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Councillors question why county council is sitting on pots on infrastructure cash
11/11/2024
The money was given for schools, libraries, highways, health care, parks and recreation facilities
Conservative County Councillors from Banbury are questioning why Oxfordshire County Council has £287m of unspent Section 106 funds sitting in the authority’s bank accounts.
The money was given to the council by developers as part of agreements when planning permission is granted. Each contribution is meant to provide extra facilities for the new residents and mitigate the impact on the wider area. Areas where section 106 funds are often used include new or improved schools, libraries, highways, health care, parks and recreation facilities.
After the issue was first exposed by Councillor Kieron Mallon at a meeting earlier this year the Home Builders Federation sent Freedom of Information requests to all councils. This revealed that Oxfordshire County Council held more unspent Section 106 funds than any other local authority in the UK. The £287.5m in the county council’s banks dwarfs the £166.8m held by the London Borough of Tower Hamlets and the £148.3m Hampshire County Council holds.
The money held in Oxfordshire is earmarked for Schools and Education (£142.6m), healthcare (£64.4m) and highways and roads (£75.9m).
Councillor Mallon again raised the issue of why the money isn’t being spent at a full council meeting last week. After the meeting he said: “Banburyshire residents in town and village have had a huge amount of housing, with that should come infrastructure, as I said at the time we have had the pain, where is the gain?
“The Liberal Democrats, Greens and Labour councillors have all had a go at running the county council over the last three and a half years, yes, since 2021 and have been crying wolf over lack of funding from the last Conservative Government, whist sitting on nearly £290m of unspent money to help residents, alleviate problems, build infrastructure and improve the health of the very old and the very young in its care, It is simply astonishing!”
Councillor Eddie Reeves leads the Conservative Group at the county council. He said: “It’s a shocking indictment of the planning system. Much of the money is squirreled away in company and local authority bank accounts without being spent.
“The tragedy of this is that, at least some of this money will now never be spent with communities paying the price for poorer public facilities”
In response a spokesperson for Oxfordshire County Council told Banbury FM: “It is not unusual for Oxfordshire County Council to hold monies in readiness to spend on strategic infrastructure, which often takes many years to be delivered. Often infrastructure projects require pooled contributions so that [section] 106 monies are held in order to help fund and deliver the capital programme. Therefore to have an outstanding balance of [section] 106 monies is not out of the ordinary.
“Many of the sites are large and complex and take a number of years to come forward and each will have their own trigger points for [section] 106 payments to be made.
“The county council has an exceptionally good record in negotiating and collecting [section] 106 payments and regularly reviews the quantity of [section] 106 monies held against the infrastructure needed to support or mitigate development. This is part of an ongoing review with services.”
Published: by Banbury FM Newsteam