Agenda item

New policy for Adoption for Acquisition and Disposal of Property

Minutes:

Andreea Plant, Head of Property introduced the report and made the following points:

 

·  The Council's new Acquisition and Disposal Policy, which had been developed to provide a clear framework for identifying and managing surplus property assets. This policy was extremely important as it aligned property disposals with the Council’s broader financial, operational, and strategic goals, ensuring that capital receipts were reinvested effectively as part of the overall capital strategy and asset management planning;

·  The policy acted as a reference document which housed various commercial property principles such as achieving Best Value under Section 123 Local Government Act 1972;

·  It also detailing various Disposal Methods, Disposals to Special Purchasers Disposal and Planning Permission Principles behind the Release or variation of land covenants Public Open Space and Common Land Considerations Land Exchanges Easements and Wayleaves General Principles for Acquisitions and an entire array of other General Issues.

 

Members of the Overview and Scrutiny Panel were asked to review and scrutinise the proposed policy and provide any recommendations to the Cabinet ahead of their meeting on 24th October 2024 where it was recommended that this policy be adopted.

 

The Panel asked questions and made comments as follows:

 

·  A member asked whether it would be councillors through committee work or officers who would be reviewing the policy every two years;

·  They also asked if there was any benefit in moving assets equivalent to cash;

·  Another member said that they were glad that the community transfer provision was still the Council policy. They also said that the policy was heavily weighted towards making profit. They said that there were no safeguards that provided for reasons for disposal;

·  The member asked what reasons would be made for an asset to be considered for disposal and whether this policy took any lessons from the past;

·  Another member said that the council was not historically good with managing covenants. They asked at what stage and how would the Council check covenants.

 

Andreea Plant and Bob Porter responded as follows:

 

·  If there were significant changes to the policy, then the updated policy would need to adopted through the formal decision making process with the final decision being made by Cabinet;

·  If the changes were significant then officers would agree the minor changes;

·  The Council kept a value for each property and kept track of those values;

·  If a property was declared surplus, that was when they would also be declared as cash value;

·  A property could be considered for disposal if the building was no longer needed and its disposal would help finance a capital programme. A property would also be disposed if a lot of capital expenditure was required to refurbish it with no hope of recouping the capital;

·  Covenants tended to be obscure and sometimes the Lands Registry did not have the information at hand;

·  The Council had covenant indemnity policy in place where the covenant were not available;

·  The Council now had a Policy Manager who now worked with service managers and Heads of Service to come up with a uniform approach for developing and reviewing Council policies;

·  Policies were reviewed in order to comply with any changes in legislation, to reflect the council’s corporate priorities, to respond to levels of risk to the Council and when policies were out of date.

 

The Panel noted the report.

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