Issue - meetings

The Scrutiny & Elections Officer explained the various documents that had been presented to Members as part of the review and the approach taken so far.

The Director of Economic Development, Dragonfly Development Limited (DDL), presented a review of the South Normanton Town Centre Regeneration Framework, acknowledging the Committee’s original review plan to take each town area in turn.  They noted that the Framework had originally been commissioned in autumn 2015 and had highlighted a range of public and private interventions that could be made to improve the town centre and surrounding areas.

As agreed with Committee, officers had produced a scorecard analysing progress against the various elements of the Framework including in surrounding villages and hamlets.  On reflection, the Framework document hadn’t guided development to a great extent within the area.  Many elements remained undelivered as the document had been aspirational in nature requiring additional buy-in from Town and Parish Councils to engage in the development plans themselves.  Where funding had not been in place, many ideas had been difficult to deliver.

It was noted that the previous Regeneration Frameworks, to some extent, also sat outside a wider strategy for development and there was not a bank of costed projects ready to put forward to support the area.  While the intention of the Frameworks had been to lever investment, the lack of costed projects had made them almost impossible to deliver.  As there was an insufficient evidence base within the document, additional research would now be required in order to evidence and cost the projects that could regenerate the town centres.  Furthermore, due to the age of the documents, there was no reference to current issues such as carbon reduction, digital connectivity and nature recovery.

The original document was completed back in 2015-17 and did not fit with current community aspirations.  The aim of completing the community consultation at the time was to ensure partners were on board with regeneration.  The suite of documents overall was potentially too ambitious and very resource intensive to produce.  It was highlighted that going forward any new approach to regeneration planning must provide value for money.

The officer acknowledged that the Frameworks hadn’t had the expected impact and it was clear that officers welcomed recommendations from Committee on potential future activity.  They noted that it was important that the Council was clear how it could support parishes and that there were clear mechanisms to signpost elsewhere when the Council could not assist.  This would also enable the Council to prioritise future action more effectively.

The Director noted that at a previous meeting there had been appetite from the Committee to work closer with parishes particularly for the Clowne framework area and that this would also be a good approach for South Normanton.  Of the three core delivery objectives, none had progressed.  Of the five Stepping Stone projects, none had progressed.  It was noted, however, that South Normanton and all the core villages in the surrounding area had been assessed through the Town Centre Health  ...  view the full minutes text for item 56