Councillors want visits funding pot
COUNCILLORS scrutinising the £1.2bn Cardiff Capital Region City Deal are calling for a funding pot to enable them to visit key sites and invite experts to meetings.
They warn that, without hands are tied.
The first joint scrutiny committee meeting took place on Monday in Bridgend with one councillor from each of the 10 local authorities signed up to the deal in attendance.
Each local authority has contributed millions of pounds to the project with further funding from the UK and Welsh Governments, and the European Union.
But councillors on the scrutiny committee were unhappy to discover that it, their there seemed to be no budget allowance for visiting keys sites of investment or for paying any experts they might want to quiz.
Cardiff city councillor Ramesh Patel said: “It’s a major pitfall – for scrutiny to be meaningful it’s absolutely essential.
“Cabinet members [on the City Deal] are entitled to go to these places, it shouldn’t be any different for scrutiny.”
He added: “We don’t want anybody to start pointing a finger at us saying ‘you haven’t done a good enough job [of scrutinising].’
“If our hands are tied we can’t do a good enough job.
“We have to have a budget set aside for that.”
Newport city councillor Majid Rahman added: “We are looking at the investment of billions of pounds – it would be good to have at least some understanding from expert witnesses.
“If we can’t find a budget for that I don’t know how we are going to make good decisions.”
Bridgend County Council, which is carrying out the role of host authority for the scrutiny committee, has been allocated £25,000 from the City Deal contingency budget for the first year to provide support and advisers.
Officers told councillors they would check whether funding could be provided for visits and experts.
During the meeting councillors agreed the terms of reference for the committee and began to look at what they could cover in future meetings.
Councillors opted to bring forward the date of the next meeting, from March to January or February, with an exact date to be finalised in the coming weeks.
Meetings will rotate around the various local authorities while the chairman and vice-chairman roles will rotate in alphabetical order.
The City Deal aims to create 25,000 jobs across the region and bring in £4bn of private sector investment by 2036.