Decision details

The Interim Monitoring Officer introduced the report which provided the Overview & Scrutiny Committee with a list of the reports due to be considered at the 6 October 2023 meetings of the West of England Combined Authority Committee and the West of England Joint Committee.

Report authors and other relevant officers gave a brief summary of their reports:

Delivery Assurance:

A letter was being drafted by the Chair of the Committee and would be circulated to all the Chairs of Scrutiny in the Unitary Authorities, to ensure a co-ordinated oversight of any anticipated delays to projects delegated to their respective authorities.

It was encouraging to see that capacity- building was happening across both delivery and project staffing and noted the Committee were also encouraged by the rigor in identifying issues and potential slippages of projects.

Common themes or issues surrounding the delays should be flagged early

with an accessible dashboard of information and exception reporting that could be shared across all these arrangements. There may be a need to look at capacity across the region for contractor availability to ensure sound programme management was in place.  

Climate and Ecological Strategy and Action Plan Update

Specific carbon metrics need to be given consideration in every aspect of decision making across all the Unitary Authorities and the Combined Authority; need to be able to measure climate impact.

Continued political pressure needs to be applied to National Grid to help address the significant delays and shift towards de-carbonisation and more renewable energy.

The Climate Emergency Action Plan is an extensive, comprehensive plan; it would be beneficial to see a dashboard or grading system where focus was placed on the significant impacts being.

Whilst the larger corporate bodies were mostly committed to this, it was positive that a lot of Small and medium-sized enterprises (SME’s) were also engaged in their commitment to tackling climate change.

Adult Education and Skills

Some concern that the Combined Authority were unable to forecast funding allocation for 2024/25 under the new Adult Skills Fund as the Department for Education had not yet confirmed regional allocations.

Needs to be a continuation in the investment for children with an Education, Health and Care Plan and those with special educational needs support needing assistance as young adults, transition into employment.

Transport Infrastructure Projects

CRSTS

Some concern about the deliverability of the CRSTS even with the re-scope of the programme and questions were raised whether keeping the M32 programme was achievable, given that the M32 programme was expensive with a high degree of risk.

The A4 corridor programme was progressing well and that the longer-term vision would potentially form part of a future programme and reassurance was given that this would be aligned with the Future4West programme.

Future4West: 

Some concerns about the lack of a carbon analysis despite a substantial amount of work already having taken place. Assurance was given that a Carbon Assessment Toolkit was in development.

There was a need to focus on realistic options that would prove to be future-proof and viable; there needed to be a clear commitment to reducing car-dependency and an changing the demands of reliance on cars. Reassurance was given that the additional time and effort in exploring all options was relatively small which would ensure that the assessment was adequately robust.

Having listened to the members of the pubic address the Committee, it was evident that people wanted short term solutions to their public transport needs as the withdrawal of services had had a significant detrimental impact on their lives.

BSIP

Concerns raised about Westlink and whether there could be a review of the boundaries including the pace and scale at which this could be done. Boundary review was being done at speed and the traffic commissioner also gave some clarification on the amount of times mini-buses could be driven in the various zones and work as being undertaken to urgently address this.

Transformation Programme:

Some concerns that there had been no operational changes within the Constitution which may create a culture of mistrust

West of England Combined Authority and Mayoral Budget Forecast 2023/24 Report

Despite there being a predication of a surplus, concerns were raised about the level of reserves being comparatively low. We note that supplies and services appear under profile due to additional in-year income.