Issue - meetings

Cabinet Members – Councillors Nia Jeffreys and Dyfrig Siencyn

To submit a report on the above.

To accept the report and note the observations.

The Leader and officers from the Economy and Community Department were welcomed to the meeting.

Submitted - the report of the Deputy Leader and Cabinet Member for Economy Operational Matters invited the committee to scrutinise:-

·         The contents of the project under the 'Prosperous Gwynedd' priority area in the Council Plan, which aimed to create the best possible circumstances for businesses and community enterprises to thrive, and support the people of Gwynedd into work; and

·         The progress of the Economy and Community Department in implementing the project to trigger growth in Gwynedd's economy.

The Leader set the context and the Head of Economy and Community Department outlined the content of the report and the Economic Development Manager / North Wales Shared Prosperity Fund Manager elaborated on the specific steps in terms of support for businesses.

Since the time of writing the report, it was noted:-

·         That the process of selecting projects that would receive funding from the Shared Prosperity Fund had ended, and that over £3m would be distributed to businesses. 

·         This was far below the 185 applications worth £10m that had been received, and should the Council have more time and resources, then many more could certainly have been supported.

·         That the £1m available through the Arfor programme had been distributed to 20 businesses and, once again, the demand was much higher than the resources available.

Members were then given an opportunity to ask questions and submit observations. 

It was noted that the UK Government's method of distributing funding from the Shared Prosperity Fund was very defective.  ⁠Specific reference was made to the lack of regional and national projects, the lack of strategy on a level higher than county level, the urgency to spend substantial funding in a short period of time which meant prioritising projects that could be realised quickly and the great uncertainty regarding what would happen after April 2025.  In response, it was noted that some things were better provided on a national level, some on a regional level, some on a county level and some on an even more local level, but that no model was ideal.  There was a need to plan on which level allocations and decisions should be made, but there had been no opportunity to do so in this case due to the timetable.

It was enquired whether some proposals were funded in their entirety and the rest were being refused, or whether there was an element of partially funding some schemes.  In response, it was noted that it had been decided not to fund some proposals in their entirety to be able to support more businesses, and that all of the partially funded businesses had confirmed that it was possible for them to deliver their project within the timetable with less funding.

It was asked whether the cost to the fund of employing additional officers to administrate the scheme included redundancy costs?  A request was also made for information about the background of those officers and what would they be  ...  view the full minutes text for item 5