Agenda item

QUESTIONS FROM MEMBERS OF THE PUBLIC NO. 1 Under Schedule 4, 13, Martin Hall will ask the Leader of the Council, Jeremy Oates the following question:-

Can the Executive Leadership Team and others at Tamworth Borough Council update me on the progress of the FHSF funded regeneration of Tamworth programme in the town centre that the Borough Council are delivering.  

I am particularly interested to hear an update on the schedule progress, overview of costs and expenses to date and funds assigned to outside agencies

Councillor Oates gave the following answer:

Its full steam ahead with the Future High Streets Fund Project. A number of key milestone has been hit with the contractors on board who will lead the physical delivery of the programme. We have a contractor on board the multi skilled group of people who are being looked after by Speller Metcalf who have a great reputation within the industry for delivering projects and keeping communities up to date with progress. I am aware that often unless you keep repeating the message it gets lost and people lose track of where we are.  The Borough Council is handing over a number of project designs to be delivered by this contractor and also have completed a number of stages of the design work of the project  itself.  You will be aware that the old Co-operative building that was purchased by the borough council has now been demolished and the start of the new college build is expected in April/May this year in terms of start date. Within that there was design work and planning permissions sort for that.  Planning permission and design work has been completed in terms of the flex units which are the shops behind his building here the parade leading from George Street to the entrance of the Middle Entry.  There are also designs that have been agreed and handed over to the contractor in relation to the new square that will created by those shops at the back of the Town Hall and also the entrance way to the Castle Grounds. In terms of those milestones, I believe St Editha’s Square as also received a significant amount of design work that as been agreed on in terms of a future plan.  So in terms of physical works you will also know that the canopy as been removed in St Editha’s Square and that square has been opened up prior to works that will happen later on in the project but that was part of the phase where we demolish the cooperative building.

So in terms of where we are at with the project we are where we should be, we are where we should be in terms of costs.  I can’t go into detail into how much has been awarded to each agency because of commercial confidentiality but what I can say is they are within the original spec that we set out when we started this project way back in 2019.  In terms of costs as we go forward and the reason, I’ve raised the date 2019 is because it was 4 years ago when we started to put this together and there are obviously now increasing construction and material costs.  They are within projects at the moment and we are continually reviewing those in terms of the outside agency costs they are within where they were in the original part of the project.  In terms of other agencies involved I have already mentioned that Speller Metcalfe are our lead on those but we also got heritage specialists, structural specialists and others who we need to consult with as and when appropriate to give us specialist information, an example of that would be the properties on Market Street which are of a particular age and nature where they have had to have specialist attention and we have  had to have specialist advice on those.  So that is a very brief summary of where we are at with the project at the moment, but it is all speed ahead the project board receives regular update the Audit & Governance Committee also receive regular updates on risk and the costings, and financial guidance in terms of value for money etc. and the Infrastructure, Safety and Growth Scrutiny Committee receive regular updates on the particle side of the project as well.      

Mr Hall asked the following Supplementary Question

I don’t have the original plans to hand but could you just confirm then what the budget number was for those outside agencies if you are on course and on budget what was that number, please. 

Councillor Oates gave the following response:

I don’t have that to hand but like I said it was all part of the original bid, but I can get those budgets to you. I can point to where they are, but I can also send you an email with those figures included.