More 'oversight' planned for regeneration schemes

Regeneration projects in three Somerset towns will be subject to “more rigorous” scrutiny going forward to ensure taxpayers are getting value for money.

South Somerset District Council set up three boards to oversee its flagship regeneration projects in Chard, Wincanton and Yeovil (the latter being known as the Yeovil Refresh).

Phase two of the Chard regeneration scheme (concerning Boden Mill and Holyrood Lace Mill) has had to be postponed, with officers admitting in January that it had misjudged how much the town’s new leisure centre (which opened in November 2021) would cost.

The council has now agreed changes will be made to the three boards to ensure the remaining projects within each scheme stay within budget and deliver the planned benefits on time.

Each board, whose membership included the elected ward members, oversees the commercial decisions associated with the numerous regeneration projects.

The boards do not meet in public since the majority of their decisions are commercially sensitive.

Natalie Fortt, the council’s regeneration programme manager, discussed the planned changes to the boards’ governance arrangements at a virtual meeting of the council’s audit committee on May 26.

She said in her written report: “To date, regeneration projects have worked with approved budgets and agreed scope. Where external funding has been available, this is often accompanied by quality criteria which must be met in order for the funding to be forthcoming.

“We now propose to work with a more rigorous approach to agreeing tolerances for each regeneration project and work stream in respect of cost, time, scope and quality.

“The benefit of this approach is that any deviation from agreed tolerances will trigger the need for a member decision at board level.

“We plan to introduce a staged approach to project management which will recognise the learning from the Chard ‘lessons learned’ report in ensuring that the end of each stage is accompanied by a consideration of whether the business case is still justified.”

A new project manager for the remaining elements of the Chard regeneration scheme (including the improvements to the A30 High Street) will be appointed within the next fortnight, following the recent departure of Anna Matthews.

Derek Yeomans – a former councillor who now sits on the committee as an independent member – said he hoped this new appointment would take a “hands-on” approach to ensure the work was being carried out as requested.

He said: “One of the comments made about the Chard regeneration, which went more than slightly wrong, was that the project manager wasn’t on site virtually every day to monitor what was going on.

“Is the new project manager going to be on site daily checking on progress and competence? We need a hands-on officer up to the end of the project.”

Jan Gamon, the council’s director of place and recovery, responded: “To say the Chard regeneration ‘went wrong’ is slightly unfair.

“Clearly, that exceeded the cost tolerances which were specifically allocated to the leisure centre – but actually, the delivery of the leisure centre and the take-up by the town has been really positive.

“Of the project managers that we have working on these regeneration projects internally, none of them is full-time on these projects – and for that reason, we always commission project management externally.

“I would say that our project managers like Ian Timms and Dan Bennett are on site frequently and are very close to what’s happening on the ground.”

Councill Robin Bastable said a lack of proper project management had led to the second phase of the Chard regeneration scheme being postponed.

He said: “The first phase of the scheme ran double over the budget. The Boden Mill building is an absolutely glorious building – it’s standing there derelict.

“If it’s there for another ten years derelict, it will cost twice as much money to redevelop, and it is a crying shame.

“When you’re working with a Victorian site that’s been a mill, missing that the ground would be contaminated is mind-boggling.”

Ms Gamon replied: “The truth about what really happened in Chard is not down to contaminated land. Essentially what happened is that the leisure centre was delivered within an approved budget, but insufficient attention was paid to the fact that this approved budget was intended also to deliver other things.

“The issue in Chard was around insufficiently robust governance around decision-making – and that’s why we have recognised that we need to be much tighter in our definition of what we can tolerate in terms of costs, time for delivery, scope and quality.

“Funds were diverted into the leisure centre without sufficient consideration of the opportunity cost of doing that – but we didn’t exceed the overall approved budget for Chard.”

Councillor Colin Winder warned that the ongoing transition towards the new unitary Somerset Council – following the local elections in May – could hinder efforts to deliver genuine benefits to his constituents in Wincanton.

He said: “There’s been an election, which has brought in a new county set-up. There has been an election at the town level, which has altered the whole set-up of the town.

“The finances should spread through the new unitary authority – we can’t say everything’s going to finish in ten months’ time.

“There is no cohesion between the various bodies – we’re rushing things and we’re not actually putting something in place which is looking to the future.”

Council leader Val Keitch – who was recently appointed to the new Liberal Democrat executive on Somerset County Council – replied: “Each authority is identifying the projects it wants to take forward. Wincanton won’t be dropped off the edge of a cliff.”

The regeneration of Wincanton town centre is expected to form part of a £20m to the government’s levelling up fund – one of four bids being submitted in Somerset in this round of funding.