Commuted sums are collected by the council to maintain new assets when adopted within the public realm. This commuted sum is intended to ensure the costs of maintaining the new highway and public open space asset, when adopted, is funded.

This report sets out the process for allocating monies collected to date, over the previous five year period, which have not yet been spent to date to be allocated towards the public realm contract for maintenance purposes for which they were required. The intention is to invest the current commuted sums into the public realm over the next 5 year period which is broadly the period over which they have been collected as set out in the recommendation and report.

That:

(a)       Invest £290,677.94 in 2020/21 and four subsequent years to fund the maintenance of the newly adopted infrastructure and maintenance of the existing assets.

1.    A number of options have been considered around the factor of the split of the current fund. Different permutations would allow for the investment with different diminishing annual amounts depending on the amount of years. . It is recommended that the monies previously collected which have not been allocated to maintenance are allocated to maintenance of the highway asset / public realm over a period of five years which is in line with the timescale over which they have been collected but not allocated to maintenance activities. This rate of investment will be a reasonable spread of monies collected to date but not invested and in future year’s allocation of new commuted sums will form part of the annual plan governance reports..