Agenda item

The report was noted.

Johnathan Burnes gave members an overview of the Swansea Bay City Deal Quarterly Monitoring portfolio report as included in the agenda pack.

 

Members noted that the target for jobs is currently 9700, but the report states that there are now 615 jobs. Members asked when officers think it would get closer to the target.

 

Officers reminded members that in the last meeting there was an evaluation framework put forward and in that was indicative time scales of when every project will evaluate elements of their projects.

 

Officers advised that they will be looking at the wider impact of the buildings not just the construction of the building. When those evaluations are produced and put through the system then members will start seeing the job numbers jump up.

 

Members were advised that in terms of when they will be getting the reports, the first one will be from Yr Egin phase one and that will go to joint committee in December for their economic evaluation. Swansea Marina would be next, followed by Swansea Arena. After that there will be a whole series of things that will happen over the next few years.

 

Officers advised that they do an economic evaluation of projects at least a year or two of operation and gave the example of the SWITCH project which won't be completed the end of 2026. This illustrates that the evaluations could be going up to 2028/2029 approximately.

 

Members sought clarification on the figures on the report. Members highlighted that the total investment target hasn't changed from the previous report, which stands at £1262.19 m and the total investment to date is £318.23m. Members highlighted that if you read the financial outturn for quarter four of last year and the annual update report, the total investment target is a different figure, it stands at £1278.27m for quarter four of last year and the total investment to date is £354m. Members clarified if they were reading the figures incorrectly or if the figures are incorrect on the report.

 

Officers advised they would double check the reasons behind the variance and advised that they would get a formal response to members in writing via the chair as to why there is a variance in value.

 

Members advised that Pembrokeshire County Council is very concerned currently with Celtic Freeport and asked what impact the Freeport is having on city deal, or if it will make any impact on City Deal’s plans.

 

Officers advised that they have found that with the Swansea Bay City deal that a lot of the partners involved in both the city deal and the freeports. The senior responsible owners, like Nicola Pearce, who is director of Environment and Regeneration in Neath Port Talbot and Rachel Moxie in Pembrokeshire County Council who are both senior responsible owners for the city deal projects.

Officers advised that Pembroke Dock Marine and Supporting innovation and low carbon growth helped catalyse the bid for freeports. Officers stated that there are lots of other things that are going on and partners involved wider than the City Deal, but those were part of the application process.

 

Members were advised there is a connection between the people and the objectives of what city deal and Freeport are trying to do such as creating jobs, investment and collaboration. Officers informed members that all the things are mirrored across the two initiatives because there's a lot of other things that happen across the region that are also impacted by the city deal, both in terms of input and output. Officers used the example of Swansea Arena that has also helped catalyse other things across the city centre.

Officers feel that they could probably pick every single project and look at what's happened around them and that is what they are hoping to be doing through the evaluations by looking at the wider impact evaluation of what these projects have leveraged and brought in for the region.

 

Johnathan Burns offered to talk to the councillors about these issues if they had any additional questions.

 

The Chair let members know that the first Freeport scrutiny committee meetings were held for the scrutiny and Cabinet members, and they have just authorised the 1st £25,000,000 funding to take the Freeport forward with £10 million for Pembrokeshire County Council and £15,000,000 for Neath Port Talbot to start everything moving.

 

Members asked when they would be having the evaluation reports. Officers explained that there are a lot of time scales across the portfolio, but the first evaluation report will be Yr Egin and hopefully by the next meeting. The next report after that will be Swansea Arena, which is scheduled for next year.

Members stated that they would like to see what specification the evaluation is, how it's being evaluated and who is doing the evaluation.

 

Officers explained that for Yr Egin it will be clear when it's reported, but what will be asked for in the evaluation and who will be appointed to do it is yet to be determined. All the future evaluations must go through a procurement process.

 

Members used the example of Swansea Arena and said that in the evaluation you can ask how the arena benefits the whole of the region, or you can ask how it benefits just the area where the arena is located. Members felt that it is the methodology that is going to give comfort to people who want to know what they've had from their investment.

 

Officers explained that part of that methodology is in the evaluation framework, but it wouldn't specify every single detail, but it would say in the evaluation framework that anything that is a portfolio objective such as jobs, economic impact and investment would be evaluated. This would be evaluated locally, regionally and potentially nationally.

 

Members were advised that in addition to this, every project and programme has a benefit realisation plan, those benefits should be tested against the evaluation of the project or programme and that's what should be the focus for those although it is up to the lead delivery organisations to stipulate what they will evaluate.

Officers stated that they have evaluation profiles for every single project detailing what they plan to evaluate and at the point in time of when they've estimated when they hope to get these done.

 

Members said that in all the business plans there are a lot of projections there which must be tested against and felt that it is an important issue about the methodology and how that is going to be constructed and who's going to do that.

 

The report was noted.