Central Estate Programme - Cobalt Square

Following approval of the Central Estate – Counter Terrorism and Organised Crime (CTOC) Hub in March 2018, initial funding to consider preparatory works at Cobalt Square was approved in March 2019. The design and development work to support the estates strategy option of retaining Cobalt Square now needs to progress to the next stage. Additional space will be made available at Cobalt Square. This paper requests the approval of additional expenditure for detailed design and survey works to progress the business case.

The Deputy Mayor for Policing and Crime is recommended to:

1. Agree to the additional expenditure of up to £3.67m to cover exploratory surveys and design work to assess the potential for Cobalt Square to form a hub for Serious and Organised Crime capabilities.

2. Agree to increase the draft 2020 capital programme by £3.67m to meet the cost of the proposed expenditure, but with this expenditure being the first call on any underspend on other capital programmes in order to seek to minimise borrowing costs.

3. Note that in the unlikely event the proposed redevelopment does not proceed, there would be a need to write the capital costs back to revenue. Taking into account previous approvals, this could create a revenue budget pressure of up to £4.2M.

4. Note that the MPS Management Board consider the risks of the work not proceeding to be low, and to be cost effective and to meet required timelines, this work needs to start immediately.

5. Agree to delegate authority to the Director Commercial with respect to entering into the necessary contracts to deliver the requirements.

1. Introduction and background

1.1. The Central Estate Programme is a project designed to rationalise and improve the “to be” retained estate mainly in relation to central functions, decision PCD 335 refers.

1.2. In March 2019 an initial sum of £250,000 for preparatory works and intial design was approved to progress this proposal.

2. Issues for consideration

2.1. The MPS Management Board has agreed that the changes requested will further improve operational effectiveness with respect to the response to Counter Terrorism and will not impact Organised Crime capability.

2.2. The approval of this expenditure will enable the detailed design of the works necessary to re-provide the organised crime function at Cobalt Square. A full business case is expected in Autumn 2020.

3. Financial Comments

3.1. The estimated costs of the surveys and detailed design including optimism bias is £3.67m. This sum has been included in the 2020/21 capital programme budget submission which is subject to Assembly and Mayoral approval.

3.2. If the proposal to co-locate partners at ESB is approved this estimated spend of £3.67m will result in a broadly cost neutral position over the time period of the scheme.

3.3. If the proposal to co-locate partners at ESB is not approved the spend of £3.67m below and that previously approved (in total £4.2m) will need to be written off to revenue. The MPS Management Board consider this to be a low risk.

4. Legal Comments

4.1. In carrying out its functions, the MOPAC may, under paragraph 7, Schedule 3 of the Police Reform and Social Responsibility Act 2011 “do anything which is calculated to facilitate, or is conducive or incidental to, the exercise of the functions of the Office”.

4.2. Under the MOPAC Scheme of Consent and Delegation 4.8 the DMPC must approve “Business cases for revenue or capital expenditure of £500,000 and above”

5. Commercial Issues

5.1. All contracts for works required for the refurbishment will be undertaken through existing compliant frameworks.

6. GDPR and Data Privacy

6.1. There are no GDPR or data privacy issues.

7. Equality Comments

7.1. There are no equality implications arising from this decision

8. Background/supporting papers

8.1. MPS Paper Appendix 1