A section 106 agreement was entered into between South Molton Town Council and Devon County Council relating to the cost of undertaking a major improvement scheme at the Borners Bridge Junction on the A361.
The date of the agreement was 13th July 2006, but the monies were not paid over until June 2010. Under Clause 2.1 the Council paid over £96,000 as consideration for the Section 106 monies and under Clause 2.3 of the Agreement if the monies have not been spent within 10 years of payment then the County Council shall refund the said contribution or the unspent part to the Town Council.
Can you therefore confirm what the monies, if at all, were spent on specifically for this project, and confirm any monies unspent and the amount of the refund due.
Our Finance Team have confirmed that we have designed a £5.4 million safety improvement scheme for a new roundabout at Borners Bridge and the design costs include the 96k from South Molton Town Council.
Our Legal Team have confirmed that we have spent the money on design work which was allowed under the agreement.
On the basis of the above statements there is no unspent money and no refund due.
We do not keep detailed costs breakdowns by geographical element for the development of each section of this large scheme as many activities overlap between elements. However we do have the total costs of the development of the scheme which are £5.62m over the last 5 years. This accords with industry standard percentage for design costs prior to construction which is usually taken as 10% of the total costs of the works, total works cost being approximately £60m.
For Borners Bridge the total expected costs of the junction improvement is approximately £3m. This roundabout is expensive to be built as it is on a straight section of road, offset side roads, on a structure over the River Mole and includes improvements to the footway underneath. Therefore the expected 10% fee percentage would be approximately £300k, almost 3 times more than the contribution from South Molton Town Council.