commitments made to us by our 106 agreements were and to put this information on a database, which is no small task,” said Deborah Wicks (Con, Greystoke).
Coun Wicks chairs a task and finish group which was set up to look into the planning mess which Eden’s 106 agreements had become.
She added: “It became very urgent, very quickly that there was a huge amount of work needing to be done on this project. It is quite a shock that this system has just been put in place. There was just nothing there.”
Agreements had been made promising schools, play areas and community facilities from projects in addition to affordable housing, but Ms Wicks said it quickly became evident that details on what has been promised are not readily available.
The scrutiny meeting was told that as well as Eden Council, Cumbria County Council was involved in respect of their commitments to health and education.
Coun Wicks said work was “desperately needed” to unpick the facts around the 106 agreements which had been made.
“This work needs completing — we haven’t got our house in order to hand over to the new authority by a long shot in this area,” said Coun Wicks.
Gordon Nicolson (Con, Lazonby) said: “What this is about is ensuring that the obligations entered into are delivered by the parties involved. The 106 agreements cover a range of activities from affordable housing community sums through to educational and highways provision.
“If we don’t do this, then there is no guarantee that that will happen and we need to progress this over the remaining life of this council.”
The new recruit will be asked to complete the review of Section 106 agreements and the work of the task and finish group .
They will maintain the monitoring of Section 106 agreements up until the vesting of the new Westmorland and Furness Council in 2023.
