Agenda item

With reference to article 30 of the minute of its meeting of 21 April 2011, the Committee had before it a report by the Director of Enterprise, Planning and Infrastructure which:  (a) presented estimate costs for a programme of repairs and upgrading works necessary to prevent further deterioration of the Council’s Advance Factory Investment Portfolio; and (b) set out various options on repair, funding and re-investment of these properties.

The report recommended –

that the Committee –

(a)       agree that the Council should not carry out the identified necessary repair and upgrading works to 16 advance factory units located at Farburn Industrial Estate and Woodlands Road, Kirkhill Industrial Estate, Dyce;

(b)       agree that the Head of Asset Management and Operations investigate whether the demolition and sale/lease and redevelopment of the cleared sites at Farburn and Woodlands Road was to the Council’s financial advantage and in the event that it wasn’t -

(c)        agree that the Head of Asset Management and Operations hire an agent to market the 16 advance factory units for sale, in either single lots, or in groups, or provisionally negotiates their sale to the sitting tenants, so as to maximise the aggregate capital receipt;

(d)       agree that the Head of Asset Management and Operations undertake a similar cost/benefit analysis for each group of advance factories in the portfolio, to determine whether it was to the Council’s financial advantage to fund, organise and carry out the necessary repairs and re-let the improved properties or, as with recommendations (b) and (c), to demolish and re-develop or to sell “as is”;

(e)       instruct the Head of Asset Management and Operations to report to future meetings of this Committee on the outcome of the implementation of recommendations (b), (c) and (d), in order that Committee might consider the approval of offers for advance factories or authorising the implementation of repair and upgrading works programmes, or any other potential property schemes for groups of advance factories;

(f)        agree that the Head of Asset Management and Operations investigate, with other appropriate officers, the mechanism by which the Council could borrow money to create a budget to fund repairs to its present advance factory portfolio, and/or fund the development of new advance factories;

(g)       agree that the Head of Asset Management and Operations open “without commitment” discussions with private Landlords on the potential development of their undeveloped industrial sites with new advance factories, either by means of a Joint Venture with the Council, or by the Council being granted a head lease or any other appropriate development mechanism;

(h)       instruct the Head of Asset Management and Operations to report to future meetings of the Committee on the outcome of the implementation of recommendations (f) and (g), in order that the Committee might consider the approval, in principle, of such potential development schemes; and

(i)         approve, in principle, that any capital receipt generated by the Council in the implementation of any of the recommendations in the report, be wholly set aside provide a separate capital budget to assist the implementation of all the other recommendations in the report.

The Committee resolved:-

to approve the recommendations.