Banbury councillors outraged after Oxfordshire County Council found to have over £260 million of unspent cash

The discovery that Oxfordshire County Council was stockpiling Section 106 funding was made at a council meeting earlier this year.

Section 106 funding is money developers must pay local planning authorities when building a new housing development.

The money typically goes towards supporting residents with investments in roads, education, healthcare and affordable housing.

However, much of the money - that coule have gone towards these amenities – has been held by the county council.

This discovery led to the homebuilders industry body the Home Builders Federation sending Freedom of Information requests to all councils.

Around 208 councils responded to the requests, with results showing Oxfordshire County Council had the biggest amount of any council with around £260 million of unspent money.

Oxfordshire County Councillor for Bloxham and Easington, Cllr Kieron Mallon expressed his outrage at the discovery of the money, following this month’s full council meeting.

He said: “The emerging figures are astounding. Oxfordshire County Council is the biggest Section 106 banker in the UK.

“Banburyshire residents in town and village have had a huge amount of housing, and with that should come infrastructure, as I said, we have had the pain, where is the gain?

“The Liberal Democrats, Greens and Labour councillors have all had a go at running the council over the last three and a half years and have been crying wolf over lack of funding from the last Conservative Government, while sitting on nearly £290m of unspent money to help residents, alleviate problems, build infrastructure and improve the health of the very old and the very young in its care. It is simply astonishing!”

Fellow local Conservative councillor Cllr Eddie Reeves echoed Cllr Mallon's shock at the Freedom of Information findings.

Cllr Reeves said: “It’s a shocking indictment of the planning system. Much of the money is squirrelled away in company and local authority bank accounts without being spent.

“The tragedy of this is that at least some of this money will now never be spent with communities paying the price for poorer public facilities.”

In response, Oxfordshire County Council has said it is not unusual for local authorities to keep money and that it plans to invest £84 million of S106 money over the next two years.

A spokesperson for the county council said: “It is not unusual for Oxfordshire County Council to hold monies in readiness to spend on strategic infrastructure, which often takes many years to be delivered.

“Often infrastructure projects require pooled contributions so that S106 monies are held to help fund and deliver the capital programme. Therefore to have an outstanding balance of S106 monies is not out of the ordinary.

“The county council has an exceptionally good record in negotiating and collecting S106 payments and regularly reviews the quantity of Section 106 monies held against the infrastructure needed to support or mitigate development.

“S106 money is held for specific purposes related to development and so cannot be spent on general council services. Funding for individual projects will often be assembled from multiple developments meaning we will always need to hold a level of funding before infrastructure can be delivered.”