The Directors of People and Place will submit a joint report on two property transactions to facilitate the decant of staff and services from the Civic Centre.

With reference to minute  70 above, Carole Burgoyne (Director for People) and Anthony Payne (Director for Place) submitted a joint report seeking approval of two property transactions to facilitate the decant of staff and services from the Civic Centre.  

The report indicated that the matter was urgent private business and the decision was an urgent key decision because it was impracticable to defer the decision until Cabinet on 14 January 2014 (with publication of the forward plan on 16 December 2013) as the Council needed to secure negotiated property deals in the market now to secure its accommodation requirements and a decision was required before this date.  In the interest of the Council, immediate action was required to secure the best deals and it was therefore proposed to implement the decision immediately after Cabinet.  Approval for the urgent Cabinet decision had been obtained from Councillor James, Chair of the Co-operative Scrutiny Board and the report would be submitted to the Co-operative Scrutiny Board. 

Les Allen (Transformation Programmes Manager), Alwyn Thomas (Senior Commercial Lawyer) and Chris Trevitt (Head of Capital and Assets) attended the meeting and presented the proposals. 

Further discussions were sought between the Cabinet Member for Finance and officers, to include the Head of Communications on a further report to Cabinet in due course.   

Agreed the two property transactions as detailed in the report and that the decisions are implemented immediately.