Council leader: Prioritising delivery for Torbay's regeneration programme

Since our election, I have consistently said that our focus will be delivery.
This is especially true when dealing with the council’s physical regeneration programme.
During my time in opposition, I was concerned with some of the schemes that appeared not to be getting over the line and significant progress in many schemes seemed particularly slow.
I am clearly aware that the rising cost of inflation was, and is still, having a significant impact on the viability of a wide range of regeneration schemes, not just here, but across the whole of the country. However, I have been shocked at just how large some of the gaps within the capital programme are.
Because of these concerns, one of my first priorities I set myself as leader of the council has been to get a real understanding of all the proposed schemes across the Bay.
Through my conversations with various officers and partners I have learnt a lot and although there is not enough space in this column to detail everything, I will be bringing reports through to future Cabinet meetings to ensure we have a real emphasis on delivery.
Within this column I did want to share a high-level summary, setting the scene so you are aware of my thinking and direction of travel as we move forward.
We all know some of the big-ticket items include the Pavilion and Oldway buildings where long-term solutions are required, and large, exceptionally large, sums of money are required if we are to finally resolve these problems.
Unfortunately, at this stage, there is no certainty as to what could be delivered in these locations nor how they will be funded but you may be aware that a consultation is taking place regarding Oldway to help gauge your opinion on some of the possible options.
For other schemes, there is more clarity over what was proposed to be delivered, an example of this being Crossways. However, because of several factors, one of them being the inflation impact, it has been confirmed that there are significant funding gaps to deliver what was originally proposed.
The council is also currently progressing schemes where we do not need to be the lead organisation and selling the site with planning permission would not only free up officer capacity to deliver other schemes but would also deliver capital funding.
This can then be used to contribute towards those financial gaps on what are our higher priority schemes.
Preston Down Road is a good example of such a scheme which could be sold on the open market, thus creating a cash receipt to the council, the scheme is delivered, and the council is able to use that money to deliver another site somewhere in the bay.
Effectively, we manage to get two sites across the line.
Moving forward, this means focused work and a clear prioritisation of schemes and identifying the required actions must take place. This is now under way and as already mentioned, will be available through Cabinet papers soon.
Along with this work, we continue to work behind the scenes to identify potential private sector partners that can help us deliver some of these regeneration schemes, together with working with Government to identify how they can support us more.
In this respect I was pleased last week to meet with Rowena Limb, area director in the Cities and Local Growth Unit and her colleagues. They visited us to get a better understanding of our challenges ahead of us working with Government on how they can support us through a Levelling Up Partnership.
We clearly have a long way to go, and I have only scratched the surface, however I am determined that because of this work we will have the absolute clarity over what can be delivered.
Decisions will start to be made, initially with proposals for some sites that can be disposed of to release much-needed capital.