Decisions

That Directors:-

1)    Approved the carry over contracts for 7 providers and 9 projects, with a total amount of £1,857,379.61, this total is across all 9 projects.

2)      Approved the growth funding for £306,036.44 for 6 projects.

That:

The Directors

1)    Approved the extending the contracts of existing Multiply providers who have met their KPIs. 

2)    Approved the use underspend to allocate growth funding to one further Multiply provider. 

Decision Taken

That the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority Strategic Director of Economy and Skills approves:

1)    That £1,498,260 is recovered from 10 providers (4 of whom no longer hold grants in the 2023/24 academic year). This includes £686,237 of National Skills Fund Level 3 (NSF L3) / Free Courses for Jobs (FCFJ) funding.

2)    That £357,334 is protected and not recovered following the assessment of payment protection requests received and due to over delivery in other priority categories.

Decision Taken

That the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority Strategic Director of Economy and Skills approves:

1)    That partial recovery is undertaken to clawback the actual value of outstanding errors only.

2)    That any eligible over delivery is utilised to minimise the amount of clawback required.

Decision Taken

That the West of England Mayoral Combined Authority’s Strategic Director of Economy and Skills agrees:

1)    The West of England Mayoral Combined Authority Adult Skills Fund Commissioning Plan for the 2024/25 academic year.

2)    The Curriculum Delivery Plan (CPD) process for agreeing CPD with each provider, and confirming the due diligence is met satisfactorily prior to awarding an allocation and issuing the Grant Funding Agreement.

That £10,972.95 of grant is awarded to 3 applicants. If all are awarded, this will leave:

• £1.75m remaining of the £2.0m total Green Business Grants pot to allocate
• £234k remaining of the £500k total Rooftop Solar Grants pot to allocate.
• £198k remaining of the £198k total Heat Pump Grants pot to allocate

That £1,244,947 from the £2.3m of Green Recovery Fund earmarked for Nature Recovery is allocated to the following projects:

·         Bathscape Landscape City Framework: £225,827. Led by Bath & North East Somerset

·         Managing More Greenspace for Nature: £649,120. Led by Bristol City Council

·         Linking the Levels: £370,000. Led by South Gloucestershire Council

That the West of England Combined Authority Interim Chief Executive Officer in consultation with the West of England Local Authority Chief Executive Officers, approve the following:

1)    Award of three Safer Shop West grant fund applications, totaling £4,971.

2)    Extend the project delivery schedule by six months, closing in October 2024.

3)    Reprofiling of the project budget.

4)    Increase the maximum grant level to £4,000 and reduce the business match to 20%.

To approve change request and the award of £500k from CRSTS capital to South Gloucestershire Council for the CRSTS Thornbury to North Bristol Corridor (A38N) project to enable the project to conduct ground radar surveys within this financial year.

To approve change request and the award of £400k from CRSTS capital to South Gloucestershire Council for the CRSTS - Chipping Sodbury to Hambrook Corridor (A4174/A432) project to enable the project to conduct ground radar surveys within this financial year.

That:

1)    The West of England Combined Authority enters into a grant funding agreement with Bristol City Council to deliver the ‘Temple Quarter – Northern Entrance and Southern Gateway’ scheme as part of the Phase 1 works funded from the successful, Homes England (HE) Brownfield Investment Land (BIL) Grant

2)    The West of England Combined Authority, as accountable body, allocates funding of £5,223,034 of the BIL grant to fund *RIBA stages 1-3 of the Northern Entrance and Southern Gateway projects, in accordance with the ‘Request for Allocation of Funding’ received from Bristol City Council, and the grant funding agreement to be entered into per decision 1) above.

*Royal Institute of British Architects Plan of Work Stages 1 to 3

This item was deferred to a future meeting

The Joint Committee RESOLVED:

1) To note the Revised Analysis of LEP External Grants as at the end of March 2022 as set out in Figure 1;

2) To note the LEP revenue outturn as set out in Appendix 1;

3) To approve the Full Business Case for the Thornbury High Street project and the award of £4.557m through the Economic Development Fund.

4) To approve the change requests for schemes in the Local Growth and Getting Building Fund programme as set out in Appendix 2;

5) To approve the change requests for schemes in the Economic Development and Revolving Infrastructure Fund programmes as set out in Appendix 3.