Another 70 homes added to new Melton Mowbray development
A viability report showed the developer could not afford to make financial contributions to infrastructure and services due to the "significant abnormal costs" of developing the site, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.At a previous meeting, a planning agent speaking on behalf the developer said the company would give the borough and county council £580,000 as part of a financial agreement known as an overage payment should planning permission be granted.
'Catch-22'
The committee on Melton Borough Council voted in December to defer its decision to allow planning officers time to investigate alternative sources of funding which might enable the developer to make a S106 contribution. In a report, planning officers said there were two grants the scheme would be eligible for – but the grants can only be applied for once planning permission is already in place, and even then, the applications might be unsuccessful.Councillor Siggy Atherton described the situation as a "catch-22", and said the developer would win "hands down" at appeal should it be refused.But she added: "Travelling through Melton this last couple of mornings, it's mayhem. With more households having at least two cars – that's just [the impact] on the roads without thinking schools, doctors."
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The Guardian
a day ago
- The Guardian
Labour preparing to use public-private funding model for NHS in England
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Backers of PFI say this approach allowed public infrastructure to be built that otherwise would not exist; but opponents say the taxpayer was often left footing huge bills for inflexible contracts that ran for as long as 30 years. Treasury data shows that 560 PFI contracts are outstanding in England, for projects including schools, hospitals, libraries and road maintenance. Hundreds of these contracts will end in the coming years, raising questions about the state of the assets being inherited by the taxpayer, and potentially triggering legal battles about the precise conditions of 'handback'. A report last year from the Association of Infrastructure Investors in Public Private Partnerships (AIIP), chaired by the Labour peer and former frontbencher John Hutton, warned of the risk of 'serious disruption' as these deals come to an end, amid what it called 'mistrust between the parties to some PFI contracts'. Rachel Reeves will be under no illusion about the pitfalls of PPP, having chaired the House of Commons business select committee when MPs examined the fate of Carillion, which was enmeshed in a number of PFI deals as well as being a direct contractor to government. However, the government is under pressure to transform the UK's crumbling public services, with limited resources, and recent announcements have made clear that ministers are ready to dip their toe into this controversial area. The 10-year infrastructure strategy, published in June, said the government would 'explore the feasibility of using new PPP models for taxpayer-funded projects (for example in decarbonising the public sector estate and in certain types of primary care and community health infrastructure) in very limited circumstances where they could represent value for money'. Scotland and Wales have developed their own, alternative approaches to public private partnerships, called 'non-profit distributing' partnerships and the 'mutual investment model' respectively. Darren Jones, chief secretary to the Treasury, says reviving PPP in England could 'allow us to do more, quicker, than you would otherwise be able to do'. He is clear that that includes neighbourhood health centres, which are meant to transform NHS care by shifting more treatment out of hospitals. The NHS 10-year plan made a commitment to 'develop a business case for the use of public private partnerships for neighbourhood health centres, ahead of a final decision at the autumn budget'. Jones said: 'We've got the new hospital programme building stuff, which is obviously huge. We've got the maintenance backlog, which is huge. We've chosen to invest a lot in technology to improve productivity and diagnostics and all that type of stuff. And you don't have an infinite budget. So if there's an innovative way of delivering a key objective for us, that's what we're trying to make happen.' Nevertheless, there is some anxiety inside and outside government about the risks attached to potential contracts, even if they are much more narrowly conceived than the mega-projects of the Blair years. When the NHS 10-year plan was launched, Unison's general secretary, Christina McAnea, warned: 'Basing any funding on a failed market system and expensive private finance model would be a major error, especially with money so tight.' Sign up to Business Today Get set for the working day – we'll point you to all the business news and analysis you need every morning after newsletter promotion The legacy of previous waves of public private partnership is complex. Research this year, by the economist Max Mosley, then at the National Institute of Economic and Social Research, looked at 1,000 schools built through PFI. It found that £13.5bn was being spent at local level on repayments, 31% of which was going on interest. Mosley, now at the New Economics Foundation, said: 'When PFI projects failed it carried devastating consequences, from huge costs levied on hospitals, to state-of-the-art schools having to close down. 'Clarity is crucial. We need to understand what types of services are in scope, how risk will be managed, and how the mistakes of the past will be avoided.' Backers of PPPs argue that the assets being handed back to the public sector when decades-long contracts come to an end are in better condition than crumbling public buildings whose upkeep has been left to the taxpayer. A recent National Audit Office report on the use of PPPs to fund public infrastructure called for a series of changes, including better sharing of risk between taxpayers and investors. 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Iain Murray, the director of public financial management at Cipfa, the professional body for public sector finance experts, said it was understandable that PPP was back on the table but that its success would depend on learning the lessons from earlier generations of projects. 'A lot of these deals were modelled in [a] low-inflation, low-interest-rate environment and all of a sudden the world turns on its head – and that's not just about the money, it's about the services they're providing to the public,' he said. 'How do you build that flexibility in? Is there a way you can think about structuring those deals to get the kinds of outcomes you want?'
The Guardian
3 days ago
- The Guardian
The Guardian view on Britain's AI strategy: the risk is that it is dependency dressed up in digital hype
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Business News Wales
3 days ago
- Business News Wales
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