Council urged to speed up £42m community spending

Councillors met at Newcastle Civic Hall to discuss why the funds had not been used

Council bosses "sitting on" tens of millions of pounds in unspent cash have been urged to speed up promised community upgrades.

Newcastle City Council currently holds £42m of unused Section 106 (S106) payments, money secured from developers as part of planning permissions being granted.

The cash can be spent on things like new schools, affordable homes, transport infrastructure, healthcare provision, and sports facilities.

But councillors were told while much of the unspent money was committed for specific projects that are yet to come forward, only a relatively small fraction had been used in the last year.

Members of the the Labour-led authority's planning committee said there were parts of Newcastle in "desperate need" of spending and that it was "awful" to see so much money left.

According to a report, the council holds almost £35m in S106 money committed to improvements at the Newcastle Great Park and other major housebuilding sites, with a further £20m due on top of that - but only £6m has been spent from those pots in the past 12 months.

In that same period, £68,000 out of a total £3.6m available for improvements to open spaces, sports pitches, green infrastructure and children's play areas across the entire city has been used, according to the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

'Desperate need of cash'

Liberal Democrat councillor Peter Allen said: "If you were generous and said that was [spent every] six months rather than a year, that would suggest it would take us 25 years to spend the money when I am sure all ward members can say that there is some scope for repairs, maintenance, and capital spend.

"I can take you to at least six locations in Jesmond Dene that are in desperate need of cash."

While the council also holds nearly £900,000 earmarked for transport and accessibility improvement in the city centre, and a further £1.5m for city-wide travel, open space, and recreation initiatives, it has spent no S106 money on any of those in the last year.

The authority also has about £8m in Community Infrastructure Funding (CIL) available, another type of charge it levies on some new developments.

'Not cheap'

Councillor Marion Williams, of the East End and Associates Independent Group, said the figures were "quite alarming".

"We have a number of parks in the city that are just a mess and it seems awful to me that we are spending so little when so much is available," she added.

She called for the council to mount a review to ensure it was "maximising" S106 payments and had the capacity to keep on top of the issue.

Planning officer Jon Rippon said that while the bulk of the S106 was identified for specific purposes, it "takes time" for developments to come forward and that bigger schemes like new schools were "not cheap".

Labour councillor Teresa Cains, who chairs the planning committee, said she shared the concerns.