More than £19 million of community funding remains unspent by Sheffield Council

Section 106 money – as it is known – is negotiated between councils and developers when developments are built.

This money can fund things such as affordable housing, roads, parks, schools and youth services.

Councillor Martin Smith asked councillor Cate McDonald, executive member for finance and resources, during the September full council meeting how much of the funding remained unspent and how many funding agreements remained fully or partially unspent across the city.

In a written reply, Coun McDonald said there was £19.4 million unspent, of which £14.7 million was committed to identified projects and programmes of work.

She added that this funding related to 234 agreements which are wholly or partially unspent.

This has increased since February when the amount of unspent Section 106 money in Sheffield stood at around £12.3 million.

The council leader at that time, Bob Johnson, said some of the money was committed to improvements in Spider Park, Ecclesfield Park, Concord Park, the General Cemetery and Forge Dam pond restoration.

He said: “We agree that everything should be done to speed up delivery of these projects, we have recently introduced a new reporting system to identify unspent money and get more projects moving forward.

“We are also making changes in the service so that we can get schemes like this implemented much faster. Some of these changes have been delayed due to Covid but will be important in addressing this issue.

“We want to get this money spent and the projects delivered and will continue to improve this.”