Purpose

1.1 The purpose of this report is to consider the existing governance arrangements in respect of a specific set of “Strategic Investment Assets” that the Council holds for investment purposes, and, if deemed appropriate, to update the delegations and authorisations to support more effective and agile decision making.

Decision

The Cabinet has considered a report outlining the existing governance arrangements in respect of a specific set of “Strategic Investment Assets” that the council holds for investment purposes, and, detailing a proposal to update the delegations and authorisations to support more effective and agile decision making.

The Cabinet has then agreed to:-

(1) Delegate authority to the Deputy Chief Executive and the Director of Finance (Section 151 Officer) to approve that the Council negotiates the terms of and enters into property related transactions, including leases, lease renewals, easements, wayleaves, rent reviews, licences, the issuing of consents and other transactions in relation to property, for any asset that has previously been declared a Strategic Investment Asset.

(2) Delegate authority to the Chief Governance Officer and Monitoring Officer to take all such steps, and complete all such agreements and contracts, as are necessary to implement the resolutions recommended in this report and any decisions properly made under authority delegated by these resolutions.

(3) Note that the application of these delegations to future Strategic Investment Asset decisions will require the Cabinet to explicitly approve and adopt these delegations as part of these decisions on a case-by-case basis.

Alternative options considered

Maintain the current approach to the management of the Council’s investment estate, which generally requires decisions to be taken under the current Scheme of Delegation within the Constitution. All decisions that fall beyond the scheme of delegation require Cabinet approval. Section 2 of the Main Report considers the impact of this approach in detail, with the primary risk being the negative commercial impact the Council could suffer. As such this option has been rejected.