South West Regional Development Agency

Summary of the Key Points from the Board Minutes - 13th December 1999

• A presentation was made to the Board on policy for Spatial Prioritisation in the SW. A formal proposal on regional priority areas will be made at the February meeting. Board members were asked to consider the issues raised in the paper.
• A presentation was made on targets for the Regional Strategy Indicators - a formal proposal will be made at the February meeting. Points were raised as to whether targets should be regional or sub regional, whether local measures will be needed and the achievability of the targets.
• The Board accepted a recommendation to make an investment of a further £4.535m gross, £1.17m net in the Royal William Yard project. The Board welcomed the programme of work already done by the RDA and the continuation of detailed discussions with developers to secure the future of the site.
• The Board noted progress on the evaluation of the proposed developments at Plymouth City Airport a further report will be presented to the February Board meeting.
• The Board noted the report on progress with the Eden Project.
• Recommendations were agreed on the Objective 3 strategic overview section of the Regional Development Plan, the RDA representation on the Objective 3 National Monitoring Committee, the Regional Monitoring Committee and the establishment of an RDA chaired Objective 3 Strategic Group.
• The RDA's Finance Report was presented to the Board. A query was raised on the likelihood of reaching full spend this year; the CEO confirmed that we would achieve full spend. The problems of annual funding for Objective 1 were noted as was the need to develop a project bank for Cornwall. More details would be presented to the February Board meeting.
• It was agreed that a paper reviewing the seven Board Sub Groups would be presented to the February Board meeting.
• The Board discussed whether it supported one or two Objective 2 Single Programming Documents (SPD). There was no collective strong view for either amongst the Board but on balance, one SPD for the region was slightly preferred.

Enquiries: Simon Hodgson: Tel: 01392 229537 email Simon.Hodgson@southwestrda.org.uk