Monitoring Arrangements and 5% Capital Funding Pre-payment - Annex K and L

Annex K - City of Preston Towns Fund Monitoring Arrangements

Full Monitoring Arrangements including templates, outputs and outcomes for each project are to be presented to a future meeting of the Board for approval.

The assurance framework Annex K will be updated following that Board meeting.

Annex L - City of Preston Towns Fund - 5% Capital Funding Pre-Payment Protocol

To support with project delivery, the Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities (DLUHC) have released an early payment of 5% of the total Heads of Terms offer.

The Council as Accountable Body has received £995,000 - 5% of Preston's total Towns Fund grant in the form of a Section 31 grant.

The funding enables early-stage activity in project development. Funding can only be spent on Preston's 6 Towns Fund projects. The funding can be used for projects where Business Case Summary Documents have not yet been submitted to DLUHC. If a project within a Town Deal does not ultimately proceed to the delivery stage, DLUHC will not seek to claw back the 5% early draw down.

The 5% prepayment is an early release of money rather than new funding. As such, payments in the future will need to be adjusted in order to take into account the early drawdown.

It is expected that the 5% pre-payment should achieve spend in 2021/22. In the event that the 5% early payment is more than profiled for 2021/22, DLUHC will net this off future payments until the amounts are reconciled.

PCC as the accountable body can use freedoms and flexibilities including capital swaps and moving money between projects to achieve spend.

Project sponsors are required to provide information to enable the Towns Fund Board to approve an indicative allocation per project.

A grant funding agreement (GFA) or memorandum of understanding (MOU) will be required to be signed prior to releasing the 5% capital funding to project sponsors.
A schedule of payment terms will be set out within the GFA or MOU.

Project Sponsors will be required to provide monitoring updates/reports and will be required to maintain an audit trail to support records supporting the spend. Preston City Council as Accountable Body will be required to provide updates to MLUHC on the use of the 5% pre-payment funds.