Agenda item - Tranche 2 prioritisation

To consider the attached report.

The Executive Board

AGREED

(a) that the headline objectives for the Tranche 2 prioritisation exercise are:

- to prioritise transport infrastructure investments to prepare those which best meet the City Deal’s strategic objectives for delivery when funding becomes available (City Deal strategic objectives, which include economic growth and maintaining quality of life, are set out at Annex 1);

- to ensure that those investments support the growth strategy set out in the Local Plans and the supporting Transport Strategy for Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire; and

- To ensure the prioritisation is aligned to wider work by the Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP) on the Strategic Economic Plan (SEP) and of the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority.

(b) To recognise dependencies between ongoing Tranche 1 work, the Local Plan examinations, the work of the Combined Authority, the Economic Assessment Panel, the Tranche 2 prioritisation exercise and Tranche 3 and agrees that potential alignment and synergies with the Cambridgeshire and Peterborough Combined Authority be explored;

(c) that the previously used criteria and methodology should be reviewed and built on and that Board, Joint Assembly and other stakeholder input be sought on assessment criteria and methodology and the ‘long list’ through workshops in early 2017;

(d) to note existing commitments to consider particular schemes through the Tranche 2 prioritisation process and confirms these;

(e) Agrees to receive a further report in June recommending the prioritisation methodology and criteria and long list process, as well as the potential for synergies with the Combined Authority and other bodies;

(f) officers should explore potential use of a proportion of future City Deal funding to:

· create a potential ‘rolling fund’ for investment in transport infrastructure/ measures to unlock early growth from which a future repayment revenue stream would follow (for example from s106 contributions) and /or

· create a fund for smaller scale measures (likely to be those costing less than £500 000) that could be bid into to allow delivery of measures that unblock localised barriers to growth and provide strong economic benefits in line with City Deal objectives.

These options would be brought back to the Board with the proposed long list in September 2017.

(g) To endorse the outline timetable for recommending transport investment priorities for Tranche 2 and notes the key dependencies.

Mike Salter, Transport Strategy Manager, presented this report which updated the Executive Board on work prioritising transport infrastructure schemes for delivery in the second tranche of Greater Cambridge City Deal transport infrastructure programme from 2020 to 2025 and agree the next steps.

Councillor Roger Hickford, Chairman of the Joint Assembly, reminded the Executive Board that the Local Plans of Cambridge and South Cambridgeshire District Councils had not yet been agreed. He stated that there had been some concern expressed by the Assembly on how the funding would be managed, but the recommendations in the report had been endorsed, as it only called for officers to “explore potential use” of future City Deal funding.

Councillor Ian Bates stated that he supported the direction of travel, but recognised that there were several obstacles to overcome.

It was confirmed that the workshops scheduled for February/March 2017 would be jointly held with the Executive Board, the Joint Assembly, the business community and other stakeholders.

Councillor Francis Burkitt suggested that the Executive Board should ensure that some of the £200 million in Tranche 2 was kept in reserve, for new projects to be funded during the Tranche 2 period of 2020-25.

Concern was expressed about the potential to focus too closely on the traditional Benefit:Cost Ratio (BCR) at the expense of achieving the City Deal’s strategic objectives, and that prioritisation should be more wide-ranging that only traditional BCR measurement. Mike Salter assured the Executive Board that a multitude of criteria were used to assess which schemes should be prioritised and the BCR methodology was only one tool that was used.