CD161 Savills for Western Lands Strategic Outline Case

In January 2020, the Board approved OPDC's revised delivery approach, which included the following key elements:

• A new focus to the regeneration of the area, taking a comprehensive view of the 'Western Lands' along Old Oak Common Lane, Old Oak Lane and Victoria Road where key sites are owned by the Department for Transport (DfT) and Network Rail.
• Developing an evidence base of the benefit of a comprehensive and coordinated approach to land, development and infrastructure funding to optimise the strategic opportunities that the area offers.
• Securing the support for major partners including public sector landowners and funders.
• Developing an engagement plan to ensure local and future communities in the area can influence the development and delivery of this major opportunity for London.

Since January, OPDC officers have engaged with public sector stakeholders, including Network Rail, HS2 and the boroughs to begin the process of securing the support of the major partners to the development of the strategy for Western Lands. OPDC has also engaged with central government - via the Ministry for Homes, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), Homes England (HE) and the Infrastructure and Projects Authority - to discuss potential funding opportunities.

This engagement with government colleagues has led to a decision to produce, and jointly agree, a Strategic Outline Case (SOC). The SOC will be developed in line with the Treasury's guidance for developing project business cases and will the "five Case" model:

The "five case" model sets out how OPDC will advance the work input from key Government stakeholders throughout each case, or chapter:

Outline of five case model

Parts of the SOC is being developed by both OPDC and HE officers drawing on in-house expertise, including input from the GLA Housing & Land Directorate and Transport for London (TfL) Operational Property. However, specialist consultancy input will be required to support the drafting and compilation of the business case and, in particular, to provide technical expertise for the economic and financial cases.

This decision seeks approval for expenditure of £60,000 from OPDC's Western Lands 2021/22 budget to extend the appointment of Savills, under the existing call-off contract, to provide this specialist input. This is in addition to the £125,000 already spent on Western Lands and SOC support during 2020/21, bringing total approved expenditure for Savills to £185,000 (see CD148 and CD154 for prior approvals).

As its March 2021 meeting, the Board approved a delegation to the Chief Executive Officer and the Director of Delivery to authorise expenditure in 2021/22 of up to £250,000 to support the ongoing development of a business case as the basis of a future bid for Government funding. This approval is being sought within that delegation. A summary of approvals under the delegation is below:

Expenditure authorisation against March 2021 Board Delegation

The proposal and how it will be delivered

The proposal to extend the commission with Savills will help ensure the separate SOC cases are produced to the Treasury's Green Book standards.

This commission will cover the following work streams:

• Establishing a reference case to create a baseline for review of the overarching strategy. This will be done by examining the local context and reviewing development proposals and appraisals.
• Review existing work on the strategic case to clearly define objectives and critical success factors jointly agree with stakeholders.
• Draft the economic case by calculating the benefit to cost ratio and other value for money considerations relative to land uplift in the delivery strategy.
• Draft the financial case narrative using existing financial models to cover affordability and viability of the case.
• Develop the narrative for the commercial case including potential models for partnerships with private sector developers. This will build on procurement and structuring work developed by OPDC and HE.
• Define how OPDC and HE will organise and supervise the delivery including reporting and governance, including the involvement of major stakeholders.
• Iterations of the draft report, leading to a final report after several formal meetings and coordination between all stakeholders.
• On-going consultations and refinements to the SOC based on government and stakeholder feedback.

OPDC intends to instruct Savills to provide the above services by variation to their existing call-off contract with OPDC.

The objectives of the proposal are to:

• Prepare a SOC for OPDC's Western Lands regeneration proposals. The business case will be developed for and on behalf of OPDC and HE and will include significant input from both local and central government stakeholders in order to clearly articulate the benefits of delivering regeneration at Old Oak.
• This SOC will bring together the detailed technical work completed to date which has established an underlying evidence for critical infrastructure requirements, land assembly and development capacity and communicate it in a way that will inform decisions required from Government on bringing forward its land and supporting infrastructure investment.

The expected outcomes of the proposal are:

• Endorsement of the SOC from key Government departments (DfT, MHCLG and Treasury) to provide "gateway approval" and allow OPDC to progress funding, land, delivery and procurement plans.

Strategic fit

This proposal supports OPDC's Western Lands strategy; the revised delivery approach which was approved by the Board in January 2020. It provides technical and management related work necessary to prepare an SOC for submission to central Government.

OPDC must have 'due regard' to the need to eliminate unlawful discrimination, harassment and victimisation as well as to the need to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between people who share a protected characteristic and those who do not.

This work has no impacts on those with protected characteristics. The outputs from the Savills' consultancy commission, where material to future strategies, policy development, communications, investments/funding requests and delivery plans, will be subject to qualities assessments at the appropriate time.

Savills has adopted an Equal Opportunities Policy.

Project governance and assurance

The Development Director will act as Senior Responsible Officer (SRO) for this commission, managing the contract with Savills. Day to day management of the work will be led by the Senior Development Manager.

The SRO will coordinate, control and regularly monitor Savills' instructions and outputs, ensuring that relevant outputs are reported internally.

Risk and issues

The following risks are associated with this proposal:

There are no extant issues that require management or mitigation.

Other considerations

There are no other considerations that need to be noted in the taking of this decision.

Conflicts of interest

No one involved in the preparation or clearance of this Form, or its substantive proposal, has any conflict of interest.

Expenditure of up to £60,000 will be funded from the 2021/22 Western Lands budget in the Delivery directorate.

The report above indicates that the decision requested of the Chief Executive falls within the OPDC's object of securing the regeneration of the Old Oak and Park Royal area and its powers to do anything it considers appropriate for the purpose of its objects or purposes incidental to those purposes, as set out in the Localism Act 2011.

In taking the decisions requested, the director must have due regard to the Public Sector Equality Duty; namely the need to eliminate discrimination, harassment, victimisation and any other conduct prohibited by the Equality Act 2010 and to advance equality of opportunity and foster good relations between persons who share a relevant protected characteristic (race, disability, gender, age, sexual orientation, religion or belief, pregnancy and maternity and gender reassignment) and persons who do not share it (section 149 of the Equality Act 2010). To this end, the director should have particular regard to section 6 (above) of this report.

The officers have indicated in section 2 that the services required are within the scope of the existing call-off contract with the service provider (HCA Contract No: DN336104) and will be instructed in accordance with the terms and conditions of that call-off contract.

Officers must ensure that the appropriate call-off contract mechanism is followed and required documentation is put in place when instructing the services.