Areas where developer levy funds should be spent were approved by Lewisham’s mayor and cabinet last week, despite questions over transparency.   

Councils can apply a Community Infrastructure Levy (CIL) to developers when they build in an area – the money is to mitigate the impact of development and goes towards improving local infrastructure.  

CIL rules allow the council to set aside 15 per cent of the funds – 25 per cent in areas with an adopted neighbourhood plan – to spend on priorities that should be agreed with the local community. This is known as Neighbourhood CIL. 

In Lewisham some of the NCIL money goes to the ward where the development is, some is redistributed across wards, and some is set aside for projects across the whole borough.  

At a mayor and cabinet meeting on Wednesday (March 11) councillors agreed that half a million of the borough-wide fund should go towards mentoring services for children and young people, tackling crime and anti-social behaviour, helping people with disabilities and mental health issues find jobs, and £100,000 of the pot was allocated to air quality initiatives.  

But questions were raised over the transparency of the consultation process and whether the residents who had a say were “representative” of the whole community.  

The safer stronger communities select committee asked that the council postpone the decision until more detailed data was gathered.  

Responses were collected through ward assemblies and commonplace, an online tool residents can use to respond to consultations.  

Chair of the select committee Councillor Juliet Campbell said the committee was “concerned about how the priorities will come about” and the lack of community-wide representations in the consultation.  

“We know that local assembly attendees tend not to be representative of the borough and the commonplace platform, based on the demographics of people that respond to online consultations, tends not to be representative of the Lewisham population.  

“I understand that 18,000 people visited to comment on the commonplace platform, however the report does not offer the evidence of what priorities were voted for.  

“The committee would like to see X percentage of people said this, X percentage of people said something else.  

“This would offer us transparency in how the priorities were arrived at and we would be confident in how the data drives our decisions. 

“While we recognise that consultation is time consuming, theme 2 of the local democracy recommendation speaks directly to public involvement in decision making, reaching and empowering our communities, including seldom heard voices, and allowing people to have a say in how we design and develop our services. 

“This is not evident in the report.” 

She said that the council needed to apply “rigour and discipline” in how it consulted the community.  

“Pausing the decision on the spending priorities of the borough-wide NCIL pot so that it can be reviewed more widely will not impact on the timeframe for delivery. 

“It may not even impact on those priorities, however it will provide assurance to both scrutiny and to residents that we’ve carried out a robust consultation process where decisions on these are driven by data and are evidence-based,” Cllr Campbell added.  

Speaking at the meeting, James Lee, head of Service, culture and community development, said the consultation process was “the best we’ve got”.  

“We fully acknowledge in this process that the people who respond to consultations, in the same way as the people who come out and vote, are not always representative of our communities. 

“We do everything we can to promote the assemblies, to promote this consultation, we’ve dropped letters to every door in the borough to make it aware. 

“We’ve gone through local community groups and we hope that through that reaching out […] the returns on the commonplace are more representative. 

“We are hopeful that due to the sheer scale of them that they are,” he said.  

Mr Lee explained the next phase of the process would involve community workshops where people can attend.  

“There will be individual funding workshops held in wards with the larger funding, so Rushey Green, New Cross, Evelyn, and regional ones for the wards with smaller amounts, which we will invite community to to come and learn more because it’s very important to remember that this is simply a priority setting stage,” he said.  

Bids for funding will follow, be reviewed by officers, and sent to mayor and cabinet.  

Mayor Damien Egan said he “appreciated the challenge” of making sure the council gets the views of as many people as possible but that the number of responses was high.  

He said: “I’m not sure if we paused and reviewed the current process whether we’d actually end up with anything different from the programmes that are being suggested.  

“The mentoring service for children and young people is absolutely critical in the borough – we’ve been talking about it for a very long time.  

“The employment support for people with learning disabilities and mental health issues is also critical, as are initiatives around air quality and tackling crime and antisocial behaviour.” 

He added the process would be reviewed and “no doubt there will be lessons that will need to get learned”.