Issue - meetings

Delivering Wirral's Growth - Options Appraisal

Meeting: 27/02/2017 - Cabinet (Item 95)

95 Delivering Wirral's Growth - Options Appraisal pdf icon PDF 128 KB

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Minutes:

PhilDavies

Councillor Phil Davies, Leader of Wirral Council said:

 

Driving economic growth, helping to create good, high paying jobs, is incredibly important. This importance is only heightened by the simple fact that – by 2020 – Wirral needs to be completely self-sufficient. The only money we will have to invest in this Borough will be the money we can raise ourselves.

 

Throughout Wirral, we have huge opportunities to transform our economy and this report is an important next step in putting us in the best position to capitalise on them. We are continuing our work on developing a new approach to drive economic growth and will do further work in the coming months to turn these plans into a reality.”

 

 

 

Councillor Phil Davies introduced a report which informed that driving economic growth across the Borough was one of the three key priorities within the Wirral Plan: a 2020 Vision.  Work to promote growth and to support communities to meet their potential was being taken forward by a range of partners and actions were set out in the Wirral Growth Plan.  One of the key outcomes of the Plan was to attract significant amounts of investment into the Borough and a number of opportunities had been identified to support this activity.  This included creating appropriate delivery structures which could more easily work with and respond to the private sector. 

 

In addition work had been taken forward through the Council’s Transformation Programme to progress the actions arising from the Corporate Asset Strategy, including the need to ensure that the Council’s asset portfolio maximised receipts from those assets held for investment purposes and met its statutory obligations. In order to consider this fully the Transformation Board had agreed that an options appraisal for establishing a property company should be progressed.

 

Members were reminded that in December 2016 the Cabinet had agreed a report ‘Delivering Wirral’s Growth’ which outlined proposals for creating a property company to drive forward investment, economic growth and secure increased income for the Council in order to support services delivery, and officers had been instructed to present an options appraisal to the Cabinet in February 2017.

 

Bilfinger GVA (BGVA) and Bevan Brittan LLP had been commissioned by the Council to provide advice on the range of options available to the Council to achieve these objectives and to identify a preferred option. The full Strategic Options report was attached as Appendix 1.

 

In the context of the Council’s objectives the appointed advisors had identified and reviewed four options and they had proposed the setting up of a joint venture company provided the best strategic fit for the Council moving forward. However, this would not preclude the Council from partnering with other organisations, such as a Pension Fund, on specific developments either through or outside of the proposed JV, nor preclude a Pension Fund from expressing an interest in the JV arrangement. The report, therefore, recommended that further work be carried out to develop a Full Business Case for progressing the  ...  view the full minutes text for item 95