Agenda item

Gill Wilson, Growth Strategy and Funding Manager confirmed that copies of the Monitoring and Performance Report and a covering report had been circulated to members of the Board. Members were reminded that the City of Lincoln Council (CoLC) were required to submit monitoring returns to the Department of Levelling Up Housing and Communities (DLUHC) every six months to cover expenditure, progress, risks, outputs and outcomes.

The next report due was for the period 1 April 2023 to 30 September 2023 and submission was required by Monday 4 December 2023. The monitoring return required sign off by the Council’s Chief Finance Officer and the Chair of the Lincoln Town Deal Board. In addition, there was the requirement that the document be circulated to all members of the Lincoln Town Deal Board. The main points highlighted for the Monitoring and Evaluation Performance Report to DLUHC were:

Programme

• HEAT, The Drill and Store of Stories had a combined value of £2.3M and had reached completion by September 2023
• Lincoln Central Market and Lincoln Be Smarter were projects that remained on programme with a combined value of £7.9M
• There had been slippage across the remainder of the projects, however all were expected to be completed by March 2026. There were no issues to raise regarding deliverability

Expenditure

• Spend was under forecast but within percentage tolerances acceptable to DLUCH
• Expenditure was expected to accelerate as the delayed projects started and completed delivery.

Outputs and Outcomes

Evidenced Outputs to be reported included:

• 1 x new Cultural Facility
• 1 x new Community Hub
• 1 x Historic building renovated and restored for reuse as commercial space
• 22 x Full Time jobs
• 106 x Temporary jobs supported
• Capacity for an additional 125 people to be trained with 243 trainees enrolled overall at the new facilities

Other reported benefits included:

• HEAT project had led to the creation of 4 new businesses
• The Store of Stories, Community Grocery membership continued to increase with 1055 new members since opening and 14,030 customer visits a month - approximately £584 per week. The project had also evidenced that through the service offered, it had been able to support 1413 children from the impact of food poverty.

Risk

• Cost risk was to be reported in respect of all pre-tender projects. Such risks had been managed and mitigated by projects through detailed pre-tender cost analysis, evaluation assurance and cost engineering
• No projects had raised any issues of non-deliverability due to raised project costs, but all projects had reported cost pressures to some degree. Regular meetings and updates with the projects aimed to ensure that any issues were identified promptly
• Raised mitigated scores had been identified with Wigford Way and Greyfriars
• Progress had been made since September 2023 on the delivery plans for Wigford Way as reported under Item 4 of the supplement pack.

Comments and questions were invited from members of the Board. Discussions concluded with confirmation that Focus Consultants had been commissioned for the creation of a mid-term evaluation report which would likely be completed by the end of January 2024.

RESOLVED that:

1. the Board agreed that the Monitoring and Evaluation Performance Report be submitted to DLUHC by 4 December 2023.

2. Officers be tasked with the arrangement of an online evaluation session with Focus Consultants, for the benefit of Members not in attendance.
3. The Mid-Term Evaluation report created by Focus Consultants be presented to the Board in March 2024.